Gun goons invade Capitol, threaten state rep in his office

An already-well-documented atrocity by many others, here's the video and the Houston Press account.

A video posted by Kory Watkins, a member of Open Carry Tarrant County, shows gun activists confronting State Rep. Poncho Nevarez, a Democrat from Eagle Pass, in his capitol office Tuesday. The crew of gun-rights supporters was apparently shopping a bill filed by GOP Rep. Jonathan Stickland, which, if passed, would allow Texans to openly carry handguns without even obtaining a license.

This type of deliberately confrontational behavior -- over guns, on the first day of the legislative session -- is even more sobering when you consider it's actually easier to get into the State Capitol with a concealed carry license than without one (no line, no metal detector, no routine security check for concealed carriers).

Just imagine the scene if some black or brown people had done something like this.  The Lege has responded, moving quickly toward some safe-guarding of their members, which will hopefully be in place before the next brazen stunt that threatens to spin out of control into violence.

These Open Carry Tarrant County thugs (mugshots of two of the perps at this link) are at odds with the Open Carry Texas contingent in tactics but not in goal.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Open Carry Texas leader CJ Grisham condemned Open Carry Tarrant County on Facebook and Twitter. “I am so pissed at the actions of people today inside the Capitol. Totally counterproductive and unprofessional."

“I mean, it’s the first day of the Legislature, we are this close to getting open carry passed, and now these guys want to come and manufacture a firearm on the steps of the Capitol? I just don’t get it.”

That helps, but not if Rep. Stickland keeps throwing gas on the fire, as he did right before this standoff occurred.

"With your help, we are going to storm this Capitol and quit getting on our knees and asking for the Second Amendment back," Stickland told the armed crowd gathered Tuesday. "We are going to take it back."

Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America had the best analysis.

“This divide within the open carry groups right now in Texas seems like an easy way for some of these bills to seem more ‘reasonable’, said Watts. “Moms are here to make sure these attempts do not go unchecked, we remember the threats and intimidation, and we will not sit idle and let this sort of behavior become acceptable.”

Earlier this week members of the Texas chapter of (MDAfGSiA) visited 175 offices in the state legislature with cookies and strollers in tow to introduce themselves and discuss common-sense gun legislation and the chapter’s opposition to expanding open carry in Texas.

The bill is going to pass, gun nuts.  Take your toys -- the ones that compensate for your shortcomings, inadequacy, and self-confidence -- and go home so that cooler (big) heads can calm this situation down enough for you to get what you want.  Threats and intimidation simply aren't good PR moves for an inexorable gun activist movement.

We'd like to avoid any Newtowns, Auroras, and/or Charlie Hebdos from you.  Thanks in advance.

Update: Texas Leftist has this.

As this legislature gets rolling, let’s hope that they remember one thing about guns.  If you pass an Open Carry law for Texas, you pass it for everyone.  All the panic buttons in the world won’t change that.  It’s time for Texans to unite for common-sense policies, and say no to a Big Government legislature that would force all of us to be less safe.

Rick Perry's Texas Miracle is leaving with him

You can't really blame the guy for being stupid enough to run for president again after his 2012 debacle.  That was just a one-off; he's been crazy lucky all his life, after all.  But the circumstances surrounding the state's economic winning streak are not being extended to his successor.

“This is going to be a painful period of time,” explained Texas Governor Rick Perry. The oil price plunge is going to make things “very uncomfortable” in the oil patch of Texas. There would be “a bit of belt-tightening in places,” and some areas would “have to make some changes,” he said.

His speech to a conservative forum on Friday in Austin made one thing clear: for Texas, the largest oil-producing state in the nation, the oil bust won’t be easy, even if seen from the perennially optimistic point of view of a politician.

Some oil companies are starting to lay people off, some are are already going bankrupt.

Yet, even as capital expenditures are getting slashed brutally, companies have not lowered their production forecasts.

And they won’t, at least not for a while; they’ll keep pumping at the maximum rate possible, especially now that revenues from unhedged production have been plunging – while the costs of servicing their mountains of debt have remained the same, and rolling over that debt has become a lot more expensive. Cutting back on exploration, drilling, and completion stems the cash outflow, but it doesn’t cut production, not until the decline rates of existing shale wells start making a visible dent into it.

The market price of oil hasn't touched bottom yet.

Analysts say that richer (OPEC) cartel members like the United Arab Emirates have been ready to accept the price fall in the hope that it will force higher-cost shale producers out of the market.

"We cannot continue to be protecting a certain price," UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said. "We have seen the oversupply, coming primarily from shale oil, and that needed to be corrected," he told participants in the Gulf Intelligence UAE Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi.

Oil prices continued their slide towards six-year lows in Asian trade on Tuesday after Brent crude closed below $50 a barrel the previous day for the first time since April 2009. 

The fall came after Wall Street investment titan Goldman Sachs slashed its price outlook, adding to anxiety about global oversupply, weak demand and soft growth in the key Chinese and European markets.

One more from that Goldman report.

One such estimate for future crude oil prices became available Monday, predicting West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude prices of $39 and $65 a barrel in the next six and 12 months, respectively. Brent crude prices will fall to $43 in the next six months and rise to $70 by the end of the next 12 months.

So the reason this is important to Texas is because Jethro Bodine, Counter of Beans, is predicting something similar in his biennial state revenue forecast, upon which all spending decisions by the incoming legislature will be made.

Comptroller Glenn Hegar is forecasting that Texas lawmakers will have about $18 billion in new or carried over state revenue to spend in the next two-year budget...

A big part of Hegar’s comparatively optimistic forecast: He estimates the price of West Texas intermediate, the benchmark for oil in commodity markets, will be $64.50 in fiscal 2015 and $69.25 the following year. That’s a slow but steady rebound from current prices.

So if he (and Goldman Sachs and everybody else) just happens to be wrong about that, then Texas' books are cooked.  Sid Miller's cupcakes are going to be in a pickle and Dan Patrick's plans to cut property taxes will turn into a big pot of stew for him to steam in.  Oh, and the governor-elect's ideas about spending more money on road and highway improvements go off into the ditch as well.

A sustained period of $40 dollar oil is going to crush the hardhats in the oil patch, eventually catch some petroleum engineers in its undertow, wreck the state's finances, and maybe even screw up the political futures of a few Texas Republicans along the way.  So keep your fingers and toes crossed that the sheikhs are bluffing, and that WTI will rebound just as soon as all those TeaBaggers in the sticks buy a few more big SUVs and new Ford pickups.

I suppose the truly desperate among us could pray for a refinery explosion or two, maybe another terrorist attack, or a wider war in the Middle East to disrupt production.  Oversupply being what it is, when Mitch McConnell is kneeling over the Keystone XL pipeline with a wrench, you know things are already bad.

Socratic Gadfly has more.  Update: And so does Charles, but without mentioning much about the future price of crude's impacts.  And Lisa Gray has this.

If you've lived in Houston long, you recognize this moment: the haunting, suspended-in-motion months when we all know that the city's roller-coaster economy has entered a dive, but while we still hope that maybe it won't be bad, that maybe Texas is diversified now, that maybe OPEC or Libya or something — anything — will change.

Sure, there've been oil-related layoffs here and there, and sure, people are asking questions about loans and banks and the risks that frackers have assumed. But with oil under $50 a barrel, Houston remains eerily normal. We see the car crash coming, but haven't felt the impact; the ball, thrown in the air, slows at the top of its arc; the hurricane might still change its path.