Monday, December 25, 2017

Unwrapping the Final Wrangle of 2017

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes you and yours a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and all other appropriate greetings of the season.  Here comes the last blog post and lefty news roundup of the year!


SocraticGadfly took a look at various regional election filings by both D's and R's in Northeast Texas and in the Metroplex, while wondering when and how Joe Straus is going to stay active in GOP politics.

Dos Centavos lists the members of the #DeportationCaucus, the Democrats in the House and Senate who voted 'no' on a continuing resolution which would have provided relief for DREAMers.

The Lewisville Texan Journal has the listing of candidates that are on the ballot for the March 2016 primary in that city (and Denton County).

Off the Kuff looked at Democratic filings for state Senate and for races in counties neighboring Harris County.

jobsanger apparently wants Joe Biden to run for president in 2020.

Texas Leftist blogged about holiday stress extending all the way out to the store parking lot.

And Neil at All People Have Value wrote about a great work of public art in Houston called Hubcap in Grass. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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It's that listicle time of year again: 'best of', 'worst of', and plaudits honorable and not-so-much.

Texas Monthly's highly-anticipated Bum Steer Awards placed "glorified bathroom attendant" Dan Patrick at the top of their list this year.  Other Bums of distinction were "the entire" Texas Democratic Party, "Prison Warden" Bob McNair, and "fake news faker" Alex Jones.  (Sid Miller, Matt Rinaldi, Briscoe Cain, Joe Barton, Blake Farenthold, Jerry Jones, Ezekiel Elliott, Yuli Gurriel, Rick Perry, and Ted Cruz did not avoid dishonorable mention.  Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton somehow did.)


The Texas Observer's best feature stories, their choices for the ten best Texas books, and the seven most pressing issues facing rural Texas are spotlighted.

The Texas Tribune summarized their 2017 political coverage, from the bathroom bill to the wave of Lege members retiring.

More than two hundred events are scheduled in conjunction with the 2018 DreamWeek Summit in San Antonio next month, and the Current has a rundown.

The Urban Edge focuses on CHIP's uncertain future, and its impact on Houston and the state.

In the latest post-Harvey developments, the Texas Standard and the Houston Chronicle's Lise Olsen connected the dots between Houston's 'flood czar', Stephen Costello, and the real estate developers who sold homes built in the flood pools of west Houston ... without disclosing that information to buyers.

"I certainly was surprised when (Costello) told me that he had never calculated what engineers call ‘the maximum flood pool’ for the Barker and Addicks reservoir. And he said he had no idea that the subdivision his firm had built was inside that area,” Olsen says. “And curiously, he didn’t remember that his own firm had also done a very comprehensive study of the potential dangers of the reservoir flood pools to homes and calculated, in fact, that more than 5,000 homes were inside the flood pools back in 2000. He said he didn’t remember that in the interview I had with him.”

And Cory Garcia at the Houston Press hoped Santa Claus was able to find everybody who got scattered after Hurricane Harvey washed them out of their homes.

2 comments:

Gadfly said...

On Biden, with #MeToo, would a lot of women Democrats accept his apologies over Anita Hill.

Second, would be 78 in November 2020, just a year younger than Bernie. That's too old in my book.

PDiddie said...

The humorous -- and sad -- part is that Ted is clinging to a neoliberal as someone who can defeat Trump. The definition of insanity.