Opinion

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With decorated trees and nativity scenes going up and temperatures starting to fall, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Texas. While many folks think of the holiday season as “the most wonderful time of the year,” it’s important to remember that there are many of our fellow Texans who are less fortunate and struggle every day to provide for themselves and their families.

This holiday season, I want to encourage you to work with your church, a local food bank, a shelter, or any other service organization making an effort to provide food, clothing, and other basic necessities to those in need. If you need help finding a local program or charity, please don’t hesitate to contact our of-fice and we will be happy to assist you.

With that, we’ll dive back into our examination of House interim charges.

House Interim Charge: Corrections

As we continue our overview of House Interim Charges, the next committee on our stop is the House Committee on Corrections. With nine sitting members, the Corrections Committee oversees all matters pertaining to incarceration at the state level, programs to provide alternatives to incarceration, and has purview over the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). As many of you know, TDCJ has a strong presence in East Texas and many employees of the department live in our district; as such, this office mon-itors the policies discussed in this committee very closely.

Like most committees, House Corrections will conduct active oversight on relevant legislation passed in recent legislative sessions to ensure the policy language and measures are working as intended.

Much of the work includes legislation and studies on reducing recidivism to lower the rate of individuals released from prison and relapsing into criminal behavior.

For example, HB 30 provides a high school education program for inmates younger than 18 or younger than 22 for individuals with disabilities.

Providing education to young inmates has the potential to improve reentry rates once the individual has served their time and paid their debt to society.

Similarly, the Committee will examine HB 3130, passed in the 85th legislative session, which established a pilot program to provide educational and vocational training, employment, and reentry services to certain defendants.

Throughout the interim, the Committee will explore the availability of mental health services for individ-uals in county jails, TDCJ facilities, or on parole.

The study also included a joint charge with the Committee on County Affairs to make recommendations for treatment and recovery options and the best practices to address the needs of individuals experiencing withdrawal from drug or alcohol use.

The House Corrections Committee will also evaluate the benefits and potential savings associated with modernizing technology throughout the state’s correctional system and consider updating regulations related to cell phone monitoring, body cameras, and video surveillance systems. Additionally, the evalua-tion includes assessing current family visitation rooms and visitation-related practices, programs, and ser-vices to make visitation more family-friendly.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact my office if we can help you in any way. My district office may be reached at (936) 634-2762.

Additionally, I welcome you to follow along on my Official Facebook Page, where I will post regular updates on what’s happening in your State Capitol and share information that could be useful to you and your family: https://www.facebook.com/RepTrentAshby/.

Write a comment

With decorated trees and nativity scenes going up and temperatures starting to fall, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Texas. While many folks think of the holiday season as “the most wonderful time of the year,” it’s important to remember that there are many of our fellow Texans who are less fortunate and struggle every day to provide for themselves and their families.

This holiday season, I want to encourage you to work with your church, a local food bank, a shelter, or any other service organization making an effort to provide food, clothing, and other basic necessities to those in need. If you need help finding a local program or charity, please don’t hesitate to contact our of-fice and we will be happy to assist you.

With that, we’ll dive back into our examination of House interim charges.

House Interim Charge: Corrections

As we continue our overview of House Interim Charges, the next committee on our stop is the House Committee on Corrections. With nine sitting members, the Corrections Committee oversees all matters pertaining to incarceration at the state level, programs to provide alternatives to incarceration, and has purview over the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). As many of you know, TDCJ has a strong presence in East Texas and many employees of the department live in our district; as such, this office mon-itors the policies discussed in this committee very closely.

Like most committees, House Corrections will conduct active oversight on relevant legislation passed in recent legislative sessions to ensure the policy language and measures are working as intended.

Much of the work includes legislation and studies on reducing recidivism to lower the rate of individuals released from prison and relapsing into criminal behavior.

For example, HB 30 provides a high school education program for inmates younger than 18 or younger than 22 for individuals with disabilities.

Providing education to young inmates has the potential to improve reentry rates once the individual has served their time and paid their debt to society.

Similarly, the Committee will examine HB 3130, passed in the 85th legislative session, which established a pilot program to provide educational and vocational training, employment, and reentry services to certain defendants.

Throughout the interim, the Committee will explore the availability of mental health services for individ-uals in county jails, TDCJ facilities, or on parole.

The study also included a joint charge with the Committee on County Affairs to make recommendations for treatment and recovery options and the best practices to address the needs of individuals experiencing withdrawal from drug or alcohol use.

The House Corrections Committee will also evaluate the benefits and potential savings associated with modernizing technology throughout the state’s correctional system and consider updating regulations related to cell phone monitoring, body cameras, and video surveillance systems. Additionally, the evalua-tion includes assessing current family visitation rooms and visitation-related practices, programs, and ser-vices to make visitation more family-friendly.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact my office if we can help you in any way. My district office may be reached at (936) 634-2762.

Additionally, I welcome you to follow along on my Official Facebook Page, where I will post regular updates on what’s happening in your State Capitol and share information that could be useful to you and your family: https://www.facebook.com/RepTrentAshby/.

Write a comment

By Horace McQueen

Politicians see lots of things in a different light than normal folks. And those who are living off taxpayers never seem to have enough. The touted stories about electric vehicles making internal combustion engines obsolete lack credibility. The sheer cost of providing batteries without harming the environment is not something our political misfits want to consider—or hear about the problems from ordinary citizens. Then there is the need for billions of hard-to-find dollars to build transmission lines to provide charging stations across the nation. Once these batteries reach their effective life as an electric vehicle where will it end up? At a landfill that will pollute the environment even more? As long as government bureaucracy keeps funding the EV racket, maybe the cost doesn’t deserve any consideration by those paying the bills!

If you are debating about selling—or buying—livestock before the end of this year, it’s time to make a plan. The last two weeks of 2022 will provide some time off for most of our sale barns since the buying outfits will be paring down their buying over the period. Over those last two weeks of the year many livestock trading outfits will be out of action till 2023.  Hopefully buyers will return next year with buyer instructions to raise their offerings for our livestock. That would make a great Christmas gift!

Lots of folks are questioning the rapid rise in the number of employees in our public school systems that are not teaching in the classroom. According to statistics from the U.S. Office of Education, from 2000 t0 2019, the number of students in our public schools increased 7.6%. In this same time frame, the number of classroom teachers increased 8.7%. But the number of school district administrators nearly doubled with an increase to 87%.  That should be food for thought for our elected school boards who were placed there to provide the best education possible for those kids in classrooms across the country. Oh well, it’s just money! That’s –30—This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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By Chris Edwards

It wasn’t too awfully long ago that Tyler County had a little family friendly gender-bending fun on display for a good cause.

The Mr. Tyler County Pageants were a whale of a time for many folks, and generated funds toward the countywide Relay for Life efforts. Men from across the county strutted their stuff in evening gowns and wigs.

Pretty wholesome stuff, right?

Well, the pageants took place at the Eagle Summit, but had they taken place at a venue where alcohol was served, the events could, in the words of a ridiculous bill recently filed, be classified as a “sexually oriented business.”

Two weeks ago, Jared Patterson (R-Frisco) introduced HB 643, a bill that seeks to classify venues serving alcohol and hosting drag performances as “sexually oriented businesses.”

This time of the year, bills are being filed in the build-up to the gaveling in of the 88^th legislature, and it should surprise absolutely no one that a bill like this is among the reams of potential legislation.

Patterson’s bill describes a drag performance as when “a performer exhibits a gender identity that is different than the performer’s assigned gender at birth, using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers and sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience for entertainment.”

There are several problems with Patterson’s bill, and while it does not stand much of a chance of passing, it represents a larger issue of legislators who are too blinded by bigotry to actually serve the people.

The state of Texas heavily regulates businesses that fall under the “sexually oriented” umbrella. Such businesses do not allow anyone under the age of 18 to enter, and the businesses must keep records of each customer who enters, etc., etc., etc.

While those may be understandable regulations for an adult bookstore, what about community theatre performances where performers often gender-bend onstage? Or what is to be made of rock concerts where a male performer might don a dress for the sake of the show?

Back in the ‘90s rock stars like Kurt Cobain and Shannon Hoon weren’t afraid to sport a dress onstage, and more recently, mega-star Post Malone does the same.

If a bill like Patterson’s were to pass, it would severely limit the performance opportunities of many in the state of Texas.

And of course, if passed, there’s also the legal repercussions for those businesses fitting the description. Sexually oriented businesses must register as such with the Secretary of State and pay a registration fee with an annual renewal and prohibit children at all times. Venue owners found in violation can be fined $4,000 and sentenced to up to a year in jail.

The bill’s author is described by some as a “legislative troll.” Some of his greatest hits include the idea of banning all minors from social media, and who could forget his book-banning fiasco?

Patterson wrote a letter last March asking school districts across the state to not buy books from distributors selling books that mention LGBTQ issues; singling out Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel memoir Gender Queer, which he labelled “obscene” and “pornographic.”

There’s nothing conservative about Patterson’s quixotic nonsense. For one, a bill such as HB 643 would add another heavy layer of regulatory sheen to many entrepreneurs’ overhead. On the other hand, trying to legislate such an issue that comes down to simple freedom of choice is just another way to try and tell people how to live their lives, and another mask to hide lack of meaningful legislation.

Wallowing in anti-gay bigotry does not make one’s views conservative, and the moral panic that the state’s GOP is trying to foment around trans people and drag queens spells lack of leadership, but the challenge to counter such nonsense is upon the ideological opposites of the state’s majority party (as well as more conventional conservative voices, which I guess identify as “moderate Republicans” nowadays).

Those who oppose such measures must engage and expose why such legislative folderol will not work in the long run.

There is a bushel full of issues that legislators could focus on that have nothing to do with drag queens. What about putting more support toward law enforcement; toward better training? Or how about tackling the sky-high property taxes?

Thousands of foster children are caught up in the system, and there are legions of Texans needed better healthcare; rural folks in need of hospitals and better infrastructure, but to ask Frisco’s own Jared Patterson, the real issues affecting Texans are the performances of drag queens and supposedly pornographic library books.