Post Mortem
Well, kids, not much to report. As we told you four weeks ago, in our predictions, we knew what was coming. So here we go:
Democrats
Senator – Looks like a run-off that isn’t a runoff. Jasmine got Jasmined, and that was fun to watch. Hey y’all, the black slang thing doesn’t work! Now comes the runoff. We still say Jasmine by a hair extension YA ALL! Unless Jasmine shits a brick? Nobody is voting for her in North Texas!
State Rep 14 – Thurman Bill Bartie LOST! Surprise? Don’t be—another little runoff. Bartee gets another bite at the apple. We want him to win! Then Weber gets another 80/20 win.
Lt. Governor- Courtney Head had the lead from the day she signed. Good job, now she goes and gets to a 70/30 loss. That should be some kind of slaughter.
Attorney General – Nathin Johnson had it going on! And he did. And he has it. Although we believe he will be wiped out this fall. Johnson was strong! He will be in a piss ant runoff this spring, and he will win. Has mo money!
County Commissioner – As we told you, AJ has friends. And a bunch of them. Don’t be so surprised. And sure enough, the upset of the night in East Texas. AJ Turner won big in a 60/40 fashion. That opens a slot on the Beaumont City Council. Now that will be fun.
Justice of the Peace Pct. 1 – Ben Collins goes to the fall fight with the former GOP Chairman. Hmmmm….why so close? Ben will have to internalize that one.
Justice of the Peace Pct. 2 – Judge Guillory had this even though that fat ass from Houston stuck her nose in dog crap and tried to tell everyone her woes. Bartie pulls enough for a runoff. We think Guillory will win it in the runoff.
Republicans
Senator – Cornyn v. Paxton will be the name of the day. Cornyn has the money, Paxton has the old Tea People. This will be a good one in a month or two. Goes to a runoff. And this will be wild!!! Hide the kids.
Representative 14 Congress – Randy Weber once again hits the 75% level. Good news! He will be 80/20 in the fall. Although the truth is, Rand Weber just hit 90% as of this writing. Something we have never seen.
Governor – Abbot wins. It was like a marching band. Silly us? No, we told you. Abbot wins with well over 500,000 votes, even from the democrats. Crazy? No. He will win big time. And that is good!
Lt. Governor – Dan Patrick wins outright. As he should. This time, with 85% of the boat. Her is in Austin, he is doing his job, and we assure you he has it going on. Very nice!
Attorney General – More Roy and Chip talking cookie talk. Just like we told you. Going to be solved in June. Friends, get ready for some of the ugliest commercials you have ever seen. Gonna be bad.
JP 4 -Ya know, the Fannett Mafia came out. And that is all we will say. Except that we are told this evening that the state has begun its investigation and the JCSO has begun theirs, and we are watching both. Let’s see what the state says and does. It is still a happy day, not in Pct. 4.
County Chairman – Platts v. Markland is over, and the winner is? Markland. Why? Republican Women and Hamshire area of Jefferson County. Why? Who knows. Markland has to step up now. It was close and without a mandate. If Markland fails? There goes Jefferson County – no pressure, right? Good luck to him. He will be alright.
There you go. Not much to report. It is a midterm. And that makes it even more fun as you never know what is coming!
There were 14 races we felt we could call, and we were wrong on 1. Again, in the 90% rang again. How do we do it? NUMBERS!!!!!
Let The Counting Begin!
We know, we haven’t posted for two days. It has been a little busy. We will be making the rounds tonight and speaking with everyone.
Friends, REMEMBER this is a primary. D’s do their thing, R’s do theirs. All the hype about crossover of this kid in the Senate race is a very smart move by the D’s. It makes it look like the R’s are weak. Giggle.
WE WILL POST THE POST MORTEM TONIGHT BY MIDNIGHT! Enjoy your day!
The Fire Man Issue
The City of Beaumont, Texas, has a great fire department. Training, response, aggressiveness, care for the community, and most of all, leadership.
There, that is what they are trained and bred to do. And they do it well.
What are they not? They are horrible in politics. In fact, they look silly walking into a city council meeting with yellow shirts on. What does that even mean? They are so silly that they have come up with the idea that they want more money. They think they are the belle of the political ball. When, in fact, all they have done is piss off two city councils with their antics.
Let’s just leave it as whoever is putting these crazy ideas in their heads is creating problems where there are none. They have even attacked their fire chief and are making crazy accusations that many on the council have said, if there is a problem, let’s fix it. Only to have the fire union say no, we are not fixing anything, and you will do it our way.
Leaving the citizens once again asking who the hell is in charge.
Well, the door has now opened again, and a new city manager is coming. And they better get on their knees and hope this next one is not a wus like the last one.
The fight? Simple – a little thing called EMS. Ambulance’s.
Every major city in the State of Texas has learned the hard way (dead people) that if you do not have a city service, EMS has NO OBLIGATION to run your EMS service as a dedicated service. Even though there is a piece of paper. Why? Well, the owners of EMS know this; if there is a choice between a $1,000 transfer and a non-paying 911, they are going to talk the transfer. And they should. They are a private service.
The City of Beaumont’s EMS service was created by the city and run by the health department when it opened in the late 1980’s. In fact, Beaumont Fire did not even respond to a call unless it was an accident or someone got hurt on a fire scene.
That led many EMS services to be without a chance to get into the honey pot. Two EMS units were running, and level zero (no units) ran amok at around 10 times a day. They added a third. And as we try to tell all of you, when the baby boomers started to age, EMS calls went through the roof. And level zero went through the roof as hospital emergency rooms became jammed and could not, and still today, cannot keep up with the case loads. So trucks were out of service, standing in the hallways for hours at a time.
It is still that way now.
So they added a fourth truck. And there you go, there are 11 fire stations in the city, and the trucks became 1st responders as calls backed up to the current day of making all calls for service.
In fact, for all calls in the City of Beaumont for EMS service, it now makes up almost 78% of the total calls in the City of Beaumont Fire Department.
So the union likes money, honey! And they saw a honey pot during the transition of EMS to the fire department, which now has taken complete control of EMS. They tried to get EMS people to become fire department people. In fact, when that idea flopped, they gave them a time limit to garner their fire certs (paid for by the city) over a period of time. When you ask them about that, they don’t talk about it. Why? It was their idea, and it flopped.
Now, there are very few EMS people who are on the trucks. Kind of like letting them float on out. However, now, EMS, with the ones left, wants to put their money into the Fire Department retirement fund! Does it make it retro? And they attack staffing on the trucks with firemen, and the overtime bucket flows out because nobody wants to be a fireman, EMT, or, for that matter, a cop.
This new generation has lost its hero want, it is said.
So again, that idea flops.
But we here at the Review have the solution. It is very simple if we were running it.
- Tell the union to sit down and shut up. File suit if you want. You are telling the nice taxpayers that you want ANOTHER TAX INCREASE! Boy, will that go over big. Can you imagine that jury?
- Open the door fully to ALL EMS SYSTEMS THAT WANT TO RUN TRANSFERS! Color those trucks nicely and let them sell themselves. Watch the Houston Crowd come running to make money.
- Put EMS trucks in every single station in the city. Eleven trucks. But tier them. Five advanced units, with six basic units. Less than 80% of the calls are advanced needs. Leaving 20% needing advanced (meaning drugs, IV’s, and advanced life support) life support.
- Hire your firemen, staff three shifts, and move on with life. You have a huge group of firefighters; they all rotate (except captains) from truck to truck inside their stations per shift.
- Lastly, you can pull from what you have (not all) by closing down the fire department dispatch (oh, do you hear the screams) and putting dispatchers in with the current 911 coms center dispatchers, saving a million dollars a year if not more! Some estimates have it at over 2 million a year, with payroll included.
This problem is now being faced by Port Arthur and the tri-cities. Union presidents have all been told that city-run EMS systems will be run by each city within the next 2 years, no matter how hard they cry about it. Citizens are dying, and one mayor had to wait 45 minutes for an EMS unit to arrive while he was having a medical crisis.
In mid-county, the plan is to have an EMS unit in each fire station run and operated by firefighters (they are running the calls anyway), and Port Arthur is going to run suit as they will have four trucks spread throughout their city. They have and are getting ready to be sued again for the inability of citizens to call 911 and have a truck respond. There are still long response times, and even with the City EMS system (private group), long response times are still being experienced and citizens are dying while waiting for EMS care.
As you can see, it is a Jefferson County Problem.
Even cities like Lumberton, Silsbee, Sour Lake, and all of Chambers County are run by government EMS services.
The problem? There is no support for a County-Wide ESD system. Without that? People are dying. Judge Branick will not even allow a planning meeting to be held.
So, back to the Fire Station we go with EMS – right?
How bad is it out on the streets? Cops are throwing shooting victims and or families are taking trauma-related family members in their cars (the media calls them private vehicles) to the hospital.
There is a solution, one of which is for the City Fire Department of Beaumont’s Union to walk into the new manager’s office and give him solutions. Right now (we have the list), you have a fireman making over $145,000 a year with overtime. Or the city council reaches down and grabs their balls and tells the union to screw off and make the hard decisions and tell them to work with it. Oh, yes, the union has paid off some of the council to vote how they want. Sorry, forgot about that.
So the question put to the city of Beaumont Elected council – “ARE YOU THE SUN OR THE STORM?” Are you making it harder for the citizens of Beaumont?
Here we go, folks. Our guess is the city will ask those hard questions of the new city manager. We guess that if he/she is smart, they will figure it out.
Get out of politics, fireman! You are bad at it. But you are great at what you do. That is what matters.
###
The Southeast Texas Political Review is a Klein and Associates Political Relations production. 1995 – 2026 PRK Enterprises, Inc. Any rebroadcast or reproduction of this site is forbidden without the permission of this Company. Such permission must be in writing and include the person’s name, address, and the reason for the reproduction. Under Title 17 of the US Code, Subjects that reproduce or reprint any portion of this site without permission of PRK Enterprises, Inc. may be liable under the statute. For comments, questions, or requests for the reproduction of quotes or stories as written on this site, please email us at setreview@gt.twcbc.com.