The Weekly Wrangle

It's Monday and it's time for another Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is sick of cronies running our cities our state and our country!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson on more GOP shenanigans: Republicans, hypocrisy, the stimulus, and more Carter "nuttiness".

Off the Kuff notes that as Texas' unemployment rate continues to rise, we are now in the position of having to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to fulfill our unemployment insurance obligations. Heckuva job, Governor Perry!

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has posted a A How to Guide for Illegal Immigrants to Vote in Texas Elections.

Xanthippas takes on more disability-as-diversity nonsense. Also, on a side note, his blog Three Wise Men's 5th anniversary is this Tuesday. We'll be putting up a special post in commemoration.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at how the NTTA will be raising rates because volume is down. So much for supply and demand theory.

This week, an old author returns to McBlogger with a true story about dogs. Completely unrelated to politics and nothing but funny.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a video of him reciting the words of the 1848 Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" as a ship passes behind him on Galveston island. Coming up this week at Texas Liberal will be a video shot at the San Jacinto battlefield.

Upon the arrival of Fashion Week in Austin, Mean Rachel wants to know "Does this city make my butt look hot?"

Citizen Sarah at Texas Vox expresses disappointment, to say the least, that the Public Utility Commission denied Sylvester Turner's petition to protect our most vulnerable from dangerous summer heat.

Teddy at the fourth estate will be able to survive the economic recession and into the new digital age. Left of College Station also reviews the week in headlines.

The Texas Tribune, a new media project headed up by soon-to-be-former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, is an idea that shows lots of promise. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has more details about it.

Just as during the campaign, malicious emails are being sent, especially to the elderly. One paticularly nasty one is entitled: SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS. Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker takes on piece of electronic hit mail and offers some ideas on fighting back in his diary, Healthcare Scare Mail and what You Can Do To Help.

Sunday Funnies

See, it's not "affordable health insurance" that the American people need. It's AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE. Tell your Congress critters that. Especially if they are conservative (Blue Dog or worse).

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009

Another iconic figure of my formative years goes into that good night.

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at his home in New York. He was 92. ...

From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.

He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.

That photo to the right is how I remember him: his hair and sideburns a little longer in the style of the '70's. A little whiter also. I don't remember "the flash from Dallas, apparently official" or his declaration that the Vietnam War was lost. I don't really remember the Apollo missions or the conventions he covered. I just recall that his was the voice of reason and authority in our house. At a time when there was only thirty minutes of national news a day, beginning promptly at 5:30 p.m. Central -- and you had three choices where to get it -- he was 'the gold standard', as longtime producer Don Hewitt has said. He certainly invented the post of broadcast news anchorman, though he referred to himself by a newspaper term, managing editor. (In Sweden, newscasters are actually called Kronkiters.)

Some viewers thought Cronkite was liberal, and they were right. But he wasn't a Democrat. (A personal aside: mine was a Democratic and union household growing up, but my wife's was Cuban-born and Republican. She said her father suspected his political leanings, and thus they were presumably a Huntley-Brinkley home.) Cronkite lived during an era when "liberal" and "conservative" applied to both political parties evenly.

Now, of course, all the thinking conservatives have abandoned the GOP. But I digress.

On Oct. 27, 1972, his 14-minute report on Watergate, followed by an eight-minute segment four days later, “put the Watergate story clearly and substantially before millions of Americans” for the first time, the broadcast historian Marvin Barrett wrote in “Moments of Truth?” (1975).

In 1977, his separate interviews with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel were instrumental in Sadat’s visiting Jerusalem. The countries later signed a peace treaty.

“From his earliest days,” Mr. Halberstam wrote, “he was one of the hungriest reporters around, wildly competitive, no one was going to beat Walter Cronkite on a story, and as he grew older and more successful, the marvel of it was that he never changed, the wild fires still burned.”

Rest in Peace, Uncle Walter.

The Texas Tribune

Reported earlier today by the Quorum and Burnt Orange Reports ...

The longtime editor of Texas Monthly magazine will team with an Austin venture capitalist to form a nonprofit news Web site devoted to government and politics in the Lone Star state.

With a large bankroll, a staff at the outset of about eight journalists, and the cachet of Evan Smith, the Texas Monthly editor, the new venture, called the Texas Tribune, hopes to be an immediate force on the state’s political landscape, much as Politico became two years ago in national politics. Many local news organizations have cut back on statehouse coverage, and the creators of the Texas Tribune plan not only to post news on their own site, but also to supply it to newspapers around the state.

“This is not about horse race politics, primarily,” Mr. Smith, who will have the title of chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s going to be a lot of deep-dive policy stuff. We have the lowest voting turnout in the country. We have a number of major issues that get no attention or insufficient attention by the people we elect.”

The corporate media has reduced coverage of the Lege due to financial hardships -- closed bureaus, senior reporters let go. Though Kuffner, BOR, and Capitol Annex along with my other brother and sister blogs of the Texas Progressive Alliance do a terrific job, we can't cover the beat full-time. And the Texas Observer -- rest in peace, Molly -- has started publishing op-eds from Dan Patrick. Beyond the bite-sized pieces from Paul Burka and Harvey Kronberg, this concept fills a perceptible void. Something with some meat in it, produced by some of the state's recently unemployed journalistic talent, could be a real winner. There's also a very interesting reveal about the money behind it:

The chairman of Texas Tribune is John Thornton, general partner of Austin Ventures, a venture capital firm, who said he has given $1 million to the project and has raised $2.2 million, and plans to raise $4 million from individuals and foundations by the time it begins, possibly in November. Other nonprofit local news sites in places like the Twin Cities, San Diego, St. Louis and Chicago started with significantly less money behind them.

“We want to have at least two years’ runway, even if there’s no additional revenue, and preferably three,” he said.

An active supporter of Texas Democrats, Mr. Thornton, 44, who is based in Austin, said he is giving up partisan politics for the sake of the Texas Tribune. He said the new venture has quietly approached reporters and editors about joining, and that with many journalists unemployed, and others worried that their employers will keep shrinking, “talent ain’t the issue.”

And the climate forecast is improving:

Texas newspapers and people who follow the state’s politics will have to take Texas Tribune seriously, said Rich Oppel, who retired last year as the top editor of the Austin American-Statesman. “I think this is significant,” he said. “Evan Smith has been an excellent editor of Texas Monthly, which may be the best regional magazine in the country. He’s drawn talent.”

The timing plays into what promises to be a fertile period in the state’s politics. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison may challenge Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primary next year, in what political analysts predict would be the hottest race the state has seen in years.

This is a media development worth watching closely.