There is a write up on
Capitol Annex about a
teleconference with Barbara Ann. She addressed issues that primarily affect Texas such as the ravages of hurricane Rita that are still visible (even though Texas has received the amount of money that Republican leaders had estimated Texas needed) to the
Trans Texas Corridor.
However, Barbara gave a very detailed discussion of issues that affect all of us.
On the Wright Amendment:
Instead of being a compromiser or mediator, she just left the warring factions to their own devices. To their credit, they did their best to devise solution. But, then she took what they gave her and tried to push it through, they [her colleagues in the Senate] rejected it; they had no buy-in. She failed to build a consensus.
Then, the letter to [Attorney General] Al Gonzalez..it was intemperate unsenatoral, inappropriate to threaten the Department of Justice. She acknowledged that yes, the DOJ can investigate anti-trust issues, but that they should look the other way and let the Department of Transportation handle review of the bill. It's more ironic because that bill itself had an exclusion recognizing she had a problem. It had a provision to exempt it from antitrust regulation and it is the height of temerity for her to claim that the Department of Justice should back off something involving antitrust violations when that's in the bill, which shows it was anticipated that would be a problem.
Barbara Ann also talked about KBH on healthcare:
A big loss for her was when [SB] 1955 failed, and it was a big, bi-partisan failure. It was offered as a 'risk pool' for small businesses, but its real purpose was to deregulate the insurance industry, which is an issue on which we are on complete and opposite ends.
She would have deregulated health insurance in this country with this bill. The concept of pooling risk is not bad, but it allowed insurance companies to discriminate against every employee of every company and would have affected hiring habits. Companies wouldn't have been able to hire someone unless they were very, very healthy. It would have skewed hiring practices, was discriminatory and would not have worked. Insurance companies would have also been allowed to prohibit coverage for a simple blood test for prostate cancer or a mammogram. The American Cancer Society was against it, and it failed miserably.
This has been her only initiative on healthcare.
And for those of y'all who don't know what KBH has proposed for immigration, it consists of the following:
- Asking all illegal immigrants to go back to their home countries.
- The U.S. hiring and paying private contractors like Halliburton billions of dollars to create "Ellis Island Centers" in foreign countries.
- Immigrants registering with the centers and being "tagged like cattle" once they got back to their home countries.
- Waiting as long as 20 years for the ability to return to the United States only after a presidential declaration that our borders are secure.