Commentary roundup: What newspapers around the state are saying

Dallas Morning News

Nov. 30 editorial, "Austin is weird, but this bill to dissolve it is a lot weirder."

We thought the political silly season had ended with the midterm primaries.

But alas, we forgot Texas’ biennial follies, the vast stack of bills filed in the days leading up to the next legislative session that range from significant to frivolous virtue signaling and political petulance. Once again, Austin is the center of weirdness, but not in the tongue-in-cheek way that celebrates the city’s quirkiness.

Shortly before Thanksgiving Day, state Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, filed measures that would dissolve Austin’s city government and create a District of Austin. In a tweet, Patterson said “elected officials in Austin have failed their city.” He blamed “record high taxes and crime” for pushing folks out of the city, and “San Francisco wannabe policies [that] force the state to come over the top on legislation each session.”

Austin’s city politics frequently have left us scratching our heads in disbelief. However, Patterson’s proposal, which also requires voter approval of a constitutional amendment, would make a mockery of the legislative process, local control and small government. City money, contracts, leases and property, including records, and debt would be transferred to the new entity that the lieutenant governor and speaker of the Texas House would oversee.

If the past is prologue, then this bill, like a similar measure that withered unceremoniously in the 2019 legislative session, is rightly doomed for the waste bin. And if you’re one of Patterson’s constituents, you probably would prefer his attention be on issues closer to home in North Texas than on reorganizing Austin’s city government under state control.

— Dallas Morning News Editorial Board

Houston Chronicle

Dec. 1 editorial, "It's time to get MADD about everyday gun violence."

We know what needs to be done, of course. We need universal background checks. We need workable red flag laws, so that police, family members or a doctor can petition a court to remove a gun from a firearm owner deemed a threat to himself or others. We need to raise the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21. We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as President Biden noted last week.

“The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” the president told reporters on Thanksgiving. “It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

Biden speaks from the heart, but he knows — we all know — that Congress isn’t going to pass a ban on assault weapons. Even before Republicans won narrow control of the House, lawmakers weren’t going to muster the votes, or the courage, to pass comprehensive gun-safety legislation.

The proposed solutions and the familiar arguments are so “wanly familiar,” to borrow a description from conservative columnist David Frum, writing in the Atlantic. “The legalistic approach to restricting gun ownership and reducing gun violence is failing,” he writes. He speaks the truth.

Acknowledging the “terrible tragedy of America’s gun habit,” Frum sees a modicum of hope in an alternative approach. To make progress against gun violence, he urges emulation of earlier campaigns against other social evils. His model is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a campaign that a California woman named Candy Lightner began in 1980 in response to drunk-driving laws lightly enforced, police and courts treating drunk drivers leniently and people dying in vehicle crashes caused by alcohol-impaired drivers. Lightner had lost her own daughter to a repeat hit-and-run driver.

— Houston Chronicle Editorial Board

San Antonio Express-News

Nov. 28 editorial, "An open letter to Operation Lone Star troops."

We read about armored personnel carriers, increased aircraft flights, gunboats, border walls, and how the National Guard will “repel and turn back immigrants trying to cross the border illegally.”

That’s serious talk that makes part of America sound like a war zone. Does it feel like a war zone? Many of you have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How does this compare?

Last week, we saw that Abbott and Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw served Thanksgiving meals and tamales to some of you in Edinburg. Hopefully, you got the opportunity to ask questions.

We wish we could say you are going home soon, but with the state’s “escalation” talk, that doesn’t seem likely.

Maybe someday federal officials on both sides of the aisle will knock down their imaginary walls to reform border security and immigration laws. Until then, it seems thousands of Texans will remain deployed to … Texas.

— San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board

Abilene Reporter-News

Nov. 26 editorial, "Bittersweet. The Reporter-News is gone, but memories still stand."

George W. Bush rode the elevator to meet with editorial staff there more than 20 years ago as governor. Frank Grimes, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, wrote "The Old Mesquites Ain't Out" there. We photographed athletes and musicians and artists and others who were emerging in their respective talents, and soon on their way to national acclaim.

It was there that staff, just after noon Nov. 22, 1963, ripped a bulletin from The Associated Press wire machine that stated President John F. Kennedy had died from a gunshot wound in downtown Dallas.

It's where rookie reporters departed each June to drive to Albany to cover the Fandangle, a tradition for years - a way to introduce Yankees and others to real West Texas.

And where bats flew at high speed on occasion through the newsroom.

A place that smelled like ink, that seeped into our blood.

So this is bittersweet.

Our historical marker will go back up once the dust settles. That will be a reminder to future downtown visitors that the daily newspaper was located there for years.

— Abilene Reporter-News

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin American-Statesman Commentary Roundup: Dec. 4, 2022