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Volume XXI Number 12 - June 17, 2022     RSS Feed   

A Periodic Newsletter for Committed Texas Conservatives

In This Issue

The January 6 Congressional Committee Concerns

NFL Cancels Freedom Of Speech For Coaches

LinaGate - The Continuing Story

Real Inflation, Courtesy Of President Biden And Democrats From Shadow Stats Newsletter

Supreme Court Justice Targeted For Assassination And Coverage In New York Times And Others Buried

A New Billion Dollar Bond Issue Being Concocted By Hidalgo, Garcia And Ellis, Get Ready For Higher Taxes

Michael Ramirez' Cartoon Of The Fortnight

Harris County's Criminal Justice Reforms By Douglas Griffith, Guest Columnist, President of the Houston Police Officers' Union

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Gary Polland
1533 W. Alabama St.,
Houston, TX 77006
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Thoughts This Fortnight

The January 6 Congressional Committee Concerns

It is important to recognize there are many concerns about this Committee. Here is a list:

  1. No dissenting voices on the Committee.

  2. No investigation on why the Capitol police were unprepared.

  3. Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed GOP members selected by the Minority Leader.

  4. They have subpoenaed sitting Congressmen, first time in history.

  5. Without due process, told telecom and social media companies to retain private communications of private citizens. Privacy anyone?

  6. Didn't we hear about January 6 in the last Trump impeachment effort by the Democrats?

The real purpose is to change the subject from the Biden Administration's train wreck on inflation, high gas prices, open borders, runaway crime and baby formula shortage.

NFL Cancels Freedom Of Speech For Coaches

In the woke NFL, freedom of speech is about gone. Jack Del Rio, Defensive Coordinator for the Washington Commanders (Redskins) was fined by the NFL $100,000 for tweeting in regards to the January 6 hearings. Here is his tweet: "Would love to understand 'the whole story' about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and destruction of personal property is never discussed, but this is?"

To the woke leftist NFL, any balanced review of January 6 or the summer of 2020 riots are a no go.

LinaGate - The Continuing Story

It seems like regularly we have new examples of either crazy spending, corruption or neglect of the basic duties of local government by accidental Harris County (Houston area) Judge Lina Hidalgo.

The latest outrage and another example of her never-ending search for more social spending programs is county funded childcare. Yes, that's right, despite underfunding criminal justice, and infrastructure, we somehow "found" $48 million for childcare. So if you are lucky enough to be picked, you get county funded childcare. She calls it a pilot program, but if she has her way, it is just another taxpayer-funded entitlement that will never go away.

By the way, your property taxes are going up already due to appraisal increases and Lina and Company now want a $1 billion bond issue, which we all pay for in even higher taxes.

In addition, Lina has made clear the U.S. Senate compromise on guns does not go far enough. For law-abiding citizens, where the Sheriff's 911 response rate is painfully slow, you used to depend on police, but due to underfunding patrols, you are essentially on your own when crime finds you. Lina supports taking away a law-abiding citizen's ability to defend themselves. Of course she had armed security paid for by the taxpayers.

In her uber-leftist world, guns are the problem. So, we have her broken criminal justice system, runaway crime, her attempts to defund Constables and now, like her friend Beto O'Rourke, they want you to turn in your guns.

Fortunately, Harris County has a choice. We can elect a mature, responsible, leader who will get the basics right, Alexandra Del Moral Mealer.

Real Inflation, Courtesy Of President Biden
And Democrats From Shadow Stats Newsletter

The way Shadow Stats calculates inflation is based on the way the government used to calculate CPI before they manipulated it. The current rate is 16.8% which is a historic high. But you know that as you buy gas, shop, etc. Prices are exploding.

Supreme Court Justice Targeted For Assassination And Coverage In New York Times And Others Buried

The Sunday talk shows on CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC gave zero coverage to the assassination attempt of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This is outrageous. The leftist media coverage is terrible and biased. If a liberal Justice had been targeted, you can bet the coverage would be Page 1 above the fold. The New York Times put it on page 20!

The ignoring of violence from the media when attacks are on conservatives fans the flames of resentment that our system is not fair to everyone. The idea we have a different justice system depending on your political party is destructive in many ways to our democracy.

Why are inciters like Democratic Majority leader Chuck Schumer not called out, censored, or charged for their conduct?

Why has Nancy Pelosi held up a bill to protect federal judges? Finally passing weeks after the Senate acted 100-0?

It is almost like they are encouraging anarchy.

A New Billion Dollar Bond Issue
Being Concocted By Hidalgo, Garcia And Ellis,
Get Ready For Higher Taxes

The runaway spending trend of County Judge Lina Hidalgo, along with fellow big spender Democrats Adrian Garcia and Rodney Ellis are looking for more of your money. This crew spent the rainy-day fund and every other dollar they got their hands on. They want to spend $600 million on bike trails near the toll roads. At the same time, property appraisals have exploded upward, raising taxes on homeowners.

To this spending orgy, they want more and more. They have not met a program they will not try to fund, unless it is designed to reduce crime – that, they will oppose.

This will only change when we replace the pro-crime big spenders on Commissioner's Court – Hidalgo and Garcia in 2022 and Ellis in 2024.

Michael Ramirez' Cartoon Of The Fortnight

Harris County's Criminal Justice Reforms
By Douglas Griffith, Guest Columnist,
President of the Houston Police Officers' Union

The Harris County criminal justice system was changed in 2019 after a high-profile court case resulted in a settlement agreed to by misdemeanor court judges who were serving at the time. The County entered into a consent decree in the case of ODonnell v. Harris County, which changed bail for misdemeanor cases. This consent decree effectively released almost all misdemeanor defendants on a free PR bond without ever seeing a judge, or anyone checking their prior criminal record.

The county was set to spend over 97 million, to implement the settlement, but to say things have not run smoothly is an understatement. This past January, ODonnell was reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, yet the county refused to revisit the settlement. The County could have asked the federal court to vacate the decree but decided against it. Meanwhile, Texas Senate Bill 6 was passed thanks to Senator Huffman, changing Texas law regarding bail, even for misdemeanor bonds, but Harris County judges have ignored it. Sadly, this has had far reaching effects on our felony courts as well.

Every six months, the county's paid monitor issues a report declaring that the reforms are working. However, the district attorney's office issued a report on September 2, indicating these reforms were causing crime to increase. Both claims cannot be true.

The Houston Police Officers' Union, sought to get to the truth by looking up readily available public records to see what the hard data had to say. We chose a week at random -- October 11-15, 2021 -- and examined every single docket for all 16 Harris County misdemeanor courts.

During this period of time, more than 9,000 people were set for misdemeanor court docket. We were astonished to find that fewer than 16 percent of these individuals actually appeared for court. This means that for every 100 persons on the misdemeanor courts' docket, only 16 bothered to show.

Judges can give a waiver to defendants that would allow them to miss court. But when the courts order defendants to court, public records document an average failure to appear rate of 76 percent for the week. In fact, there were days in which multiple courts reported failure to appear rates for defendants whose appearances were not waived at 100 percent. Yes, this meant no one showed up for court on some days.

Activist along with some Harris County officials, claim that the reforms are working. By their own records it shows that they are either lying or incompetent. It is obvious from this report that the "reform" is nothing more than social engineering of the criminal justice system.

According to data from the Texas Office of Court Administration, misdemeanor court backlogs in Harris County have increased by 172.79 percent in the past decade, with the greatest portion of the backlog accumulating in the past four years. Meanwhile, the county has dismissed 72 percent of misdemeanor cases the last two years.

When Harris County's misdemeanor judges agreed to this settlement, they claimed that their bold, new system could be used as a blueprint for the entire country. Some even encouraged felony judges to use more free PR bonds because things were working so well. This has led to more violent offenders being released onto our streets with multiple low or no bonds. Over 170 citizens of Harris County have lost their lives because of "reform" in the Harris County Court system.

I ask that Harris County residents look at the district attorney's report, along with our own findings, to conclude that the monitor's report is not only inaccurate, but simply a lie. As the old saying goes, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The report we compiled is from public records that anyone can look up and fact check. The data clearly shows that the situation is even worse than what the district attorney's office determined last September.

When offenders do not go to court, and offenders are not held accountable, the system fails. The Citizens of Harris County will continue to be victimized by repeat offenders as long as a majority of our county leaders continue to push their social experiment. Bail reform isn't working, period!


Senior Police Officer Douglas Griffith is a native Houstonian and has twenty-nine years of service with the department. He succeeded Sergeant Joe Gamaldi as President of the HPOU.(hpou.org/board/douglas-griffith/)


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.

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-one 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 also for 20 years cohosted 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.

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