Monday, April 06, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle, Cabin Fever Edition

We're three weeks through (what we all hope will be) a 6.5 week lockdown, and some members of the Texas Progressive Alliance have been feeling a little claustrophobic, while others are sewing their own masks in preparation for a supply run.

By contrast, some of us have adjusted just fine.


Here are some of the best blog posts, Tweets and left-centered news collected from around the Great State over the past week.

The COVID-19 global pandemic is impacting our lives in many ways, and that was the focus of everyone's thoughts and reporting this past week.


Our good guvnah remains above the fray, keeping his social distance from us, fiddling while Texans in (Carthage, London, Athens, Paris, Florence, Geneva, Dublin ...) Roma and Rhome burn.



Federal funding from the recently passed legislation is on the way.


But the state's economic woes will last for a long time.


Among the many industries suffering through the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, Lone Star print media is taking it on the chin.


“We’re f—— trying to keep the ship afloat in the apocalypse,” said Tim Rogers, the editor of D Magazine, which laid off fifteen employees last week, including editors, designers, sales people, and administrators; all remaining employees are taking salary cuts. Its freelance budget has been eliminated. San Antonio’s long-running alternative newspaper, the Current, laid off ten people and cut everyone else’s salaries. The Houston Press, which became a digital-only operation in 2017, instituted another round of pay cuts and slashed its freelance budget in half. Although it has so far avoided layoffs, the Austin Chronicle has temporarily gone from a weekly print publication to an every-other-week schedule. It has also reduced staff hours by ten to thirty hours per week. Southwest Magazine, the beloved in-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines, has closed for good.

Texas dailies are also feeling the pain. On March 30, national newspaper chain Gannett, which owns the Austin American-Statesman, announced company-wide furloughs and pay cuts. Newsroom employees making more than $38,000 a year will be required to take one week of unpaid leave each month in April, May, and June.

SocraticGadfly mourned another casualty of the pathogen, possibly fatal -- Texas icon Half Price Books -- and wondered if it can survive as even a shell while reminiscing about many years of shopping there.

But some businesses are adjusting quickly.


And the state's colleges and universities are helping, too.


To date the most severe rate of infections have occurred in Texas nursing homes.



And the ripple effects to our elections are being felt.


Texas has one of the most restrictive absentee ballot laws in the country. Even under ordinary circumstances, this means many Texans will have a tougher time casting a ballot than voters in most other states.

During a pandemic that could prevent millions of voters from venturing to the polls, however, Texas’s law could wind up disenfranchising much of the state.

The law only allows Texas voters to obtain an absentee ballot under a very limited list of circumstances. Voters may obtain an absentee ballot if they plan to be absent from their home county on Election Day, if they have a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents them from voting in person, if they are over the age of 65, or if they are jailed.

It is far from clear that a healthy person who remains at home to avoid contracting coronavirus may obtain an absentee ballot.

Texas Democratic Party v. Hughs, a lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party, seeks to fix this law — or, at least, to interpret the law in a way that will ensure healthy people can still vote. But the lawsuit potentially faces an uphill battle in a state court system dominated by conservative judges.

All nine members of the state Supreme Court are Republicans, and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit — a sign that he intends to resist efforts to prevent this law from disenfranchising voters.

The stakes in this case are astoundingly high. As Texas Democrats note in their complaint, voters are “now heavily discouraged” from even leaving their homes “by various government orders and are being discouraged in an enormous public education campaign.”

Even if the pandemic were to end by July 14, when the state plans to hold several runoff elections, “certain populations will feel the need and/or be required to continue social distancing.” Millions of voters could potentially be forced to choose between losing their right to vote and risking contracting a deadly disease.

Kuff looked at the potential for expanded vote by mail in November.


There'll be more on COVID-19 aftershocks in Part 2 of the Weekly Wrangle, coming later today or tomorrow morning.   Here's some news from the environmental circuit:





And even in the middle of a contagion pandemic, we need to keep an eye on the Gulf.


Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast provides an update on his health (it's good news), and Keri Blakinger sends him a post for his blog collating criminal justice developments.

And I'll close this early edition of the Wrangle with some lighter fare.



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Sunday, April 05, 2020

Sunday 'Ratings to Die For' Funnies












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