Opinion

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I would like to begin this column by saying it is the honor of a lifetime to have earned the trust of those living in House District 9 to continue serving as your voice in Austin.

I’d like every voter in House District 9 to know — whether you voted for me or not — that I will work each and every day to represent Deep East Texas with honesty, integrity, and humility while working tirelessly to promote and protect the interests of our region and the values we hold dear.  As a reminder, our next legislative session begins in January 2025.

With that, here’s an update from your State Capitol.

As you might be aware, the Texas Panhandle has been devastated by recent wildfires. My prayers have been with our fellow Texans over the past weeks and will continue to be with them as they work to recover from the largest wildfire in Texas history.

In response to the disastrous wildfires, the Speaker of the House announced the formation of the Investigative Committee on the Panhandle Wildfires. The Committee will investigate the factors contributing to the wildfires, the allocation of resources and effectiveness of wildfire disaster preparedness and response, and coordination between local, state, and federal entities for wildfire prevention, preparedness, and response.

Wildfires have become a growing concern not just in West Texas, but across the entire State of Texas. During the 88th Legislative Session, I worked with the Texas Forestry Association, the Texas A&M Forest Service, and other leading experts on a bill aimed at studying wildfires. Though this bill ultimately failed to pass, I believe that developing a deeper understanding of wildfires and equipping our communities with the knowledge and resources to better prevent, mitigate, and respond to wildfires would benefit all Texans.

While I look forward to working on this issue in future sessions, I’m pleased that the Texas House is leading the effort to better understand wildfires by establishing this investigative committee, which represents a crucial step toward enhancing our state’s resilience and response to these destructive natural disasters.

Despite the difficult times facing communities, ranches, and livestock in the Panhandle, Texans always persevere. If you would like to help with the recovery effort in the Panhandle, you can donate to the Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raiser’s Disaster Relief Fund at https://tscra.org/disaster-relief-fund/ or to the Panhandle Plains Chapter of the American Red Cross at https://www.redcross.org/local/texas/north-texas/about-us/locations/panhandle.html.

The mobile office is still on the road this month, and our District Director looks forward to seeing you on March 20 at the Houston County Courthouse Annex in Crockett from 9-11 a.m. and at the Trinity County Courthouse in Groveton from 1:30-3:30 p.m.

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 and my Capitol office may be reached at (512) 463-0508. Additionally, I welcome you to follow along on my Official Facebook Page, where I will be posting regular updates on what’s happening in your State Capitol and sharing information that could be useful to you and your family: https://www.facebook.com/RepTrentAshby/.

Trent Ashby represents District 9, which includes Trinity County, in the Texas Legislature.

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Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have an electric vehicle.

Biden, or at least his flying monkeys at the Department of Energy, says so.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency, a ludicrous and not-constitutional entity, set new emissions standards for vehicles of 85 grams of CO2 per mile, ostensibly to eliminate billions of tons of the gas by the year 2055.

That standard is to be reached by 2032, which mathematicians will note is only 8 years. Beginning in 2027, the total should be 170 grams per mile, so there’s a 5-year window to cut things in half.

That number is for light-duty vehicles, which are basically every car owned by us regular folks.

However, current emissions, according to the EPA, average 400 grams per mile per vehicle; so by 2032, you’re supposed to drive a vehicle that emits 79 percent less plant food.

This all came from an agency that has no elected officials nor any reason to have its ideas voted upon or passed as a law. It is simply governmental diktat.

Why a government thinks it can determine the best way to save the planet is incomprehensible. You just can’t legislate the weather, and the ham-fisted attempts at trying to correct something is only going to disenfranchise and frankly push into poverty its people.

Electric vehicles are more expensive to own, more expensive to charge, more expensive to maintain and news reports indicate they also are more expensive to insure.

EVs also are even more toxic to the environment, in that lithium mining exacts a terrible toll on those areas.

Yet again, though, unelected busybodies have put out regulations that will force these new expenses, which also will come with changes to lifestyles, and there’s not a thing anyone will do about it.

It’s not just the EPA, mind you, that inflict such policies on us; every federal agency does the same. There’s the old saw that because of the amount of rules, regulations and laws that exist, at any given minute we are breaking the law.

Which is something more that punches us in the pocketbook.

I’ve said in the past that there’s no part of life as and American citizen that doesn’t have the touch of government on it. What’s been happening lately, though, is the tightening of the screws, making things more and more difficult to comply, and certainly more difficult to remove, since once power is granted, it is never returned.

The largest perpetrator of this kind of control on our lives is the EPA. It’s becoming more and more necessary for us to respond to this come election time.

Either that, or prepare to pay for charging stations to be installed in every home.

Tony Farkas is publisher of the San Jacinto News-Times and the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of this publication.

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Special to the Booster

AUSTIN — Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced a notice of funding availability for a $25 million grant through the Opioid Abatement Fund Council (OAFC or the Council) to distribute naloxone, a medication designed to rapidly reverse opioid overdoses, to communities hit by the opioid crisis.

Texas governmental entities, nonprofit organizations and entities conducting business in Texas are eligible to apply for this funding. A grant will be awarded to one applicant to implement the program statewide, and applicants may use qualified subcontractors or subgrantees to help implement the program regionally. The OAFC will accept applications for funding through its grant management system from April 10 through May 7. An informational webinar will be hosted on March 14.

“I encourage eligible entities to apply for this crucial funding to help the state of Texas respond to the opioid crisis,” said Hegar, chair of the OAFC. “With fentanyl continuing to flow across our southern border and the federal government working against Texas efforts to secure that border, making naloxone available in areas with greatest need while balancing the Council’s regional and targeted requirements has significant potential to prevent opioid-related overdoses. Given the tragic trend of fentanyl poisonings occurring across Texas, especially among school-aged youth, wide availability of naloxone can literally save lives.”

The Texas Legislature formed the OAFC in 2021 to ensure money recovered through the joint efforts of the state and its political subdivisions from statewide opioid settlement agreements is allocated fairly and spent to remediate the opioid crisis using efficient, cost-effective methods. The OAFC is made up of 13 appointed experts and Hegar as the non-voting presiding officer.

Last year, Hegar announced a first-round payment of $47.1 million to political subdivisions from the Opioid Abatement Trust Fund to address opioid-related harms in their communities. Additionally, Hegar transferred $5 million to the Texas Access to Justice Foundation to provide civil legal aid to Texans personally harmed by the opioid crisis.

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By Robert Poynter

A federal Judge just ruled that Illegal immigrants can own and buy guns, and to keep them from doing so, violates the Constitution.

One of the questions on the form is are you a United States Citizen, and the law is you must be a citizen to buy guns in the United States.

Without knowing it, the Federal Judge just undid every single gun law in existence if this ruling stands. Federal law states that you must be a US Citizen, to overturn that one law using the Constitution as it’s reasoning to overturn that law, means that all other laws pertaining to guns are also Unconstitutional. If illegals are undocumented, and they can buy guns, how are they going to run any sort of background check on this people? If they can’t run background checks on these people, how are we to know they don’t have ill intentions when purchasing a gun? If a person enters our country, illegally, and can buy a gun, how can they enforce any other gun law, while hiding behind the Constitution making it legal for a criminal to purchase a gun? These are unvetted people, who entered our country illegally, they are criminals. So ask yourself, how can they enforce any other gun law, now that they claim illegals can own and buy guns?

Well what do I know about such things, after all I’m just a Dumb ole Biker, but think about this.

These are unvetted, undocumented, illegal aliens, that can now legally buy guns, what could possibly go wrong? Illegal aliens from 168 different countries, many of them who hate us, can now purchase weapons to use against us.

Writer/thinker/self-professed “Dumb Ole Biker” Robert Poynter serves as mayor of the City of Chester