Good morning,

Readers loudly responded to the GOP’s ballot statement on vaccine mandates… and you’ll see what they had to say at the end of today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Wednesday, January 19, 2022
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But first… I’ll be in College Station tonight moderating a forum of the Republican gubernatorial candidates at 6:30pm. The event will be live-streamed on our Decision Texas page, as well as archived for later viewing.

Pay Issues Affecting Hundreds Of Texas Soldiers

• After stonewalling inquiries for two months, Gov. Greg Abbott said last week that he knew of only 84 pay issues for Texas soldiers. That same day, a source provided Texas Scorecard with a spreadsheet outlining 545 Texas soldiers. This information comes from calls made to a “hotline” set up for soldiers experiencing problems getting paid.
   
• Since then, Robert Montoya has attempted to get answers. The new records raise questions about whether Gov. Abbott was misinformed by the Texas Military Department (TMD), or if he knowingly misled the public. 
   
• The source who provided the spreadsheet told Texas Scorecard some soldiers have lost faith in calling the pay hotline.
   
• The governor’s office did not respond to inquiries about the issue.

Your Right To… An Early-Pay Discount?

• For days, Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign has teased his new “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” promising to be a major relief from the state’s ever-increasing property tax burden. Instead, as Brandon Waltens reports, fiscal policy hawks are underwhelmed by the proposal.
        
• Abbott released the three-point plan at a campaign stop during a meeting of the Kingwood Tea Party in Atascocita, a suburb of Houston.
       
• But rather than announce his support of a plan to eliminate property taxes entirely, Abbott’s proposal largely tinkers around the edges. One part of the plan would continue the state’s trend of slowing the growth of the property tax burden. Another would provide taxpayers a 3 percent discount for paying their tax bill early.
     

• I’m not sure a “pay your bill early for a discount” is the same thing as a “taxpayer bill of rights.” Why isn’t Greg Abbott just embracing the TPPF plan to eliminate property taxes by 2033 without an income tax? In my opinion, this exercise by the governor is a sad nothingburger offered by a fellow who has functionally ignored property tax burdens since entering office.

Implied Powers

• Ever since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, advocates of a strong national government have distorted the meaning of its words to oppress Americans. In episode 63 of Liberty Cafe, Bill Peacock examines how the debate over words in the Constitution is harming the liberty of Americans today.

Parents Push Against Pervasive School Porn

• At a public meeting in the Austin suburb of Leander, parents again spoke out to their local school board trustees about the administration offering sexually explicit books on the shelves of kids’ school libraries. Jacob Asmussen has the details.
          
• Parents in other school districts spread around the state are also speaking out on the issue.

School: Don’t Tell The Parents

• In a new report from the Daily Caller, the Round Rock Independent School District has been found to be instructing teachers not to tell parents if a student wants to identify as transgender or “non-binary.” Round Rock ISD is a suburban school district centered in GOP-dominated Williamson County.
       
• Too many people in public education don’t want to “partner” with parents, they want to replace parents. And, yet, “Republican” officials will rush to claim this (and every other) incident is “isolated.” It’s not isolated, it is systemic.

Election Code Flaw Exposed

• Citizen activist Darius Root explains in a new commentary that, due to changes last fall in the election code, vote harvesters in Texas won’t have to worry about supplying convincing signatures on mail-in ballot applications. 
   
• Root writes, “Republicans prioritized cutting backroom deals with Democrats, and Texas voters have a watered-down law exploitable by ballot harvesters to show for these efforts.”

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Y’All Answered

The March 1, 2022, GOP Primary ballot will feature a series of policy-related non-binding statements placed there by the State Republican Executive Committee. Yesterday, we asked how readers would respond on this GOP ballot statement: “Texans should not lose their job nor students be penalized for declining a COVID-19 vaccine.”

To that statement, 94.36 percent of readers said “yes” in agreement with the statement while 5.64 percent answered “no.”

Here’s a sampling of the responses…

• “Medical autonomy is a GOD given right. No one should be forced into a medical procedure of any kind just to keep a job. What's next? Gender reassignment to keep your job?!” – Dawn Martin
     
• “I fully agree that Texans should not lose their jobs or students be penalized for not being vaccinated.” – Penny Amack
      
• “No government entity or official, elected or not, has the right to decide what is jabbed into your body.” – Lloyd Smith
   
• “Whether or not someone has been vaccinated has very little to do with their functionality in society or ability to perform--it has everything to do with governmental control.  This is only a skirmish in the war that will ultimately be waged on complete governmental supremacy which will include our ability to make up our own minds.” – Arthur Potter
   
• “If politicians were not fired for causing a quorum busting legislative session and then paid for their bad behavior, why should hard working citizens who actually go to work, be fired for refusing to put a shot in THEIR bodies!?” – Cindy Kelley
   
• “We should be able to decide what is necessary for our health. No one should lose a thing based on that decision. What happened to HIPAA laws? The radical progressives would like us to wear V or NV armbands to show our status. Americans are sick of this overreach.” – Steve Crevier
   
• “If ‘my body, my choice’ is a good enough reason to kill unborn children surely it’s good enough for a vaccination.” – Steve Sullivan
   
• “This whole COVID-19 situation is very eye-opening in the sense of how easily the left has adopted and imposed tyranny while demonstrating how difficult it has been for the right to eventually embrace and uphold freedoms granted by our founding documents.” – Patrick Bell
   
• “YES, I agree. Texans should not lose their job(s) nor students be penalized for declining a COVID-19 vaccine.” – Karyn Brownlee
   
• “The fact that this question is even asked on the ballot shows how far Texas has slid into the disgusting ‘bipartisan’ swamp.” – Zack Dunnam
   
• “Texans should not be bullied or otherwise intimidated into compliance for a purely political motive masked as a health “crisis action.” It is a shame we have come to this point suffering the failures of political would-be dictators of both parties.” – H. J. Bronson