A bloglunch with Mayor Parker, and more on Medicaid expansion and Uber

-- As Neil has already mentioned on Facebook and at his new shop, a handful of us blogger types had lunch with the mayor at her office yesterday, and we covered a wide range of policy topics.  We promised Janice Evans and Jessica Michan that it would (mostly) be off the record, and nobody broached any politics or campaign issues.

So maybe I'll respond later with something about this, or this, but honestly... I doubt it.

There are so many better things to talk about that are meaningful, that would make a difference in the race, and the two front-running campaigns simply aren't going to discuss them.  This is why the lack of debates, or forums, or whatever they're called is so disappointing.

Just one example: the Texas Observer has more on the subject of Houston police brutality than you will ever read in the Chronicle, see on TV or hear on local radio, and much more than either of these two candidates will ever discuss.  The same is true of most every other topic you can think of that confronts the residents of Houston who are not wealthy.

Update: In a strange turn, Noah at Texpatriate inexplicably draws out mayoral challenger (and erstwhile also-ran in 2012 for Harris County Democratic Party chair) Keryl Douglas. That exchange, and a couple of Tweets from her, are as accusatory as you can imagine. For an attorney (I'm not one but she is), libel -- or something walking up to the line of libel -- seems a very weird way to open one's public communications as a candidate.

-- At the lobby day for expansion of the Medicaid program in Texas at the Lege last spring, I found a sympathetic Republican in John Zerwas. (His wife Cindy, just lost her battle with cancer a couple of weeks ago.)  Even if we have to wait a couple of years until the the next session, I'm holding out hope that Zerwas can persuade fellow R legislators with some financial math, and the Dallas News provides an assist.

Gov. Rick Perry’s rejection of Medicaid expansion will force private health insurance premiums to rise by an average of 9.3 percent for Texans buying coverage on their own, a new study finds.

GOP lawmakers, strongly encouraged by Perry, decided not to add poor adults to Medicaid’s rolls and that means about 1.3 million fewer Texans will have health coverage of some sort by 2016 than if the federal health law were fully carried out in the Lone Star State, according to a study by the nonprofit research organization RAND Corp.

Here's the breakdown.

With Medicaid expansion, the percentage of Texas’ non-elderly population that’s uninsured would drop in 2016 from 28.2 percent to 12.4 percent, they said. Obviously, that won’t happen. Still, the number of uninsured Texans will decline from more than 6 million currently to just over 4.2 million. With full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the number would have shrunk to 2.9 million. Undocumented immigrants can’t gain coverage under the law, so in states such as Texas and Florida, the uninsured rate will remain high, the researchers found.  

The free money from the feds didn't work.  Perhaps a bit of complaining from constituents who pay insurance premiums might get their attention.

(I know: who am I kidding? All this BS from the GOP about stopping Obamacare has nothing to do with rational thought.  Still, I just can't abandon logic.  Even a few appalling ignorant Republicans like Jan Brewer get it, for Christ's sake.  So if you pray, pray for Rick Perry's soul.  It might be the only chance he has left to make it to heaven.  Nah; who am I kidding?)

-- My two-part series about Uber last week drew considerable attention; Charles Kuffner has also written some posts on the topic, most of them ahead of mine (including two more back in July, when the news broke).  Via OTK, here's another comprehensive look at what Dallas is doing now, as we wait for Uber to begin in Houston.

Per a late addition to Wednesday’s meeting agenda, the Dallas City Council is scheduled to vote on a substantial city code rewrite that will redefine everything from who can dispatch a car to who can drive a limo to the cost of a limousine’s off-the-lot sticker price (has to be more than $45,000). And the city doesn’t want you to be able to order up a limo whenever you want: The rewrite, says the addendum, will “require limousine service to be prearranged at least 30 minutes before the service is provided” and establish “minimum limousine fares.”

The addendum item doesn’t come out and say it’s aimed directly at Uber, only that “the use of computer applications and other technologies by some providers of limousine service has distorted certain distinctions between limousines and taxicabs,” and that it’s high time the city “establish those distinctions to help the public understand the differences between those types of passenger transportation services.” City Hall also wants to be able to regulate drivers being dispatched via app.

But in a memo sent to city council Friday night, assistant city manager Joey Zapata is quite clear: This rule rewrite is all about Uber, with whom the city has been tangling since September. Says Zapata, the city told Uber in November that in order to operate in Dallas, it needed 1500 Marilla’s OK. At the same time car-for-hire companies and drivers were told that working with Uber was a violation of city policy. Uber, says the memo, was cited for “advertising a transportation-for-hire service without first being granted operating authority by the City.” Zapata says 31 drivers have been cited 61 times for “driving for an unauthorized service.”

Lots more at the link.

Barry Smitherman: worse than Abbott

Greg Abbott is going to be a shittier but smarter version of Rick Perry if he makes it to the governor's mansion next year, no question. And now there's a clone of Abbott's that seeks to replace him in the TXOAG.

AG candidate Barry @SmithermanTX wants us to read this conspiracy site interview about "preparing for independence." http://t.co/VCw5gJlEYQ
— Bud Kennedy (@BudKennedy) September 2, 2013

Kennedy quickly reTweeted Smitherman's own self-promotion, then followed up with the above, and then in his column yesterday...

Talking about Texas’ resources, Smitherman said the state has “made great progress in becoming an independent nation, an ‘island nation’ if you will.”

And: “I think we want to continue down that path so that if the rest of the country falls apart, Texas can operate as a stand-alone entity with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system.”

Smitherman has made Brains updates previously; he was the guy who Tweeted out a picture of a hangman's noose beside the names of Republican senators who supported gun safety legislation last April, in the wake of the Newtown, CT school tragedy.

Smitherman was also the guy whose three children made 4-figure contributions to Rick Perry's presidential campaign in 2012. One of the Smitherman sons, a sophomore at Texas A&M at the time, joined his mom and dad in maxing out the federal limit of $2500.  Rick Perry, naturally, gave Smitherman his current job on the Railroad Commission after his loyal service on the Public Utilities Commission (to which he was also appointed by Rick Perry).

Barry Smitherman is as worthless overseeing Texas energy regulation -- that's the Railroad Commission's task, after all, and he's the chairman of it -- as tits on a feral boar. The Austin Chronicle had even more of Smitherman's TeaBagging atrocities...

(L)ast week Smitherman went hunting for anti-abortion votes with the Texas Alliance for Life. In a long-winded speech that started with comments about oil production (one must imagine the fundamentalists were agog for this), Smitherman suddenly took a sharp veer into conspiracy theory, blaming President Obama for China's one child per family policy. That was just the beginning.

In an extraordinary grab bag of extremist talking points, Smitherman predicted America's economic collapse unless attendees "encourage those of childbearing age (WHO ARE MARRIED) to have lots of children, and then support policies that support having lots of children." Note: That's his emphasis, not ours.

He had stuffed his policy blunderbuss with a plethora of applause points for the far right, not least that more fundamentalists breeding will cause the downfall of public schools. In Smithermanland, there will be new rules "making it easier for large families to leave failing public schools, pursue home schooling or online options, and eventually get a college degree. Moreover, he argued that people who don't have kids should take the brunt of the tax code. He said, "we should incent marriage and dis-incent single family households. … The federal tax code should reward large families, whose children will eventually pay lots of taxes, by increasing deductions for children, or placing families with children into a lower marginal tax bracket."

And he wrapped this all up with a pretty bow, in case you missed his point. "Don’t’ have sex until you get married, get married at a relatively early age, and then have lots of kids."

And this week, the secessionist talk. Smitherman is quite obviously trolling us all, TeaBaggers and the rest of Texans alike, with this Gohmert/Stockman mashup of the slimiest things he can pull out of his ass what passes for a mind in the Tea Party caucus.  Stay tuned; I'm sure he's working on next week's bulletin already, and there's still 8 weeks to go before election day!

But as Bud Kennedy notes, Democrats don't have a candidate yet, and the TXGOP has two other prospects for attorney general that are almost as freak-right-wing as Smitherman.

Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, has got much of the Texas Legislature at his back, while Sen. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, has the blessing of Kelly Shackelford of the Liberty Institute, Americans for Prosperity chief Peggy Venable, and Texas Eagle Forum boss Cathie Adams (he also incorrectly claimed for a while that he has been touched by the hands of self-appointed king maker Michael Quinn Sullivan of Empower Texans.)

Can Texas actually elect a worse attorney general than Greg Abbott has been over the past ten years? Sadly, the answer is yes.

Update: Wonkette.

And of course, it’s just “being prepared for the worst” that’s motivating Smitherman to ramp up oil and gas production, fight environmental and labor regulations, and do everything possible to “[enable] the industry to produce as much as it can, as quickly as it can.”

You know, so they can fill up the big gas tank before they close the gates to Bartertown to protect it from the motorcycle gangs with mohawks. Also something something Obama EPA unconstitutional usurpation states’ rights, and global warming is a myth.

Update: Lisa Falkenberg with some more.

Speaking of those selfish feminists, Smitherman has a few words for them, too, though not by name. Toward the end of his speech, he addresses the protests that erupted at the state Capitol a few months ago as lawmakers considered tough abortion restrictions.

"All you had to do was see our people, who were civil and polite but persistent," Smitherman says, "versus the other side, which was satanic, evil and crude."

Best as I can tell, the "satanic" reference began with a young female demonstrator with funny glasses who got cute with the wrong video camera, and muttered "hail Satan" to the screen. I took it as sarcasm; the conservative blogosphere took it as confirmation.

And the good Christian Republican who wants to be your next attorney general took it as an opportunity to out-kook his rivals.

If you want to send a message, call Western Union

Conservatives among the general public are about to learn something liberals and progressives have known for well over ten years now: when it comes to opposing military intervention, nobody cares what you think.

Two top Republicans warned Monday of catastrophic consequences if Congress votes against striking Syria and suggested the White House may be mulling a more robust military intervention.

Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Republican hawks who have long advocated deeper US involvement in Syria's civil war, met President Barack Obama as part of his efforts to sell US lawmakers on military action.

McCain emerged from the meeting with a stern warning for fellow Republicans who may be considering voting against military action purely to damage the Democratic president.

"A vote against that resolution by Congress I think would be catastrophic," said McCain.  "It would undermine the credibility of the United States of America and the president of the United States. None of us want that."

Cover your ears and brace yourself for the "McCain is a RINO" caterwauling from the right.  The New Pacifists have a point; they just haven't connected all the dots yet.  Perhaps a cartoon will help.

Please note that the cartoon is a deep azure blue, and that the fellow portrayed is wearing large earrings.  In other words he's a classic Neoliberal, supporting the president in whatever he does... as Britney Spears once helpfully suggested.  He might have marched in an antiwar protest in the last decade or so, maybe even made the pilgrimage to Crawford and Camp Casey.  (Update: Yes, I understand the cartoonist possibly drew his subject with bifurcated ears and excessive lobes.)

But Obama inherited Bush's mess, you see, and besides Congress has completely obstructed everything he's tried to do in the past 5 1/2 years.  So bombing Syria is really not (going to be) his fault.

This is the part where I write, again: if you need an example of what non-voters mean when they say "both parties are just alike", this would be it.

But we're peering into the conservative hive mind here, so let's get back to that.  For some fairly horrifying anecdotal evidence, read this Facebook post by Rep. Ted Poe -- who represents both the Montrose and Kingwood -- but most certainly read some of the comments.  As many as your toxicity meter will allow.

Poe was already going to vote 'no', as will many other Republicans in the House, but that really isn't the point.  As previously posted, Obama is going to launch Tomahawks no matter what Congress decides.  And maybe something more, if you believe John Lindsey McGraham.

Graham, who is facing a tough primary fight from his right for the Republican Senate nomination in South Carolina, warned of the wider consequences of a failure to back military action.

"I can't sell another Iraq or Afghanistan, because I don't want to," Graham said.

"It weighs on the president's mind strongly about the signals we send," Graham said.

"(What) I can sell to the people of South Carolina (is) that if we don't get Syria right, Iran is surely going to take the signals that we don't care about the nuclear program.

See, it's clearly about what a Republican hawk with a Tea Party challenger can sell to South Carolina Republicans. Oh, and Iran.  And also Russia.  Which is to say, Putin.  Because he's been disrespectful to Obama.

So that message is going to get sent. (Some of us dirty hippies have seen this movie before.)

Update: Poll: 2/3 Of Britons Don’t Care If Rejecting Syria Action Damages Relations With U.S. Who's going to start calling the English "crumpet-eating surrender monkeys", and call for a boycott of spotted dick? The Neoliberals or the Republican hawks?

Update: When the WSJ is busting Robert Taft and isolationism on ya, GOP peaceniks, you've already lost the battle to not fight a war.

The Weekly Wrangle

On this Labor Day, the Texas Progressive Alliance stands with fast-food workers in their fight for economic equality as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff covers the decision by Harris County Judge Ed Emmett to reject the petitions submitted by pre-kindergarten advocates to get a referendum on the ballot this November.

We don't just need jobs, we need -- as Theodore Roosevelt advocated -- jobs that pay a living wage. WCNews at Eye on Williamson says that no matter what Cong. John Carter says, a living wage is not a "dumb decision".

Horwitz at Texpatriate notes that Fox26's allegations of exuberant pay raises for Annise Parker's inner circle are a bunch of poppycock, and analysis by the Houston Chronicle article proves it.

The ride-sharing service called Uber is coming to Houston, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs explored both the pros (Part I) and the cons (Part II).

Neil at All People Have Value made some more posts on his new blog. Please look around and offer your comment. All People Have Value is part of Neil Aquino.com. Please consider checking out the full website.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows Republicans don't care about the uninsured or about Latinos. That's why Hidalgo and Maverick Counties in South Texas have the highest numbers of uninsured Texans in the state.

=========================================

And here are some other posts of interest by Texas bloggers.

Offcite interviews HISD Superintendent Terry Grier about the design philosophy behind the construction of their new schools.

Flavia Isabel compares Amazon and Tesla.

Better Texas Blog goes on the road for Obamacare education.

Concerned Citizens liveblogs Rep. Joaquin Castro's town hall on immigration.

Equality Texas celebrates the effect that the demise of DOMA had on one bi-national couple.

Greg Wythe published a guide to Texas election code for the Kindle.

Harold Cook is not voting for Harvey Hilderbran.

The TSTA blog chastises George P. Bush for attacking teachers.

Texas Living Waters expresses ambivalence about the water infrastructure referendum.

Juanita Jean documents the lies of True The Vote.

Lastly, BOR keeps track of the abortion battle as it transitions to the regulatory agencies.

Thank a union thug today

After a new Funny and an excerpt from EJ Dionne's "New Life for Labor" at Truthdig -- on the state of play this year -- my Labor Day Facts and Funnies from a year ago. (Has it only been 12 months since we had Mitt Romney to kick around?)

Be sure and thank a union thug today for your holiday. And your vacation time, and your healthcare -- especially if you still have all those. And like Neil says, tip time and a half while you're at it. (Actually I think holiday pay is double time, but I never quarrel with my brother when he's got his Zen on.)

Could this Labor Day mark the comeback of movements for workers’ rights and a turn toward innovation and a new militancy on behalf of wage-earners?

Suggesting this is not the same as a foolish and romantic optimism that foresees an instant union revival. What’s actually happening is more interesting.

Precisely because no one in organized labor expects the proportion of private-sector workers in their ranks to rise sharply anytime soon, unions, workers themselves and others who believe that too many Americans receive low wages are finding new ways to address long-standing grievances.

At play here is “Stein’s Law,” named after the late conservative economist Herb Stein who shrewdly declared: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” The steadily declining share of our economy that goes to wages is one of those things.

As New York Times labor writer Steve Greenhouse has noted, until 1975, “wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of our nation’s GDP.” But in 2012 they fell to a record low of 43.5 percent. Those who make the economic engine run are receiving less of what they produce. And it’s not because employees aren’t working harder, or smarter. From 1973 to 2011, according to the Economic Policy Institute, employee productivity grew by 80.4 percent while median hourly compensation after inflation grew by just 10.7 percent.

Last Thursday’s one-day strike of fast-food workers in dozens of cities is one of the new forms of labor creativity aimed at doing something about this. The folks who serve your burgers are demanding that instead of an average fast-food wage of $8.94 an hour, they ought to be paid $15. Assuming two weeks of unpaid vacation, this works out to $30,000 a year, hardly a Ronald McDonald’s ransom.

The protests have the benefit of putting low-wage workers in the media spotlight, a place they’re almost never found in a world more interested in the antics of Miley Cyrus and Donald Trump. “They want a raise with those fries,” the New York Daily News cheekily led its story on the strike.

==============

The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday a year later, on September 5th, 1883.

On September 5th, 1882, some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America’s first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall, past reviewing stands in Union Square, and then uptown to 42nd Street, the workers and their families gathered in Wendel’s Elm Park for a picnic, concert, and speeches.

Labor Day parade, Main Street, Buffalo, NY, ca. 1900.

This first Labor Day celebration was eagerly organized and executed by New York’s Central Labor Union, an umbrella group made up of representatives from many local unions. Debate continues to this day as to who originated the idea of a workers’ holiday, but it definitely emerged from the ranks of organized labor at a time when they wanted to demonstrate the strength of their burgeoning movement and inspire improvements in their working conditions.

In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.

Here are some quick tips on how to celebrate labor the union way:

• Fire up your Weber grill, made by the International Union of Allied Novelty and Production Workers.

• Grill some all-beef Butterball patties. If you are in the mood for hot dogs and brats, Oscar Meyer, Nathan’s and Johnsonville have what you are looking for.

• Add some Heinz Ketchup, Gulden’s Mustard and Vlasic pickles.

• Throw it all on a Wonder Bread bun.

• Funyuns, Fritos and Doritos are good side options.

• Wash it all down with a cold Budweiser or any other union-made brew. And there’s Minute Maid juices for the younger set.

Update: The Agonist has some good reading about Eugene V. Debs, who ran for president in 1920 from his prison cell.

When Republican Warren Harding was elected, he commuted Debs' sentence and invited him to the White House. The day after leaving the Atlanta Penitentiary, Harding greeted Debs at the White House with these words: "Well, I've heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now glad to meet you personally." It was a different time.

CNN's John King on the Houston mayoral race

Sunday Funnies