Thumbs up, down
Gohmert is where he belongs; big news on chipmakers; Styles thrills; sad day for parade.
It’s tempting to believe Rep. Louie Gohmert is a whole lot smarter than he seems. He was, after all, class president at both A&M and Baylor law school, a district judge, and briefly served as chief justice of the 12th Court of Appeals. All that, before even being elected to Congress in 2004, where he is now, as he puts it, “a bold defender” of American principles “who is constantly coming up with big, innovative ideas.”
But then he eventually talks, and he brings us right back to where we started: wondering how in the world he keeps getting elected.
His latest big idea is to join the GOP scrum seeking to oust Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. On that score, we say the more the merrier, given how scandal-plagued, investigated and indicted Paxton has been throughout his two inglorious terms.
On the other hand, voters in the 1st Congressional District have apparently decided keeping him in Congress is a good way to keep him safely out of the way. Now, he’ll be asking voters all over Texas to put him at the center of things in Austin — and that strikes us as a very big ask indeed, kind of like an invitation to commit voter malpractice.
Bad ideas seem to have come in pairs this week. In Katy, ISD officials are defending blocking students’ access to websites aimed at providing support for troubled LGBTQ teens, especially those struggling with suicidal thoughts. Under the heading of “human sexuality,” all sorts of helpful, and in some cases potentially lifesaving resources, are blocked. There’s the LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline run by the Trevor Project, for one, but also on the no-go list are Houston’s Montrose Center, the Advocate news site and Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.
Sure, schools have to prevent student access to objectionable or adult-oriented material, and yes, like most districts Katy relies on third-party firms to determine which “categories” of content to block. But censoring the internet is tricky business — and sometimes good sites get swept up in wellmeaning bans. When they do, the right move is to simply make exceptions so that students who may need the support those sites offer can get it.
Of course, if the district meant to “Big Brother” those affirming sites all along, it has a whole other basket of problems to confront.
Texas is full of problem-solvers, after all. Consider one of the biggest problems facing the global economy at the moment, the maddening shortage of semiconductor chips used in computers, cars — well, just about everything these days. Two big companies — South Korea’s Samsung and North Texas’ own Texas Instruments — are about to spend very large sums to do something about it.
On Tuesday, Samsung announced it would build a $17 billion facility in Taylor. That’ll be the largest direct foreign investment in Texas history, noted U.S. Rep. Mike McCaul, who wasted no time in taking a victory lap after introducing, along with Sen. John Cornyn, legislation in 2020 that would boost the domestic production of the chips. (The bill hasn’t passed, yet, but some of its provisions made it into the defense authorization bill pending in Congress.)
The Texas lawmakers were right to worry that too many of the chips were being produced overseas. Now, with Samsung promising a ginormous factory near Austin and TI making plans for up to $30 billion in investments toward a new plant in Sherman, that could be changing soon. Forty-seven billion bucks? That’s worth bragging about.
Although, if you know anyone under 30, all the bragging overheard this weekend is sure to be about “Watermelon Sugar” dandy himself, Harry Styles, who played a sold-out show Wednesday night at the Toyota Center. The “Sign of the Times” megastar had fans lined up for hours in the Wednesday morning cold waiting for the show. “Traveling the country for him is sort of my thing,” said Avery Wohleb, who’d camped out since 3 p.m. Tuesday.
The show allowed Styles to finally make good on promises to return to the city after two previous shows were canceled, first by the pandemic and then by a tropical storm. The holiday takeaway for Houston? “So stop your crying, and have the time of your life.”
Canceled shows are one thing. But you can’t make up a rained-out Thanksgiving Day parade, and that’s what Houston got Thursday. As Chronicle writer Dug Begley noted Friday, the city got as far as warming up the band before calling it quits in the face of pending
nasty storms. Just minutes before the floats began sailing down the parade route, Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials halted the show. It wasn’t just fear of the rains, but potential lightning and heavy gusts. That’s two years in a row the parade was put on ice, given last year’s COVID cancellation. Thumbs made do with the familiar sight of Macy’s parade in Manhattan filling the TV screen while the turkey prep was underway, hoping next year the weather and public health will permit the parade we all deserve after two very long years.