Sunday Anonymous Funnies

Beto still rising

Post-Labor Day ads are allegedly shifting into high gear; thank Jeebus I have that crap blocked online and don't watch any teevee channels where I would be subjected to it.

Beto's Ellen appearance (two short videos there; you should watch them) got swamped by Trump's meltdown over Bob Woodward's book and the Kavanaugh hearings.  I thought he would get more mileage out of that; maybe he is, or will.  Debates seem to be on the backburner.  Maybe that will also change next week.  This week I'm of the opinion that O'Rourke is going to have all the money he needs in order to win, so he might not have to debate Cruz, who could score too many points against him in a Jimmy Kimmel, one-on-one, hoops challenge kind of way.  The Zodiac Killer could -- theoretically -- snuff the rising star with just a few well-placed shots, puns intended.

Let the skirmishes play out on Twitter, with Avenatti's publicity-hawking rally countering Trump's and the crowd-funded billboards featuring poorly-aged Trump Tweets and such.  Playing Mr. Nice Guy, staying above the fray, is a winning strategy.  So far.

But I still can't see a path to casting a ballot for him no matter what the polls say or how close the race gets.  I'm forced to undervote the US Senate race, as Alyson Kennedy did not qualify even as a write-in.  I reached out to the Dallas SWP last week for comment; no response at post time.

That leaves Bob, Ted, and a Libertarian (TexTrib's list matches the one at the SOS website).  I'm taking a hard pass on all of that.

The Labor Day Wrangle

To honor the struggle of the American (and global) worker, this week's aggregation of blog posts and left-leaning political news is interspersed with a few collections of the history of and forecasts for labor in our late (end?) - stage capitalist system.

The Wrangle opens with the latest tropical storm developments in the Gulf of Mexico.

So what does this mean for Texas? Unless Gordon unexpectedly tracks more westward toward the Texas coast, the biggest question for our region is the extent of rainfall. If the storm holds to the forecast track, Houston is probably looking at something on the order of 1 to 4 inches of rain from this coming Thursday through next weekend. If the storm moves a bit more westward, and then slows down over Texas, we could see quite a bit more than that. But for now, most available forecast modeling indicates rain totals toward the lower end.

As the president likes to say: "we'll see what happens".

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

US Senate race developments included Ted Cruz finally getting worried about Beto O'Rourke's challenge, so much so that he got down on his hands and knees and asked Trump for help.  And Trump obliged, which prompted an immediate response from both Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti.

“I am excited to announce that I will be leading a large resistance rally in Texas at the exact same time of Trump’s, details tba,” (Avenatti) tweeted. “All groups are welcome to join. We must fight fire with fire and we must send a message that we will fight to make America America again.”

Beto's appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' teevee talk show is scheduled this week.  The Texas Observer's Justin Miller followed O'Rourke and some of his volunteers down at the border as he worked to shore up his weakest flank, Latin@s.  There was a disturbing reveal among the mostly positive spin and news.

It’s hard to convince unlikely voters to vote when they don’t answer the door. For the 45 minutes I tagged along, (TX-16 Democratic nominee and presumptive successor to O'Rourke in Congress Veronica) knocked on about a dozen doors and got answers at only one or two. She’d leave a handwritten note, hoping that might help.

Tagging along with Escobar is Sergio Mora, a former Webb County Democratic Party chair. The enthusiastic crowd at last night’s event makes him think change just might be afoot in Laredo. But is there any other evidence that voters are unusually fired up. He shrugs. “That’s the big experiment this cycle.”

One El Paso volunteer tells me that most people who answered their doors in Laredo had never heard of O’Rourke and many had no intention of voting.

This sounds unfortunately familiar; in TX-07, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher apparently has the same problem, as told by The Atlantic's Elaina Plott.

Leoneo Torres is 20 years old, Hispanic, and a registered Democrat. Born and raised in Gulfton, he now works at Galaxy Auto Insurance. The stores lining the Orchard Green strip mall are advertised almost entirely in Spanish, save for an African deli. Torres told me he’s one of the few fluent English speakers in the area.

He voted for the first time in 2016, casting his ballot at the community center nearby for Hillary Clinton and every other Democrat down ticket. He’s active on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and said he and his friends talk often about Cruz challenger Beto O’Rourke. Most recently, they shared with each other a video of O’Rourke skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot. He’s excited to vote in November, he said: “This is about the next six years for our state, you know? It’s a big deal.”

So he was surprised when I mentioned Fletcher’s name. “Who did you say? Elizabeth?” he asked. He turned to his computer and began Googling. He clicked on her campaign page. “Oh, cool,” he said. “She’s a Democrat.”

“I mean, yeah, I’ll look into her, but this is the first I’ve heard of her. Kind of weird, right? I wonder if she’s planning on coming around here,” he said, and shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”

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

The Pullman Strike of 1894 (via Dandelion Salad)

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SocraticGadfly de-hagiographied -- de-hagiographed? -- the appalling spectacle that was the state funeral of John McCain.

A federal judge gave Ken Paxton and a handful of other extremist state attorneys general a legal victory over Obamacare.

The Internal Revenue Service could hand Texas more than $300 million after a federal court in North Texas ruled that the federal government improperly charged a handful of states millions in state Medicaid program fees that help fund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

[...]

States shouldn’t count on a victory just yet, said William Sage, the James R. Dougherty Chair for Faculty Excellence at the University of Texas School of Law and professor of surgery and perioperative care at Dell Medical School.

“It’s really important to point out the irony of winning $300 million back from the federal government for Medicaid, when Texas turned down $100 billion from the federal government for Medicaid,” he said.

Meanwhile, Texas and Wisconsin lawyers are set to argue in court Wednesday that Obamacare should be declared unconstitutional, according to Paxton’s office.

And a year after Harvey, the Houston Chronicle reports that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is finally starting to do its job.

Two petroleum tanks located in a sprawling terminal along Buffalo Bayou in Galena Park, 8 miles (13 kilometers) southeast of downtown Houston, first sprung leaks on Aug. 31 of last year when the tanks shifted on their foundations during days of heavy rainfall during Harvey, according to documents and a statement from Magellan.

Those broken-down tanks spilled gasoline and ultimately spawned a leak that lasted for more than 12 days and created more than 2 million pounds (0.91 million kilograms) of air pollution — the storm's largest pollution incident, the Houston Chronicle reported.

But it took another 295 days before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sent its first notice of enforcement to that company — Magellan Terminal Holdings LP's Galena Park Terminal — on July 6, state records show.

The Houston Chronicle and The Associated Press teamed up in March to describe the impact of 100 major releases and hazardous waste spills that socked Houston alone — most of which were under-reported and went without investigation for months as state and federal agencies scrambled to react to the environmental damage that accompanied Harvey's floods.

Harris County pollution control officials so far have cited eight of the biggest Harvey-related polluters, including the Magellan terminal. They sent out most notices only days after the series was published, records show.

State environmental proceeded more slowly. This week, TCEQ spokesman Brian McGovern said the agency has issued notices of enforcement to 68 Harvey polluters.

About 14 of those notices went to refineries and chemical plants, according to a list provided by McGovern. At least five of those industrial polluters were specifically cited for Harvey-related violations, but others received notices for pollution problems that predated or followed the storm, records show.

Most of the state's Harvey-related enforcement actions came after April 6, when Gov. Greg Abbott lifted a 7-month-long emergency order that had suspended most of the state's environmental reporting rules, according to lists provided by the state.

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

The WSWS gives an update on the progress -- and regress -- of unions, particularly striking teachers, on this holiday.

Labor Day 2018 is being celebrated today in the United States and Canada. As is the case every year, the day will be marked in the US with a few demonstrations organized by the AFL-CIO, where union officials and Democratic Party politicians deliver empty and hypocritical speeches. This year, however, Labor Day takes place amidst a resurgence of class struggle that is bringing workers into ever more direct conflict with the corporatist and anti-working class trade unions.

With public schools reopening, teachers are renewing their fight for substantial wage improvements and increased funding for public education. In the state of Washington, where in 2013 Democratic Governor Jay Inslee oversaw the largest corporate tax cut in US history—$8.7 billion for aircraft and defense giant Boeing—teachers have walked out in several districts. Despite efforts by the unions to shut down the struggles, there are increasing demands from rank-and-file educators for a statewide strike.

Last week, teachers in Los Angeles voted by 98 percent to authorize a strike in the nation’s second-largest school district, with 640,000 students and over 33,000 teachers. In Detroit, teachers and parents are livid over high levels of lead and copper in drinking water, just two years after Detroit teachers waged a series of wildcat sickouts over decaying schools and underfunded classrooms. The school district has been forced to shut off water to all the city’s schools.

In the states where teachers waged statewide walkouts earlier this year, none of the issues motivating the strikes have been resolved. In Arizona, the state Supreme Court just threw off the ballot a tax initiative, called Invest in Education, which would have raised income taxes by a meager 3 to 4 percentage points on individuals and households earning more than $250,000. The unions, the Democrats and their affiliated organizations promoted the initiative as the solution to the funding crisis when they conspired to shut down the six-day strike by 60,000 Arizona teachers last May. In the end, however, the ruling class would not countenance the slightest incursion on its moneymaking operations.

More:

The trade unions have worked systematically to prevent strikes and, if unable, to quickly isolate these struggles and sell them out.

• The teacher unions have rushed to settle a dispute in Seattle, the largest school district in the state of Washington, in an effort to prevent a statewide walkout. The teacher strikes in the spring were not initiated by the unions but emerged through a rebellion of rank-and-file educators against them.

• After the labor agreement covering 31,000 workers at US Steel and ArcelorMittal expired Saturday, the United Steelworkers union has forced workers to remain on the job despite the demand for historic rollbacks by the highly profitable companies.

• A month after the July 31 expiration of the contracts covering 230,000 workers at United Parcel Service, the Teamsters has defied the overwhelming strike mandate by workers and is trying to push through a contract introducing lower wages and part-time conditions for package delivery drivers, along with poverty-level wages for warehouse workers.

• The Communications Workers of America has kept 7,000 AT&T workers on the job months after the expiration of their contracts.

• After Fiat Chrysler workers voted overwhelmingly to strike the company’s transmission operations in Kokomo, Indiana, the United Auto Workers has kept them on the job. The UAW has been exposed as a direct arm of corporate management, accepting millions of dollars in exchange for its role in pushing though historic concessions on auto workers.

The actions of the trade unions are the expression of what they are. Over the past four decades, the unions, based on their defense of capitalism and the nation-state system, have been transformed into cheap labor contractors and police agencies over the working class. They exist not to organize opposition to the dictates of the ruling class, but to prevent this opposition.

During the Janus v. AFSCME case, attorneys for the public sector unions repeatedly told the Supreme Court justices that agency fees—the equivalent of union dues for public sector workers who opt out of union membership—was the “tradeoff for no strikes.” That is, the state-sponsored, automatic deduction of a portion of workers wages was the payment for ensuring that workers do not rebel against the conditions imposed on them.

More recently, a spokesman for the New York State United Teachers told the Albany Times Union that the Taylor Law, which bars strikes by public sector employees, “has worked effectively for more than 40 years” in “keeping the peace” and should not be overturned.

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

Bonddad writes about Trump's base of white evangelicals, and how they rationalize against all hypocrisy that the ends justify the means.

It's fairly clear that the justification that evangelicals have for supporting Trump is that no matter how vile he is personally, no matter how many laws and norms he flouts, he is being used by God to do God's work.

This is the same rationalization used by conservatives like Mitch McConnell, who only care about a conservative judiciary: a Supreme Court Justice such as Brett Kavanaugh, who would overturn Roe v. Wade, prevaricating about doing so in order to be confirmed, is just doing God's work ... by saving the lives of aborted babies.

Off the Kuff notes the motion by the plaintiffs in the Texas redistricting lawsuit to bring the state back under preclearance for its discrimination in map-drawing.

David Collins' two Twit bits spurred commentary about ranked choice voting and another progressive gone neoliberal.

And Harry Hamid writes something sublime about her new favorite musicians.

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

Worker self-determination is more common in countries with lower income inequality. In other words, when workers have more of a say, the profits their hands and minds produce are better apportioned. Germany and Scandinavian countries like Finland and Norway are examples. But it’s also true next door in Canada. There, legislation provides more protections for unions, enlarging numbers and giving labor organizations more impact. Nearly 30 percent of Canadian workers belong to unions. In Denmark, Sweden and Finland, it’s more than 60 percent.

In the United States, it’s 10.7 percent, near the bottom among developed nations, despite a survey released last week that found 62 percent of Americans approve of unions. The difference between those two numbers shows how much U.S. legislation obstructs unionization.

Germany, one of the world’s most successful capitalist nations, and some other European countries have embraced a democratized corporate model in which workers are routinely and systematically engaged in governance through works councils and membership on corporate boards of directors. Germany has required since 1976 that workers elect half of the members of the boards of directors of corporations with more than 2,000 employees. In this model of corporate co-determination, workers are partners, not inputs.

Works councils are employee-elected boards that consult with management on workplace issues. German companies began establishing them in the late 1800s. The government mandated them for all medium and large companies during World War I. The Nazis, of course, shut them down, but corporations restored them after the war.

This system works well for German workers. They make about $10 an hour more than their U.S. counterparts. Government debt and income inequality both are lower there than in the United States. Manufacturing has thrived in Germany while it has waned in the United States. And German workers don’t have to worry about health insurance because they were the first to launch what would become universal health care. Life expectancy is longer in Germany.

As might be expected with corporate boards populated by workers, German CEOs are paid less than American CEOs, and German companies place less weight on short-term profits and more on worker concerns like job security.

Putting labor back in Labor Day Weekend

Definitions: The Proletariat (Gaither Stewart)

The antiwar speech that jailed Eugene V. Debs for 10+ years (video and transcript)

Plutocracy I: Political Repression in the U.S.A.
Plutocracy II: Solidarity Forever
Plutocracy III: Class War

Democracy Against Capitalism: Markets

The separation of the political and economic spheres has given private interests the dominant position in the lives of workers. They control the hours worked, the nature of the work, the kinds of things that are produced. This control arises through the property relations established and enforced by the state. With the sanction of the state, these private interests have the power to decide people’s income and whether they are allowed to earn an income at all. We even see private interests setting limits on the speech and assembly rights of individuals. Private interests have the power to limit health care benefits, vacations, and childbirth leave, just to name a few. Legislation to assert the interests of workers is routinely defeated, and when not defeated, is always watered down, in the name of efficiency or of profit, or of the absolute rights of people/corporate entities to the property they control.

Why Unions Still Matter, on Labor Day and Always

Sunday Funnies

Trump wanted to buy National Enquirer’s safe full of reporting on him

"Owning the Libs"

Texas GOP "monkeys it up"

From Twitter today, two trending topics mashed into one headline.

It's almost like the Republicans are trying to lose.

The Weekly Wrangle

Reminiscences were the theme of the week, as Texas Progressive Alliance bloggers and news sources looked back at Hurricane Harvey, John McCain, and other people and events in the week that was.

Last Tuesday's conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea by Michael Cohen -- which occurred within minutes of each other -- was a turning point for the Trump presidency, and both items were briefly summarized by Somervell County Salon.

Socratic Gadfly remembers Senator Maverick (not fondly, either).

#Harvey1YearLater was an opportunity for many Houstonians to contribute their stories to the narrative of the region's most destructive storm in over a century.  Following the successful bond election on Saturday, the Houston Chronicle followed up with a report indicating that the county still hasn't decided how to fix its flood infrastructure.  The Texas Tribune collected its reporting all in one place for a compendium of good reading.  The AP, via Talking Points Memo, noted the chutzpah of Big Oil recommending taxpayers foot the billion-dollar bill for the Texas Gulf coastal spine, to protect their Southeast Texas refinery and chemical plant infrastructure from the next mega-hurricane (caused by climate change, that they caused).

Grist focused on Meyerland's recovery, while Offcite went to a couple of Houston's poorest neighborhoods, Kashmere and Trinity Gardens, to gauge the rehabilitation efforts.

Meanwhile, as developers began building new homes in the floodplain (an abandoned golf course in west Houston), Mayor Sylvester Turner and city council's reaction was ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The neoliberal storm rages on in the Bayou City, as Harvey's damage did absolutely nothing to change the way bidness goes down at City Hall between the developers and the Democrats.

In some cases, MUDs directly lied to residents about whether their housing units were located in the region’s floodplains. In others, they directly disfigured water flow patterns of the land, opening it to more hazardous flooding against the complaints of residents.

And yet Houston developers have continued to push this privatized model, arguing that without MUDs, developers would have to pay for utilities with their own capital, likely resulting in poor service provision — if not cuts altogether.

The local debate about MUDs reflects the confidence of Houston’s developers and the weakness of the opposition, both in the council and outside of it. This balance of forces allowed real-estate capitalists to transform a statement about privatization’s fundamental insolvency into an argument for its acceleration.

In election news, Beto O'Rourke is quickly becoming a cult of personality for Democrats, not just in Texas but across the country.  The Sulphur Springs News-Telegram opined about "Havana Ted McCarthy Cruz and Robert Francis Kennedy O'Rourke" playing debate chicken.  Socratic Gadfly took down the Buzzfeed puff piece about Beto.  And Off the Kuff took a look at the latest Senate race poll and compared O'Rourke's numbers to those of Lupe Valdez.

The Dallas News reported that Valdez's missing pistol was located exactly where it should have been: in the Dallas County Sheriff's Department property room.  It took a second audit to locate it.

The madness of Dan Patrick was on full public display, as our state's lite governor went on Fox to rage at CNN and MSNBC for the death of Mollie Tibbetts, and challenged Geraldo Rivera -- and not Mike Collier, his actual November election opponent -- to a debate.

Doyin Oyeniyi at Texas Monthly has the latest on Reality Winner, sentenced to five years and three months in prison for leaking classified information.

Winner is a Kingsville native who joined the Air Force after graduating high school. During her time in the military, Winner worked as a linguist and translator in Arabic and Farsi with the National Security Administration in Fort Meade, Maryland. She later left the military and moved to Augusta, Georgia where she worked as a contractor translating Farsi for the NSA. It was while contracting in 2017 that she printed out and mailed a classified document regarding Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election.

[...]

Winner’s defense requested that she serve her sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a federal prison in Fort Worth, where she can get treatment for her bulimia and be closer to her family in Kingsville. On Thursday, Judge J. Randall Hall Judge agreed to make the recommendation to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for Winner that she be detained in Texas. 

Leif Reigstad at TM also has another update on Amazon's HQ2, showing Dallas and Austin as frontrunners for the coveted economic prize.  Austin isn't all that thrilled about it.

Fracking is using up already-scarce water in the Permian Basin, says Courthouse News.  The coming underground water war between Mexico and the US is part of the focus of the Texas Observer's nine-part series, "Shallow Waters".

David Collins riffed off of Quetzal Cáceres's post at Black Agenda Report about fauxgressives and fauxcialists.

Neil at You Must Act Right Now was witness to an act of civil disobedience at the proposed location of the baby jail/family detention jail in Houston.

The Rag Blog's Paul Buhle eulogized a pair of global peace leaders, Uri Avnery and David McReynolds.

And Harry Hamid wrote about his annual near-death experience.

Sunday Funnies

"A man in his position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous".

Oh, and strip superdelegates of power ...

Women (and everyone who loves and supports them) will take to the streets today -- #WomensEqualityDay -- with rallies and marches to #StopKavanaugh.

Beto O'Rourke: a cult of personality

He's morphed from an upstart longshot right into a presidential wet dream for swooning Donkeys in the span of a couple of weeks.

No. Just no.

When Jon Tilove at the Austin Statesman featured 'Beto 2020' in his column/First Reading blog last week, I rolled my eyes.

If you like Cruz-O’Rourke 2018, you’ll love Cruz-O’Rourke 2020. https://t.co/c7oGdhkDDD 🙄#LetsNotGetAheadofOurselves

— PDiddie (@PDiddie) August 16, 2018

That was the first I had read about this (like I've said before, I quit Facebook weeks ago; I'm no longer privy to the hive mind of Democratic activists ... and feel much healthier as a result).  Tilove, who normally has something valuable to contribute to the political discussion, had gone off the rails with this prognosticating.  Or so I thought.

On Monday, I led the Wrangle with my premise about a brightening forecast for O'Rourke's chances against Poop Cruz.  Then Beto's remarks about NFL players taking a knee, video posted by Real News (over 15,000 views and 28,000 reTweets), blew up the Internet.  Then the latest poll broke, from NBC News/Marist, showing a scant four-point lead for the Zodiac Killer.

That poll -- look at Kuffner! On it! And look who his first commenter is! -- does not reflect the impact of the viral 'kneeling' video or his recent teevee ad buy, as RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly pointed out yesterday.  (And still no mention of the one poll that had Beto just a nose ahead.  Very odd.)

So then I start seeing all kinds of fawning comments and Tweets about Beto, from locals to statewides to "Hollywood liberals" (as Rafael puts it) to the chattering political consultant class, all dreamily fantasizing not about Senator O'Rourke ... but President -- or Vice President -- O'Rourke.  Just as Tilove above speculated.

The next superstar in the Democratic Party is @BetoORourke. I predict he’ll defeat Ted Cruz this November and be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 2020. And he’s not just what our party’s been looking for, he’s what America desperately needs.

— Ken Olin (@kenolin1) August 23, 2018

Also this, thoroughly refudiated by Gadfly.  And this.  And this.  And way too much more.

It's a shame nobody read the Texas Monthly piece I excerpted in this January post (the original at TM is currently offline) that enlightened me about O'Rourke, and led me to the conclusion that I could not ever vote for him.  It's also a shame no journalist has thought to probe a little deeper -- here on the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey -- about why he was one of four Texas Democrats who voted against tax relief for victims of the storm.  His answer to this point has been his usual superficial BS.

But the real burning question for me is: how does Julian Castro feel about being Pipped by Beto?

Beyond that, the TexTrib via Progrexas sees the 'kneeling' comments on the video as maybe not helping Beto too much here in Deep In the Hearta.  They may, sadly, be right about that.

The Weekly Wrangle

The summer heat is on and it's rising in the midterm statewide races.  The Texas Progressive Alliance got the kids off to school and then got back to blogging about the coming elections.

Beto O'Rourke enjoyed a swelling enthusiasm for his effort to unseat Ted Cruz and go to Washington as Texas' new junior US Senator.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected favorable polling and mentions of television and Facebook advertising to revise his prediction to a much closer contest, while Kuff seemed to be feeling a little pessimistic about Beto's chances and speculated on some consolation prizes for Texas Democrats.

The TexTrib's Ross Ramsey has an analysis -- reprinted at Progrexas --  of Greg Abbott's attempt to expand gubernatorial power that would make even Pa and Ma Ferguson, among the most corrupt Texas governors in the state's history, blush.  (With envy, not shame.)  Retiring state legislator Byron Cook warned that the governor's move represented a constitutional overreach, aka power grab.

SocraticGadfly has some fun introducing Lupe Valdez to Aerosmith.

The Dallas Morning News had the best coverage of the Democratic statewides rallying around Texas last week, with the noteworthy development being the "upper-downballot" slate of candidates drafting off of Beto O'Rourke's blue wave machine.

The TSTA Blog sees through Dan Patrick's phony concern about teachers' health insurance premiums.

HuffPo noticed that former Congressman Blake Farenthold is continuing to disgrace himself.

There were many questions raised by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's visit to Houston last week, and the two best were asked in the headlines of articles written by Jeremy Wallace at the Houston Chronicle and Elizabeth Trovall at Houston Public Media.

Grits for Breakfast returned from summer hiatus with a comprehensive criminal justice news aggregation  that included links to stories about worsening wait times at DPS TDL offices, probation tailored for youthful defendants, bail reform, red light cameras, "convict leasing", and a lot more.

With the death by suicide of another Harris County inmate -- and a story by The Appeal about DA Kim Ogg's apparent change of heart on her 'reformer' branding -- The Intercept broadens the question to Democrats generally: why aren't they doing more to help candidates who will practice criminal justice reform instead of just preach it?

Harris County officials were "in over their heads" when they struck deals for contingency fees with lawyers who would be litigating on their behalf against opioid manufacturers, says a Yale professor emeritus of law quoted at Forbes.

The Texas Observer's nine-part series on border water and climate change, "Shallow Waters", has part four posted, about the 15 aquifers shared by the US and Mexico at the Rio Grande border and how little both countries understand about them.

Better Texas Blog can't understand the arguments against paid sick leave.  Austin became the first city in all of the southern US to pass a mandated paid sick leave policy, but Texas Standard quoted a Houston-based law professor predicting that the Lege will get involved after both the capital city and San Antonio approved ordinances enabling the employee benefit, exerting its eminence over "local control" again (as it has done with local anti-fracking laws, plastic bag bans, and so forth).

The ongoing Harris County flood bond election is noted by Save Buffalo Bayou with information about the new projects recently added.

Early voting on the bonds started Aug. 8 and continues through Tuesday, Aug. 21. The election is Saturday, Aug. 25. The $2.5 billion target is widely considered a small down payment on a $20-30 billion county-wide flood resiliency program that should emphasize buyouts, land acquisition and preservation, floodplain restoration and other non-structural approaches.

The list of 237 projects includes 38 projects that were added as a result of community meetings held across Harris County in June, July and August, according to the district website. Note that the list of potential projects is not fixed or obligatory, and citizens should still have opportunities to influence future plans and priorities.

Six additional projects were added through community input to the projects on Buffalo Bayou below Addicks and Barker dams.  (More details at the links.)

The Houston Justice Coalition has a full slate of events and media appearances this week.

The Houston Press reports on a local elementary school that believed starting the year off with a big sign that shamed girls was a good idea, and the Lunch Tray takes issue with a partnership between Houston ISD and Domino's Pizza.

BeyondBones warns of the Bananapocalypse.

And the Rag Blog's Ivan Koop Kuper bid farewell to Bayou City troubadour and the "mayor of Montrose", Don Sanders.

Arlo Guthrie and Don Sanders perform on national television as Houston’s KPFT-FM returns to the air 

after the KKK blew up the Pacifica station’s transmitter. Courtesy Kuper Group Archives.

Sanders was at the forefront of the founding of Houston’s progressive, noncommercial radio station and Pacifica affiliate, KPFT-FM, in 1970 and was an on-air personality in the station’s early days.

This was the very same public station that was bombed off the air, not once but twice. Historically KPFT-FM is the only radio station in the United States that has ever been under attack by right-wing extremists. The transmitter bombing was the handiwork of four members of the Pasadena, Texas Klavern of the United Klans of America, Inc. aka the Ku Klux Klan. However only one Klan suspect, Grand Wizard Jimmy Dale Hutto, age 24, was formally indicted and served time for the offenses.

Sunday Funnies

Why did Nancy Pelosi avoid two of the hottest 

Texas Congressional races during her Houston visit last week?

Though Aretha Franklin wasn't the first person to record "Respect," her 1967 rendition is by far the best known and most revered. That year is important to mention because it was after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the year of the U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia and the year leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It was right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and the movement for gender equality.

In her 1998 autobiography, Franklin said the song was "the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect. ... The song took on monumental significance."

DNC 2020

There's a (neoliberal) party goin' on right here this morning.

From everything that's been happening recently, I do not get the impression that when Bernie Sanders comes to town to accept the party's nomination two summers from now, he will be wildly greeted by the party's local centrists.

As he refuses the Democratic nomination in his home state that he won last night. Please go away already and let your supporters carry the torch forward. https://t.co/qJrQ1BEZVH

— Erik Vidor (@ErikVidor) August 15, 2018

Alex Wukman at Free Press Houston isn't a fan of the city hosting, regurgitating the same tired historical reasons about why Texas isn't a blue state.  Not really a good excuse.

I'd be cool with the Donks coming to town, Bernie or Biden or some other being crowned.  It's an open question as to whether the nationals would credential me as media; you may recall the state party cut those out for blogs this year in Fort Worth.  Ted argued with them until he got one, but I wouldn't have bothered.  It would not stop me from covering the convention.  The problem would be all of the lazy, half-ass, intermittent local and state sycophant bloggers who would suddenly want to fanboi and -girl their way in, squeezing out someone who writes critically of the party.  Like I said, wouldn't stop me from being there and writing about it.

So best of luck to the Chamber of Commerce and I hope all of the Blue Dogs' dreams get dashed.

Update: This list is about the farthest thing from 'definitive' I have ever seen.  Positively hideous.  Cillizza is always this dumb, but Harry Enten has no excuse.

I bet you could name 1-5 in the left column and #6, top right, but can you name #7 without clicking the link?  I could not.

Hot Texas takes about Beto, Pelosi, and Stormy's attorney

-- The blue worm is turning for Bob.

Holy shit, @civiqs now has @BetoORourke taking the smallest lead over Ted Cruz. pic.twitter.com/hZCrHkOQ0k

— Markos Moulitsas (@markos) August 13, 2018

Yes, one point.  Yes, kos getting all giddy.  Go ahead and read the replies for a sense of what's happening on the ground, and try to ignore the consultants, wannabe consultants, and associated "Ahmanexpurt" pundificating.

(I'm surprised Kuffner is so slow on this.  Just the other day he said he wasn't buying that the race was close and that he'd need to see a poll with O'Rourke in the lead.  He should eventually resemble some eagerness once he finishes with campaign finance reports, I guess.  I have to say it again: that blog is a shell of its former small-handed, pear-shaped, obsessive-compulsive, number-nerdy self.  Which is to say it is still all of those things, just completely unreadable now.)

Texas Democrats fell in love with Bob early on, and are now so frenzied with Betomania they're about to leave a wet spot on their chairs.  Yes, that is as disgusting as it sounds.

He's rolling out positive TV ads, he's already spending more on Facebook than anyone except Trump, and the debates are coming.  The race will be much closer than I thought just a few weeks ago.

-- Nancy Pelosi is in town again today, with SJL and Congresswoman-in-waiting Sylvia Garcia.

Pelosi and Jackson Lee will participate in an event organized by Jackson Lee called the Mom’s Summit. That event starts at 10 a.m. at the Houston Community College central campus at 1300 Holman Street. Later, Pelosi attends a town hall meeting with Garcia’s campaign that is focused on immigration, gun violence and health care. That event is at 2 p.m. at Talento Bilingue, 333 S. Jensen Drive, Houston.

Keep an eye out for other local Congressional hopefuls who might be in attendance, like Dayna Steele, Mike Seigel, and Sri Preston Kulkarni.  These are the Dems who have presented themselves as progressives, and could be more likely to join the 50 others (including 9 incumbents, list here) who say they will not support Pelosi for Speaker should the Ds take back the House.

On the other hand, expect to see Blue Dogs like Todd Litton and incumbent Al Green.  Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, in avoiding giving John Culberson a cudgel to hit her with, refuses to say whether or not she will support Pelosi; so do Texas Democrats Colin Allred, Adrienne Bell, Gina Ortiz Jones, and MJ Hegar.  Steven David (the sacrificial lamb for House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady), who desperately needs some publicity of any kind, ought to show up.

There will be a ton of local candidates, judicials, and perhaps a few statewides as well.  Attendance and the Tweeting of photos can be inferred as endorsements.  "Make of that what you will."

Update: No noteworthy sight-ems.  This, though.

While Pelosi had no public events with Fletcher or Democrat Todd Litton, who is running in the 2nd Congressional District in northern and northeastern Harris County, she cited them as two of the best chances Democrats have of picking up Republican-held seats around Houston in the November elections.

Republican Congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw, who is running against Litton, said he has no worries about Pelosi coming in to help his opponent, to whom she contributed $7,000 earlier this year. Litton previously picked up campaign donations from Pelosi, the California Democrat who hopes to become Speaker of the House again in 2019 if Democrats win back control of the U.S. House. Crenshaw said instead of being worried about Pelosi’s influence, he’s hoping it will fire up his supporters.

-- Last, Michael Avenatti, better known as Stormy Daniels' lawyer, was in H-Town yesterday.

Celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti, who gained national fame for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, appeared in a Houston immigration court Tuesday to reunify a 9-year-old immigrant boy with his mother, who had been deported to Guatemala.

The attorney and cable TV fixture visited early-voting Iowa over the weekend after announcing a potential presidential bid. In Houston, he urged the goverment to immediately release Anthony Tobar Ortiz so that he could return to Central America with Avenatti that same day.

A lot more about the child's case he argued at the link.  I join the opinion that the mainstream media is doing the same favor for Avenatti that they did for Trump about four years ago.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance again took a break from the most rabid Washington-related political news -- no Manafort, no Rudy, no Omarosa, no Kellyanne, thanks -- and focused on environmental, educational, and social issues occupying the public domain over the past week.

David Collins has some post-Midwestern primary election thoughts, which included a measured response to the now-weekly unhinged rants of centrist Democrats blaming the Green Party for having the temerity to allow the sun to rise too early while simultaneously turning off their snooze alarms.

Your link is dated March 13, 2018, three months before the MT primary in June. The GOP-as-Green was defeated in the GP primary on June 5 by Steve Kelley ... who was declared ineligible for the fall ballot by a federal judge in July. https://t.co/visOIjdm1g #VerifyYourScapeGoats

— PDiddie (@PDiddie) August 12, 2018

Meanwhile the DNC quietly (but almost unanimously) aborted their two-month-old moratorium on accepting PAC money from fossil fuel companies, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs learned that a brand-new DNC member from Houston was probably instrumental in the move.

Reality-based Texas blogs addressed the worsening climate crisis before the DNC sold out.

Texas Vox described how cities in Texas -- beyond Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and hopefully Dallas soon -- can craft a 'Paris-friendly' climate action plan.

Downwinders at Risk advanced the hearing with the Dallas city council's Quality of Life committee on August 27th, with the current challenge being that city officials do not think that the public can "handle the truth" about air pollution in the Metroplex.

DeSmogBlog detailed how the fracking industry is cannibalizing themselves, setting up the next bust cycle via overuse of horizontal drilling, using the film There Will Be Blood's milkshake analogy to describe how it is happening.

Millard Fillmore's Bathtub recalls the days when DDT was sprayed from airplanes in order to prevent the spread of polio.

In more recent poisonous aerosol applications by misguided public officials, the Texas Observer documented Sid Miller's crawfishing on cattle spray boxes.  (Just go read it.  Really.)

Depiction inaccurate; his head is up the other end.

The Culture Wars, in the diminutive form of beleaguered Attorney General Jeff Sessions, came to Houston and promptly ate too much Mexican food, upsetting the delicate constitution of the city's liberals and conservatives.

Houston Mexican restaurant faces backlash after bragging about hosting Jeff Sessions for dinner https://t.co/7rrry44bCc #HouNews #BoycottElTiempo

— PDiddie (@PDiddie) August 11, 2018

El Jefe at the Beauty Shop also recapped the El Tiempo debacle.

UPDATE: Pro-level trolling by Montrose Tex-Mex competitor El Real, via Eater Houston.

Dallas city council member Dwain Caraway resigned after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges.  The Dallas Observer compiled a few of his greatest hits, including his contribution to the QAnon controversy.

With the midterm elections looming, voter registration among millennials is surging -- just not in Texas, says the San Antonio Current.

"Texas seems to be moving backward in comparison to the rest of the country," said Zenen Jaimes Perez, communications director for the Texas Civil Rights Project. "This state, unfortunately, is becoming an outlier. … Very clearly, it’s motivated by state’s top leaders wanting to keep the same people in power."

As schools get set to open, the Texas Tribune takes note of students in Port Arthur who are still living a Harvey PTSD moment.

Texas Standard brings home the report card on Texas schools in the RGV earning an A, which defies the conventional wisdom about poverty and achievement.

In the wake of this past weekend's "Unite the Right 2" march, Jef Rouner at Free Press Houston believes that Houston should be preparing for its own white supremacist rally.

SocraticGadfly wants to know more about all the alleged Texas atheists the Lyceum poll on the Cruz-O'Rourke Senate race said the state had.

In a promising Texas media development, the Rivard Report has relocated its San Antonio offices, tripling the square footage, adding to staff and making conference space available for meetings with government officials and community leaders.

Harry Hamid has another edition of the Saint Christopher Chronicles, begun week before last and continuing with 'Breakfast with Buck'.

Carlos Sanchez at Texas Monthly eulogizes the liberal lion of the Texas Senate, A.R. "Babe" Schwartz.  He was an avid environmentalist and a civil rights advocate -- especially desegregation -- at a time when that was not a popular position.  He also pushed for open government, education, and state services for the mentally challenged.

And the biggest music news last week was rapper Travis Scott dropping 'Astroworld' and scheduling a new jam fest in H-Town in November.