Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Perry declined border briefing from Napolitano

The man is is just an ass.

(Rick) Perry greeted Obama at the foot of the stairs from Air Force One, clapping for the president as he descended. The two shared a hearty handshake before Perry pulled the letter out of his suit pocket and handed it to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who was standing behind the president.

A White House official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sent Perry a letter last week describing the administration's border security efforts and offered him a "top-level NSC briefing." The official said Perry declined.

What a jackwagon. Let's dispatch him to the border with his Coyote Special  -- after we boot him out of the $10 grand-a-month rental governor's mansion in November.

Monday, August 09, 2010

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is pretty sure its invitation to President Obama's events in Texas were lost in the mail, and we will keep saying that to ourselves as we bring you this week's blog highlights. (Regular -- or more frequent, at least -- posting to resume here in short order.)

Off the Kuff continued his interview series with Congressional candidate Ted Ankrum and State Representatives Senfronia Thompson and Garnet Coleman.

Staggering levels of formaldehyde in Barnett Shale air and the attempted cover up, breaking news by TXsharon on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

This week on Left of College Station, Teddy reports that the Republican electoral strategy is to conceal their policy agenda, and notes that Congress should do nothing because the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire. LoCS also covers SMUT and says Texas Dominates the Recession at a price.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why Republicans like John Cornyn want to take us back to pre-Civil War days when blacks were not full citizens of the United States.

What part-time governor is also a real estate genius or maybe instead a sleazy grifter? Read Libby Shaw's take at TexasKaos in Rick Perry Stuffed His Pockets with $500K from Murky Land Deal.

NatWu at Three Wise Men says that however bad the economic news seems these days, things are actually much worse.

WhosPlayin stepped in it this week by pointing out how the local school district is giving an across-the-board raise to all administrative personnel, many of whom are already highly paid, while some highly-experienced teachers could go without raises this year.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has been skewing the child support statistics to his favor, reports PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

On a day trip to Galveston, Neil at Texas Liberal took a picture of a portion of the seawall mural that showed workers in hazmat suits cleaning up muck from the sea. While Galveston is a great place to spend a day and spend a few dollars, the folks there are long acquainted with toxic spills.

Thursday, August 05, 2010

Prop 8 declared unconstitutional

It's been a real bad go-round for conservative attempts to codify discrimination. Last week, Arizona's SB 1070 mostly nullified; this week, a New York city commission approved the location of an Islamic community center near the site of the former World Trade Center, and California's Prop 8 is rendered a massive fail at the hand of the Ninth Circuit's US Judge Vaughn Walker.

Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, as excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

Rather, the evidence shows that Proposition 8 harms the state's interest in equality, because it mandates that men and women be treated differently based only on antiquated and discredited notions of gender.

Moreover, the state cannot have an interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular.

A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not proper basis for legislation.

Here, the purported state interests fit so poorly with Proposition 8 that they are irrational. … What is left is evidence that Proposition 8 enacts a moral view that there is something "wrong" with same-sex couples.

The evidence at trial … uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples.

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

I would really like to see how a conservative SCOTUS argues to overrule this decision. And if it should dare to do so, the corresponding outrage and backlash.

As my friend Neil noted elsewhere...

Yes to birthright citizenship. Yes to the "mosque" in NYC. Yes to gay marriage. Yes to universal coverage. Yes to an inclusive, decent society.

Houston Votes

Last week I lunched with Houston's political blogger nation -- Kuff, NeilStace, Martha, David and also Big Jolly -- and the traditional media, Rick Casey -- as well as representatives of the League of Women Voters (Christina Gorczynski) and Texans Together's Houston Votes project (Fred Lewis, Maureen Haver, Sean Caddle). Their goal is to register 100,000 modest- to low-income citizens of Harris County, and then get at least 50,000 of them back to the polls in November. A vigorously non-partisan affair, their mission is to give voice to the historically disengaged.

In Harris County, as you may already now, this is a sizable problem: the best estimates are that 600,000 eligible adult citizens are not registered to vote, and they are mostly disadvantaged minorities; Asian-American, Latino and younger voters along with those in the lower-income strata. Houston Votes conducted this work for the first time here in 2008, registering 24,000 and turning them back out to vote at a 65% clip (without any allegation of impropriety).

The door-to-door-canvassing is happening now. This mobilization is an added effort to their storefront registration drives (which was their only point of contact two years ago, thus the more ambitious registration goal this cycle). The HV project extensively trains all deputy voter registrars, carefully checks collected voter reg cards,  and otherwise closely monitors the process. Once the registration deadlines passes they will call or contact at the door every person registered, encouraging them to vote and providing poll location information.

A couple of events around this effort:

-- Tonight, Thursday August 5, the Kickoff Party at Pearl Bar.

-- Saturday September 18, at the George R. Brown: the LWV will co-sponsor with the ASCE a candidate meet-and-greet for the public. Every single candidate on the Harris County ballot, from governor to precinct constable -- Democratics, Greens, Libertarians and Republicans -- have been invited to attend. After an early evening reception there are two debates currently on tap: candidates for county judge and tax assessor/collector will square off.

(Thanks to Big Jolly David Jennings for the comprehensive post -- despite his obvious misgivings -- as well as for many of the links I used here. His post on the LWV event is worth a click also.)

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Abbott's child support statistics skewed to his favor

In my conference call with Barbara Radnofsky last week, she alluded to a developing scandal within the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's department of child support collection. Theodore Kim of the Dallas News broke the story today.

"During my tenure as attorney general, the child support division has been elevated to the No. 1 national ranking," Abbott, a Republican, said in an interview last month in his Austin office. "And it is recognized around the country as being the top child support agency anywhere in the land."

Yet the full slate of numbers provides a more varied picture.

Texas lags in the percentage of overdue support it collects, according to an analysis of federal data by The Dallas Morning News. Delinquent cases and amounts owed are rising faster here than in many other states.

And Abbott's critics, including Democratic rival Barbara Ann Radnofsky, accuse the state of chronically underreporting how much child support is owed. State officials deny the charge.

"This attorney general is very bent on making his numbers look as good as possible," Radnofsky said.

Abbott's signature issue -- he ran millions of dollars of television ads in his re-election campaign of 2006 about his success in the endeavor of 'bringing deadbeat dads to justice' -- employs 2600 people and has an annual budget of nearly $300 million.

But he cooks the books.

Abbott, above all, underscores Texas's top rating, which the federal Department of Health and Human Services determines by comparing amounts collected with collection costs. The federal government rewards high-ranking states with additional money.

In fiscal 2009, Texas took in $9.80 in child support for every dollar it spent. That was more than double the national average of $4.73, federal statistics show. California collected $2.10 per dollar spent, putting that state 48th.

Abbott credited the statistics to a streamlined corporate culture and a caring workforce.

...

Comparing Texas with other states is difficult since each state collects child support and child support data differently.

Abbott says his numbers account for only the most challenging cases. Other states include all cases in their reports to the federal health agency, which gathers the data.

In truth, many problem-free cases are included in Texas's numbers.

Most big cities – including Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio – automatically add all child support cases, including ones involving willing payers, to the attorney general's database. Parents must opt out to avoid inclusion.

It gets worse, though.

Ginger Weatherspoon, who was fired from the attorney general's office in 2008, blamed the state for relying on a computer system that she says misinterprets state law and has generated widespread discrepancies.

"The state is collecting money that they are not owed, and they are not collecting money that is owed," said Weatherspoon, now in private practice. "There are major problems that need to be addressed."

There's also unnecessarily suspended payments to families.

Monica Attura, 44, of Plano has a different view. She and daughter Beatrice have received support for eight years.

But when a judge increased her ex-husband's biweekly payments from $600 to $750 earlier this year, Abbott's office began withholding payments as it verified the change.

Attura said she has not received child support for nearly two months, despite her attempts to resolve the matter. Her bills are adding up.

"It doesn't make sense to me, what is going on," said Attura, an interior designer who makes about $35,000 a year.

And apparently "liberal" definitions of what constitutes a father's income. From the comments there (typos left uncorrected):

(Abbott) looked at my Annul income based on a W2 form, and never consider my other child support in Oklahoma city. and Oklahoma did the same. So now I pay $975.00 a month in the State of Texas and $975.00 in the State of Oklahoma. And guess what? with the economy being the way it is overtime is scarce, and I haven't seen one bonus. Your next story should be "Those faithful fathers and mothers who pay child support in the State of Texas now living under bridges".

It seems Abbott's version of the truth leaves a lot to be desired by all parties involved in the child support matter. The big finish:

Radnofsky, Abbott's general election opponent, accused Abbott of issuing misleading numbers.

She argued that the state has incorrectly calculated the amounts owed for a large number of families since a 2002 change in state law.

"All of the bragging of success depends on ignoring the failure of the attorney general to collect or even acknowledge the legal debts that noncustodial parents have had written off," Radnofsky said.

Abbott intends to challenge the comprehensive healthcare plan passed into law earlier this year; he blustered about doing the same thing regarding legislation to cap greenhouses gases (no longer under consideration in the Congress). He wades into every fundamentalist conservative issue from gay marriage to the Ten Commandments on the state Capitol grounds.

He has a big fan club of enthusiastic freaks supporters.

Greg Abbott -- and I've been writing this since 2006 -- is the most dangerous politician in Texas.

It's long past time to elect an Attorney General who is capable of representing more than the most extreme faction of the Texas Republican party.