The Special Weekly Wrangle

As the Texas Legislature is poised to reconvene for its special bathroom session, the Texas Progressive Alliance has the mega-blog post roundup from last week and also wants to know where it can buy one of those "Sunset and Sign, Die" pins.

Off the Kuff highlights a spate of LGBT candidates running for office in the near future.

SocraticGadfly tells any Texas Greens who are thinking of skipping 2018 in working to restore party-line ballot access to stop entertaining such thoughts because next year will be a good opportunity.

Got any Democrats in mind to run for governor in 2018? Drop a line to the TDP if you do, says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

Stace at Dos Centavos watched as the Harris County commissioners pollo'ed out on joining the lawsuit against the anti-sanctuary law.

Grits for Breakfast examines what police reform looks like from the conservative (specifically the representative from Empower Texans) perspective.

Texas Vox posts some of the videos of the Center for Nonprofit Studies at Austin Community College's series of “civil” discussions of the significant social issues Austin is facing, entitled Civil Society.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme notices that the war on immigrants is taking a toll on the shrimping industry.

The Texan Journal reports that a federal judge has denied the request of a Title IX plaintiff for a new trial, after a jury found the Lewisville ISD not guilty.  The case will be appealed to the Fifth Circuit.

jobsanger links to a New Republic piece on Trump and Russia, quoting 'Deep Throat' of Watergate infamy: "Follow the money."

McBlogger laughs at the religious left's attempts to gain relevance.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston thinks we really need a bathroom bill.

Neil at All People Have Value attended the Medicare For All town hall sponsored by the Bernie Sanders/Our Revolution group and also by Houston socialist organizations. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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More Lone Star lefty blog posts and news!

The Rivard Report says it's Greg Abbott's special session and the rest of us are just livin' in it, but San Antonio lawmakers have other ideas.

PoliTex reports on Abbott's prolific use of social media, particularly Facebook Live, as he kicked off his re-election campaign last Friday.

Melissa del Bosque at the Texas Observer has the story on Trump's southern border wall already taking shape, running through an environmentally sensitive South Texas wildlife refuge.

Better Texas Blog keeps digging into how bad Trumpcare would be for our state.

Juanita Jean has some fun with a Republican neighbor.

Paradise in Hell wonders what town hall meetings Ted Cruz goes to, and High Plains Blogger sees "Lyin' Ted", of 2016 GOP primary fame, making a comeback.

DBC Green Blog previewed CD-36 Green Congressional candidate Hal Ridley Jr.'s event in Clear Lake over the past weekend.

Chris Ladd at Political Orphans is here to remind us, as a former 'GOPLifer', that Democrats are not going to save us from Trump and extremist Republicans. 

Michael Li demonstrates how easy it is to draw minority opportunity districts in Deep-In-The-Hearta, and Gabriella Dunn at Burkablog documents the many requests for Texas voter data.

Somervell County Salon carefully documents a recent appellate court case in North Carolina that found that county commissioners cannot say a prayer before their meetings.

Ashton P. Woods at Strength !n Numbers asks: is loving a black man a revolutionary act?

And Harry Hamid retells a children's tale as "Gabble, Rabble, and Ross".

Sunday Funnies

The Chronic cans their best asset

Nick Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist at the Houston Chronicle, must update his resume' to 'formerly' at the Houston Chronicle.



Always the class act, here are his parting words:

I have an unfortunate announcement: Today is my last day at The Houston Chronicle. My position was eliminated. Much has been written about the reduction of staff editorial cartoonists at newspapers (along with print journalists in general) and today, the odds caught up with me. Ironically, thanks to social media, my cartoons are seen more widely than ever.

One cartoon I posted during the heat of the presidential election campaign last year was shared around 550,000 times on Facebook alone, and those were just the ones I could track. I was at a wedding in New York around that time. The woman sitting next to me asked me what I did for a living. I told her, and she said, "Oh, I saw your cartoon on Facebook today." She pulled out her phone and there it was. Thanks to the internet and social media, the reach of editorial cartoons has never been greater.

While the internet and social media help spread my work widely, they also have made it harder for anyone in the news business to make a living. I was able to drive significant traffic to my employer's web site at times, but not on the same scale as the Facebook traffic. And traffic alone isn't enough anymore. Newspapers are moving to a subscriber/paywall model. Unfortunately, the powers that be decided a full-time cartoonist was not going to be a part of that model.

I've had a good run, and I'm grateful to been a political cartoonist for so long. I've been extremely fortunate in my professional career. I really want to thank my readers for their encouragement, comments, and feedback. Even the insults and disagreements have been appreciated.

But you're not rid of me yet. I'm still syndicated with The Washington Post Writers Group. I’ll continue to draw 3 to 4 cartoons a week for the foreseeable future and, hopefully, for many years to come. Meanwhile, please feel free to let me know of any opportunities that you think would be a good fit, inside or outside of journalism.

One last note: I called our Human Resources department earlier this year to see about getting more vacation time -- be careful what you wish for...

As you may know, the Chronic is owned by Hearst, which long ago employed yours truly as an advertising executive.  I prepared budgets for three of their smaller newspapers at a time (mid- to late Eighties) when they were running profit margins between 30 and 40%.  Newspapers don't make that kind of money any more, but they don't lose money unless they're going head-to-head in a single market, which is how joint operating agreements came into being back in my day and before.  Even those legal and political machinations don't make enough cash for their corporate overlords any longer, and many of the weaker papers have died or gone paperless, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which Hearst also owns).

The Chronic has laid off staff a few times over the past ten years, sold their downtown office for its high real estate value, watched costly talent like Ken Hoffman bail out for objecting to the paywall model, and now has eliminated the last reason for reading that newspaper.  Truly the best thing they had going, in their last-gasp quest to maintain what is probably only a 10 or 15% profit margin.  Their Austin/Lege coverage has face-planted, their DC bureau is invisible; it's like they've given up on reporting in exchange for photo slideshows on the free site.  I find it embarrassing to have watched the paper fall so far as the result of the decisions made by their consistently weak and excessively staffed management.  There's at least three times the number of managers that there was thirty years ago.  For what?  To do what?  Drive the business further into the ground?

Positively disgraceful.  My subscription has already been canceled.  Nick Anderson will be just fine, but the Houston Chronicle is sinking faster than Hillary Clinton's poll numbers on the day before Election Day.

Starring Sylvester Turner as Donald Trump

And several of the Democrats on city council as Republicans (you pick which ones) in Congress.

Karun Sreerama (l), Chris Oliver (r)

Houston's public works director will vacate his post temporarily following revelations that he made unlawful payments to a Houston Community College trustee now awaiting sentencing on a federal bribery charge.

Karun Sreerama paid $77,143 to longtime HCC trustee Chris Oliver in three installments between late 2010 and mid-2013, when Sreerama owned a private engineering firm. Federal authorities say Oliver was leveraging his power to influence the awarding of HCC business contracts.

Wait for it ...

Mayor Sylvester Turner said (on July 12) he was unaware of the criminal case or Sreerama's involvement prior to this week. Turner added that he spoke with the public works director during a "brief telephone call" before placing him on paid administrative leave.

"I am taking this action so that I may thoroughly review the information to make sure there are no further related implications for the city and him," Turner said in a written statement. "It is against everyone's best interest for a public servant to have to operate under a cloud."

The mayor, who is traveling in Europe on city business, added, "I continue to have confidence in Karun and look forward to his return."

Wait for it ...

City Council members widely praised the mayor's decision to place Sreerama on leave, but largely were reticent to say whether they thought he ought to remain as director of the city's largest department, with a $2.1 billion budget.

"At this time, I can't say one way or the other," said Councilman Larry Green, who chairs the council committee that reviews public works issues.

Wait ... for ... it ...

Over the years, Sreerama has been a prolific political donor, predominantly to Democrats, and was a key supporter of Turner's 2015 mayoral bid. His family contributed a combined $20,000 to Turner's runoff campaign. He also has contributed to the campaigns of seven of the 16 sitting council members: Green, Ellen Cohen, Amanda Edwards, Brenda Stardig (a Republican), David Robinson, Jack Christie (also a Republican), and Jerry Davis.

Oliver has been reprimanded (!!!) by his colleagues on the community college board, but further action such as removal from office awaits ... something more serious and external than his pleading guilty to felony bribery charges, I suppose.  Sentencing, perhaps?  Sreerama awaits Turner's return from Europe for additional judgement, if any.  The mayor pro tem doesn't think it's a big deal.

Cohen said she could see Sreerama resuming his leadership role with the city.

"As far as I'm concerned with the information I have to date, I believe that he's in a position, once everything is discussed, to continue to do a credible job," Cohen said.

No.  Just no.  Even Marc Campos gets it, and he can't find his asshole without using a mirror.  Oliver should have been gone long ago, and Sreerama should follow him right out the door, along with his firm being barred from receiving further municipal contracts for an extended period of time.

It's almost as if these people know they're not going to be standing for re-election for a long time -- if ever again -- and are grabbing all the money they can, with both hands, while the grabbing's good.

Now do you understand why Houston's Democrats strike me as the kind of thing we used to refer to as moderate Republicans?