Monday, January 21, 2019

The MLK Day Wrangle

The Texas Wish-It-Was-Actually-Progressive Alliance supports the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on this federal holiday, and denounces the attempts to usurp and reassign them for their own lousy conservative purposes by charlatans like Mike Pence.


Social justice events, and news spawned from them, dominated the past weekend. A quick review:

-- The 2019 Women's March carried on with rallies across the nation despite accusations of anti-Semiticism directed at some of its organizers.


Robin Paoli, writing for the HouChron, spells out why Houston women keep marching.

-- The Indigenous Peoples March in Washington was marred by a group of high school students from Covington, KY who squared off with Nathan Phillips, an Omaha tribal elder and Vietnam veteran.  The smirking young man captured in video has been identified as Nick Sandmann.


-- And today, the two MLK parades in H-Town draw national focus as one of the parade organizers has invited the two conservative electoral challengers to Mayor Sylvester Turner, Bill King and Tony Buzbee, to lead his parade ... competing with the city-sanctioned one.


What would Dr. King do?

(Organizer Charles Stamps) rejected the idea that his selection of Turner's rivals as grand marshals was a political swipe at the mayor, though he acknowledged he would like Turner to lose his bid for a second four-year term in November. Stamps said he sees nothing wrong with having two parades and that King would support the idea.

"He would join our parade and say there should be a thousand of these things," Stamps said.

(Wayne Dolcefino has been busy piling on Turner, claiming the mayor is trying to hide the use of federal disaster money earmarked for Harvey relief.)

In a landmark criminal justice reform improvement, Harris County misdemeanor judges -- joined by Judge Lina Hidalgo and Commissioner Rodney Ellis -- announced measures that effectively spell the end of cash bail in the county.


The new slate of Democratic judges have approved comprehensive revisions to Harris County’s bail system that could clear the way for thousands of people, regardless of income, to avoid spending time in jail while awaiting trial on minor offenses.

The county judges plan to present their new court protocol to a federal judge, in a joint request with the sheriff, the county and poor defendants, in a historic class action over bail practices, asking that she implement the revised system as a foundation for a settlement.

[...]

“What it means is that no one will be in jail because they cannot afford to get out,” said Court at Law Judge Darrell Jordan, the presiding judge, who has been on the bench since 2017. “This is a history-making moment for civil rights, not only in Harris County but for the US, because as the third-largest county in America, larger than 26 states, what we do here will be watched by all and can be emulated or replicated by all.”


In Galveston County, a lawsuit brought by the ACLU to eliminate the practice of wealth-based detention continues to move toward injunctive relief.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Planned Parenthood and for the state of Texas (as represented by AG Ken Paxton).

A federal appeals court has lifted a lower court order that blocked Texas from booting Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid, potentially imperiling the health care provider’s participation in the federal-state health insurance program.

A three-judge panel on the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that Sam Sparks, the federal district judge who preserved Planned Parenthood’s status in the program in February 2017, had used the wrong standard in his ruling. The appeals court sent the case back to him for further consideration.

The case stems from a long-running flap over a misleading video released in late 2015 by the anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, which suggested that abortion providers at Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue for profit. The sting video included edited clips of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal tissue for research. A string of investigations that followed the video’s release were unable to confirm its claims, but it energized a crusade against the health care provider and sparked outrage from the state’s Republican leadership.

Women's reproductive freedoms are under assault all across the country.  Demonizing Planned Parenthood is simply another front for stigmatizing poor women seeking birth control.  Just two women's clinics remain open in San Antonio after the closing of Whole Women's Health in the Alamo City last week.

“Whole Woman’s Health has been a heroic advocate and provider of women’s health," said Mara Posada, director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood South Texas. "We regret that the state of Texas has made it increasingly difficult for providers of abortion care to be here for women who need them. Abortion is health care and health care should be accessible.”

[...]

“What changes is how people get access to those services,” (WWH corp. v-p Andrea Ferrigno) said. “Our decision to close the San Antonio location stems from the stricter regulatory landscape we have seen across the state for the last few years that disproportionately affected smaller providers. The regulations make it more difficult to access care and increases the cost of the services, making it unsustainable.”

After the US Department of Justice changed sides in the Texas redistricting lawsuit (the case argues that the state's long history of racial discrimination demands it be placed back under pre-clearance), the plaintiffs responded that the DOJ missed the deadline, and didn't follow the rules.

An op-ed by a group of Houston area faith leaders gives a rebuttal to Trump's warning about his self-created immigration crisis at the southern border being 'an emergency of the heart and soul'.  Groups like the Texas Pastor Council have come out in full support of the Trump agenda, and their shrill voices may be heard by some as speaking for the whole of the religious community.  These leaders provide the counter-weight.

There are two special elections under way to fill vacant Texas House seats, but you wouldn't know it judging by voter turnout.

HD79 special: Through Friday, the last day for which numbers are available, a total of 1,083 people had voted early, amounting to 1.2% of registered voters. Polls were closed today (Sunday) and will be closed tomorrow (Monday) for the holiday.

HD145 special: Through today (Sunday), a total of 637 people have voted early, amounting to 0.9% of registered voters. Polls will be closed tomorrow (Monday) for the holiday.

Both TXElects and the SA Current have the contenders for the HD135 empty chair.

Five filed for the HD125 special election to fill the unexpired term of former Rep. Justin Rodriguez (D-San Antonio), who resigned to accept an appointment to the Bexar Co. Commissioners Court:
  • Steve Huerta (D), a San Antonio social justice advocate
  • Ray Lopez (D), a former San Antonio council member
  • Fred Rangel (R), a San Antonio commercial construction business owner and former State Republican Executive Committee member
  • Coda Rayo-Garza (D), a San Antonio education policy advocate; and
  • Former Rep. Art Reyna (D).
Early voting begins January 28 for the February 12 special election.

There are municipal elections galore across the state; Fort Worth Democrats are encouraged by their candidate for mayor, Tarrant County Dem chair and former AT&T VP Deborah Peoples challenging Republican incumbent Betsy Price in May.  Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer is tracking that city's mayoral contest, with former state Rep. Jason Villaba the latest in, and former city attorney Larry Casto the first out.  He's made no mention yet of the Socialist Workers Party's Alyson Kennedy, however, whose announcement in The Militant indicates she's been campaigning since January 12.

Off the Kuff ran down the elections Houston has on the calendar this year.

Twenty-twenty presidential campaign developments caught the attention of Texas bloggers.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had a piece on five of the women getting ready to run, focusing on the enigmatic Tulsi Gabbard.  He followed up with "The Corporacrats" (Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar).  SocraticGadfly saw the Gabbard announcement and examined the recipe for the Tulsi Kool-Aid, and who's mixing and pouring it.  David Collins also had something brief to say about Tulsi's bid.  And Zachery Taylor has several presidential candidates who are being censored by the mass media.

And Texas Lege business is getting serious: Better Texas Blog takes their first look at the opening state budget proposals, while Raise Your Hand Texas has a toolkit to navigate the legislative session.  The TSTA Blog explains the problem with merit pay for teachers.  And Frontloading HQ takes note of Rep. Lyle Larson's "flamethrower" bill, so called because it would move the Texas primary from March to the end of January in an attempt to make the Lone Star State more relevant in picking the presidential nominee.  (It's not given any better odds of passing than it has had in legislative sessions past.)

In this week's "Texas Republicans Behaving Badly" news, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reports that Louie Gohmert took Steve King's side in his latest racist brain fart.  The Current points out that Ted Cruz, Kevin Brady, and former US Rep. Lamar Smith provided lots of financial support to King in recent years.  And Juanita Jean has an update on the employment status of Blake Farenthold.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog blogged about the DPS releasing the report about demoted Texas Ranger Brent Davis of Tyler.

Mike McGuff, the Houston media blogger, published the press release from Hearst Newspapers announcing the Chronicle's new president, Mike Medici.

Sarah Martinez, again at the San Antonio Current, has some lighter fare, reporting on Dr Pepper's effort to become the official soft drink of Texas.

Harry Hamid had a party in the panic room, and it may or may not have been in the panic room but only in his head, and it may or may not have involved alcohol.

Ken Hoffman at CultureMap gets all the great perks: he caught a free flight to Manchester, took in a soccer match, then rode the train to Liverpool and got his Beatles fix taken care of.


The Beatles bus takes you past John Lennon’s boyhood home on Menlove Avenue and Paul McCartney’s family home on Forthlin Road. We stopped at Strawberry Field for a photo op. We drove along Penny Lane and saw the barbershop, bank, and fire station in McCartney’s song. The tour guide carries a guitar and sings Beatles songs as the bus approaches places in John, Paul, George and Ringo lore. 

And here's a slideshow of the best eateries to visit during Galveston Restaurant Week (lasting nearly a month), starting this weekend.

Little Daddy's Gumbo Bar
 Lunch: 12, Dinner: $20. See the menus here.
Brains and Eggs endorses!

(From) January 26 through February 20, 33 participating restaurants will offer either a breakfast, lunch and or dinner 3-course meal for a steal. According to the Galveston Restaurant Week website, two- or three-course dinners will be priced between $20-$35 and two-course lunches, breakfasts and brunches will cost between $10-$20.

Proceeds from the meals go to Access Care of Coastal Texas to provide lunches for persons with HIV or AIDS.
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Sunday, January 20, 2019

The Corporacrats: Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar (and that's just the women)

Too many of the guys to list in one post, but we'll get to them soon enough.

What say we open with the junior senator from the Empire State?  She made the rounds on all the Talking Heads programs this morning.  Did you watch any of them?


Cartoonist Jim Margulies captures her 'all things to all people' pandering better than anything I could write.  (It could have just as easily been Kamala Harris; but we'll get to her in a minute.)

More than any other candidate, Gillibrand carries the #MeToo flag for women, a badge of distinction and somewhat of a cross to bear for the crucifixion of Al Franken.  I'm not one who holds it against her; Franken behaved badly for many years.  What we laughed at in the Eighties and Nineties isn't funny at all now, and he shouldn't have made a habit out of grabbing constituents' asses at photo ops with him.  He earned his fall from grace.  His resignation was on him, not on Gillibrand.

I could blog about her Wall Street groveling or her decade-old gun flip-flops -- today's WaPo, from Taegan Goddard, has your thirty-second summary -- but Gillibrand's biggest shift has been her ... shall we call it, evolution on immigration.  Andrew Kaczynski at CNN, with the Tweet thread below and the long read here.  It's detailed and even-handed (IMO).


Read both entirely (OK, skip some of the Twitter comments).  Here's an excerpt from the end of the piece, presenting her conversion in the most favorable light.

In January 2009, Gillibrand was appointed to replace Clinton, who had been confirmed to be President Barack Obama's new secretary of state. Her appointment was met with backlash from New York-based immigration activists.

El Diario Nueva York, one of the largest Spanish language newspapers in the state, published a cover story on Gillibrand. The headline "Anti Inmigrante," ran under a photo of then-congresswoman. The newspaper's editorial board called her "an unfortunate selection."

Gillibrand sought to quell the concerns by meeting with immigration groups. After meeting with activists, Gillibrand announced that she supported several more liberal positions on the issue, like a moratorium on raids until comprehensive immigration reform was achieved.

The meetings seemed to work.

"We saw a very positive shift in attitude in the way that she looks at immigrant constituencies," said Chung-Wha Hong, former executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, who met with Gillibrand, to the New York Daily News at the time.

New York Assemblyman Peter Rivera was going to have a press conference announcing his "total opposition" to Gillibrand before it was canceled after aides to the new senator reached out. Rivera soon announced he no longer saw her as anti-immigrant.

[...]

Gillibrand moved in the Senate to support policies advocated by the activists, including in March 2009, when she signed on as a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act.

Gillibrand was asked about her past positions in a 2018 interview with 60 Minutes, where she said, "I just didn't take the time to understand why these issues mattered because it wasn't right in front of me. And that was my fault. It was something that I'm embarrassed about and I'm ashamed of."

She added, "I just think as I've gotten older I've learned more about life and sometimes you're wrong. And you've gotta fix it. And if you're wrong, just admit it and move on."

So is she a chameleon or a thoughtful, deliberative pol?  Someone who revisits her thinking on the basis of new information or enlightenment, or on political expediency?

I think if you're the kind of person willing to give Tulsi Gabbard a second chance, then you'd have to be intellectually dishonest not to do the same for Kirsten Gillibrand.  As for me, they're both near the bottom of my list.

-- So where does that leave Kamala Harris, the ultimate identity politician in the 2020 race?  She is heavily rumored to be announcing this weekend.  She checks all the boxes: daughter of a Tamil Indian mother (a breast cancer research doctor) and a Jamaican American father (a Stanford University economics professor).  No hardscrabble background, that.  She stands a full five feet two inches tall; an attribute she seems to have camoflaged fairly well to those of us who only glimpse her occasionally on teevee.  (Other famous people at that height include Kelly Ripa, Reese Witherspoon, Prince, Shirley Temple, Alyssa Milano, and Eva Longoria.)  She's also been engaged in working both sides of the Democratic political street for some time now.  For example, Harris claims to support M4A, but ...


Her record as an LA prosecutor and as California AG has been well-scrutinized, and she comes up short.  At the end of this post just over a week ago, I wrote:

Kamala Harris was on Colbert, said "she might" run for prez, is gutted vetted as her side of the story regarding the 2012 settlement for bad mortgages in California -- the cause of the Great Depression in 2008 -- gets spun back over her.  It's long, a bit in the financial weeds, and a very bad look for the junior Cali senator.  On top of her bumpy (well-hidden; look for the graf with David Sirota mentioned) record (scroll to the end, past the puffery) as a prosecutor, I have trouble seeing how she gets to the nomination.  Tough-on-crime and easy-on-banks Democrats pretending to be progressives doesn't sound like the winning ticket to me.

Update: Briahna Gray at The Intercept, under the headline "Can a Prosecutor become President in the Age of Black Lives Matter?"

(Harris) is running for president as a progressive, but as attorney general of California, she criminalized truancy -- making it a crime for kids to be late for school and dragging into the criminal justice system even more disproportionately low income, predominantly black and Latino families. She’s overlooked the misconduct of her prosecutors and fought to uphold their wrongfully secured convictions. She defended California’s choice to deny sexual reassignment surgery to a trans inmate, and in 2014, appealed a federal judge’s holding that the death penalty was unconstitutional.

The list goes on and on. But in some ways the details don’t matter. The problem isn’t that Harris was an especially bad prosecutor. She made positive contributions as well -- encouraging education and reentry programs for ex-offenders, for instance. The problem, more precisely, is that she was ever a prosecutor at all.

There's also a lot of people starting to speak up about their experiences with her, and it is seemingly all negative.  She has a similar staff/sexual harrassment problem as Bernie Sanders, but he apologized for his, while she has made excuses for hers.  Her memoir, The Truths We Hold, is thin on accomplishments, as reflects her overall curriculum vitae.  Despite all of this, I expect Harris to be one of the last left standing at the end.  Nate Silver's analysis using five Democratic voter metrics -- Party Loyalists, The Left, Millennials and Friends, Black Voters, and Hispanic Latino Voters (sometimes in combination with Asian voters) -- shows her with the most upside.

Harris ... was easily the top choice in the survey of influential women of color that I mentioned earlier. So while I don’t automatically want to assume that nonwhite candidates will necessarily win over voters who share their racial background -- it took Obama some time to persuade African-Americans to vote for him in 2008 -- Harris seems to be off to a pretty good head start. And her coalition not only includes black voters, but also potentially Asian and Hispanic voters. Harris did narrowly lose Hispanic voters to Sanchez, a Hispanic Democrat, in 2016 (while winning handily among Asian voters). But her approval ratings among Hispanic voters are high in California, a state where the group makes up around a third of the electorate.

If black voters and the Hispanic/Asian group constitute Harris’s first two building blocks, she’d then be able to decide which of the three remaining (predominately white) Democratic groups to target to complete her trifecta. And you could make the case for any of the three. Harris polls better among well-informed voters, which could suggest strength among Party Loyalists. She’s young-ish (54 years old) and has over 1 million Instagram followers, which implies potential strength among millennials. (And remember, Democratic millennials highly value racial diversity.) Harris’s worst group -- despite a highly liberal, anti-Trump voting record -- might actually be The Left, the whitest and most male group, from which she’s drawn occasional criticism for her decisions as a prosecutor and a district attorney.

Overall, however, this is a strong position for Harris. As Slate’s Jamelle Bouie points out, it may actually be a strategic advantage to be a black candidate in this Democratic primary in 2020.

Here's where I amend myself from last week: dyed-in-the-wool Donks simply want to see Trump defeated.  They won't consider the shortcomings listed too severe to hold her back.  Kamala Harris is just superficial enough to pass muster with Democratic Party constituencies and skate onto the November 2020 ticket.  Whether her name appears first or second is the only thing left to be determined.  It's very early, but she's on the lead with the gents.

-- That's going to leave "Minnesota nice" Amy Klobuchar somewhere out in the cold a year from now, I'll wager.  Though her in-laws are onboard with a presidential run, and she could bring a state the Dems need (Hillary barely carried it) and the Midwest in general needs to be shored up by them after the 2016 Clinton debacle, Klobuchar shows up lukewarm on some of the issues that will generate blue enthusiasm.

She has not signed onto (Bernie) Sanders’s single-payer health care bill, commonly called Medicare for All; she said it “should be considered,” but prefers “a sensible transition” such as allowing people to buy into Medicare, or expanding it to cover those 55 and older. Her push to make college more affordable is not as expansive as the left would like. While she has denounced Trump’s border policies, she has not joined the movement to abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Once more, 538.com.

... I’m not quite sure how she builds a winning coalition. Klobuchar is potentially a near-perfect choice for Party Loyalists, who are liable to see her Midwestern moderation as being highly electable, especially after she won her Senate race by 24 percentage points last year in a state where Trump nearly defeated Clinton. Beyond that, though? Minnesota is a pretty white state, so Klobuchar doesn’t have a lot of practice at appealing to black, Hispanic or Asian voters. Her voting record is fairly moderate; she’s voted with Trump about twice as often as Booker has, so she’s not an obvious fit for The Left. Millennials, perhaps? Her social media metrics so far are paltry — she has just 140,000 Twitter followers, for example — although (not totally unlike Warren) she has a goofy relatability that could translate well to Instagram ...

I think mild-mannered centrism is a deal-killer for a vice-presidential contender, which is the best Klobuchar can hope for.  Almost every man or woman with a real shot at the top of the ticket is going to have a better option for their running mate.

Just my humble O, as always.
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