Monday, December 07, 2020

The Weekly Far Left Texas Wrangle


(Mrs. Diddie is taking some vacation this week and we're going to bump around out of doors in the exurbs, doing Xmas-type things, so my long-awaited post on the Latin@ vote waits longer.  Hope it's relevant by the time I finish it.  While you wait, Angela Valenzuela has excerpted a TIME piece that hits a lot of the points I'll be making.)

If you live in Houston and need help this week, the good souls at Baker Ripley are here for you.


It looks like TXGOP chairman Allen West -- or at the very least, someone he approves of -- will be challenging Governor Abbott from his right in 2022.  The SD30 special election may hold a few clues as to how that will play out.


Matthew McConaughey continues his non-political political tour of podcasting, excoriating the "illiberal left that absolutely condescend, patronize and are arrogant towards the other 50 percent".  Since he's so 'aggressively centrist', Chairman West need fear not should his higher aspirations tend toward the Governor's Mansion.  Alright (alright, alright).

Texas Republicans -- and Democrats, to be clear -- may have done better in choosing Beaumont Rep. Dade Phelan as House Speaker-to-be, if all of these glowing profiles of him are any indication of his talents for the job ahead.  Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current previews the legislative budget battle.  And Scott Braddock of the Quorum Report suggests, from his Lege reporter POV, that his job will be more difficult next year because of COVID.


That's my segue to the latest on the coronavirus.


Social justice (or injustice, as the case may be) showed up a lot in the news over the weekend.


A school in a small town in Texas has ignited hope across the community by opening a student-led grocery store to support families in need.

Linda Tutt High School in Sanger launched the grocery store in November so students could purchase necessities including toilet paper, meat and basic food items. They pay for their purchases by earning points from good deeds.

"In our school district, there's roughly 2,750 students enrolled and throughout the district 43% of these students are considered economically disadvantaged," Anthony Love, the principal at Linda Tutt, told CNN. "About 3.6% of our students are considered homeless. We thought it was important to support them and their families and make sure they had food on the table."

Following up on two items from Friday's Round-up:


And business leaders are hoping that Hewlett Packard's HQ move from San Jose to north Houston spurs a technology renaissance for the region.


Closing today with some football and Santa Claus.


Britton Banowsky, executive director, College Football Playoff Foundation, former SWC assistant commissioner: "I think everyone assumed it would be [Texas] Tech and Houston. Because it was the publics [Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Houston] and the privates [Baylor, Rice, SMU, TCU]. That was kind of a clean way to do it. Public schools get public funding and it just seemed like the legislature would want to make sure it happened. Then out of the blue, Houston was out and Baylor was in."

Texas' governor at the time, Ann Richards, was a Baylor graduate. Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock graduated from both Texas Tech and Baylor. The Texas House Speaker [Pete Laney], House Appropriations Committee Chairman [Rob Junell] and Texas Senate Finance Committee Chairman [John Montford] were all Texas Tech graduates.

According to the book "Bob Bullock: God Bless Texas," by Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson, Bullock summoned Texas and Texas A&M's presidents to his office in early 1994 as the merger neared. "You're taking Tech and Baylor, or you're not taking anything," Bullock told them. "I'll cut your money off, and you can join privately if you want, but you won't get another nickel of state money."

And on behalf of those ATT and DirecTV subscribers who were blacked out by Tegna from watching Texans football this past weekend ... thank you.

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