Monday, June 29, 2020

The Weekly EV Wrangle


The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes that worsening virus statistics as a result of the striking ineptitude on the part of our elected officials were not -- again -- topic de jour for the roundup of blog posts and Tweets and news from around and about Deep-In-The-Hearta ... but it is what it is.


Circumstances took a dramatic turn for the worse last week.


And our so-called leaders continue to lie about it.


The most damaging reveal came from the doctors at the Texas Medical Center.


(Gov. Greg) Abbott had expressed displeasure to hospital executives with negative headlines about ICU capacity, sources familiar with the talks said. Abbott spokesman John Wittman said any insinuation that the governor suggested the executives publish less data is false.

It's not just the state's largest cities that are overwhelmed.


Far west Texas is simply not a place you want to be if you need medical care.


The Chron's Zach Despart also reports that Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is in self-quarantine after being exposed to the coronavirus by a staffer who tested positive.

Moving on to election news, you can go vote this week (if you're feeling lucky).


Willie Nelson and several other special Lone Star guests are raising cash for Joe Biden in a virtual concert later today.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs sees Biden sleepwalking to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in his latest White House Update.  G. Elliott Morris threw some cold water on the positive polling for Biden in Texas. (*ahem* a little ahead of you, dude.)


Kuff blogged about the latest state polls, and SocraticGadfly looked at Howie Hawkins clinching the Green Party nomination and the various haters who still don't like it or him.  With respect to runoff election developments, Grits for Breakfast points out that Rep. Eddie Rodriguez has a tall hill to climb against his SD-14 opponent, former Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt, in overcoming his missing vote on the Sandra Bland bill when he was in the Lege.


In H-Town, the most recent city council meeting was flooded with peaceful protests to the city's law enforcement reform initiatives.


DosCentavos is not a fan of the latest attempt at police reform by committee.  Transform Houston outlines their objections to Sylvester Turner's task force on cop reform.  And Mario Bravo at the San Antonio-based Rivard Report calls on elected officials to lead.  And almost a month after the Dallas PD attacked BLM protesters in that city, the rallies go on.



For the past 27 days, dozens of protesters have gathered at City Hall and marched through the streets of downtown and Uptown in a show of solidarity against police violence and systemic racism. Yesterday evening was no different. Nor was the evening before that.

This Monday marked three weeks since we last saw police become violent toward the protesters, when they kettled and detained 674 peaceful marchers on the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge after they shot smoke or tear gas—that’s still unclear—and fired “less lethal” munitions at them.


Democracy Now! interviewed Brandon Saenz, the Dallas protester who lost an eye after DPD shot him with one of those “less lethal” projectiles.  Grits has a lot more from Space City and Big D and also Austin, plus a police union's bitching about working the protests, ridding our schools of cops, and #BlueLeaks in his lengthy CJ round-up.

There's much more Wrangled, including some important environmental developments -- look for another post this week -- but we'll stop here for now with a couple of lighter pieces.

Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Observer, will have a column in D Magazine.

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Sunday, June 28, 2020

Sunday "Electoral Distancing" Funnies


Government refuses to say which businesses received over $500 billion in coronavirus bailout loans
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Friday, June 26, 2020

Race for the White House Update: Sleepwalking to 1600 Pennsylvania


Go back to sleep, Joe.  We'll call you.


The waiting is the hardest part

The Democratic National Convention Committee announced Wednesday that the "Convention Across America" will be "anchored in Milwaukee," moved from the arena where the Bucks play to a smaller convention center downtown.

"[S]tate delegations should not plan to travel to Milwaukee and should plan to conduct their official convention business remotely," the DNCC said.

There goes my yellow-vested vacation in Wisconsin.  They're blaming the plague, but it's a convenient excuse to avoid a historical repeat of what happened in Chicago in 1968: "the police are there to preserve disorder".

As with every other moment this cycle has produced for him, Biden went soft on cop reform.


And the climate again.


The vast majority of the uncritically thinking electorate cares nothing about what he says or does; he's not Trump, and that's all that matters.

Is that really going to be enough in the fall?

Before you declare Biden the winner, remember his lead is not insurmountable. Polls closer to November could very well show a race that is tightening. At this point in the 1988 cycle, Michael Dukakis led nationally by almost 5 points, and in 2000, George W. Bush was up by nearly 8 points. But Dukakis ended up losing by nearly 8 points in November while Bush narrowly lost the popular vote. 

Frontloading HQ appears to be doing an Electoral College update on a daily basis now, so I'll dispense with mine for the foreseeable future, unless I think there's reason enough for my insights to be worth contrasting to the statewide polling, moving averages, yadda yadda.

That leaves the veepstakes as the only parlor game left to play.  Perry Bacon at 538 has the exhaustive compendium, but it seems to me the choice among the four reported finalists is already down to Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.  And while some (mostly white) people think Warren has a good case electorally, I just don't see that happening.

Biden could pick a Black woman he feels more comfortable with -- bad pun on Carville intended -- but Kamala is going as hard after the job as she can.  It's actually kind of shameful.


In any other year, this pandering might be considered ridiculous and awful by a vast majority of the American electorate.  Not in 2020, though.

-- Trump had another really bad week, beginning in Tulsa last Saturday.


Click to the Tweet thread if the WSJ isn't letting you jump the paywall.  The Supreme Court slapped him around a bit, too.  Probably don't need to mention the polling again.  He was, remarkably, back to his bubbly old self last night with Sean Hannity.


Nice haircut.  Next time have them take some off the top.

-- Howie Hawkins will be the Green Party's nominee.


The Greens' national meeting and presidential nominating convention, also virtual in a few weeks, will give you the opportunity to find out what they're all about.


Bernie Sanders was the compromise.

 
-- Mark Charles' independent campaign remains low-profile but is gathering momentum.


-- Last, WikiNews via Indy Poli Report has interview transcripts with the Constitution (William Mohr), Libertarian (Spike Cohen), and Green (Angela Walker) vice-presidential nominees.
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Monday, June 22, 2020

TexProgBlog Wrangle II: BLM, Juneteenth, and the 'rona


This edition begins with the latest on the societal upheavals produced by the COVID19 pandemic, and the realization that the police aren't exactly serving and protecting Americans unless they have a noticeable lack of skin pigmentation.

Last week, and as posted earlier today, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff deciphered Governor Greg Abbott's puzzle about requiring masks in the state's local jurisdictions.  Wolff quickly ordered San Antonio and surrounding communities' businesses to command the wearing of face coverings in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.  Other Texas metros followed suit.


Greg Abbott's presser this afternoon wasn't quite a Category 5 disaster, but he earns a 4 on the basis of continued weak leadership.


At least he didn't say we should be cutting back on testing.  That may be happening anyway.


Here's some news for those who may need it.


Making the segue with these next Tweets:


Perhaps it's best to begin this round-up of the most recent police brutality and abuse developments back where it all began: H-Town.


The depth and scope of HPD Chief Art Acevedo's -- and by extension, Mayor Sylvester Turner's -- problems in this regard have not yet seen the full light of day.


The cases of Chavez and the Harding Street raid, which claimed two lives, begin to converge as the various investigations keep pulling on different strings.  This next Tweet from Keri Blakinger below drops you into the middle of a thread, so if you want the backstory that has transpired over the past few months, links in surrounding Tweets will take you to it.


Recall that Mayor Turner's response to calls for defunding HPD took him in the opposite direction, and that his only gesture to date has been a decree forbidding chokeholds.


"Chokeholds outlawed; problem solved!".  Wanna take another shot, Mr. Mayor or nah?


Turner would rather stand -- or sit -- with Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.


Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast, whose writing has led the efforts for actual, accountable, law enforcement justice in Texas, has this brief blog post from this Saturday past.

Viewed broadly, America finds itself essentially at the bottom of a thirty-year crime decline. But as police have had less crime to respond to, their budgets and staffing have ballooned, reported Politico (last) week.

Police officials routinely tell the public that cutting their budgets would make us less safe. This is true even at agencies that had their budgets increase and saw crime rise.

Indeed, have you ever noticed that, when it comes to police budgets, there's no version of reality that would justify reduced funding?

If crime is going up, we're told we need more officers to address it.

If crime goes down, it's attributed to past budget increases and we're told cutting budgets would reverse progress.

The whole process resembles a self licking ice cream cone. To hear the police chiefs and city managers tell it, there apparently is no situation that justifies applying budget scrutiny to these agencies.

It's of great concern that there has been an outbreak of hangings of men of color lately, most of which have been deemed 'suicide' by investigating police officers.


I. do not. believe. that these men. are lynching. themselves.

Shifting to the history of Juneteenth, long but not widely known in Texas and even less so throughout the rest of the country (read: Caucasian America), the commemoration of the freeing of slaves announced in Galveston 155 years ago -- and two years after the Emancipation Proclamation -- is receiving highlighted emphasis in our national awakening.


Even less is known -- or acknowledged -- about the role of the fabled Texas Rangers in cleansing South Texas of the brown people who lived there before the whites arrived.


DaLyah Jones wrote in the Texas Observer about how much the Black Lives Matter rallies in East Texas meant for those of us who grew up there.


Even as things change, there remains a contingent who resist.


So as I often do here at the end of these posts, here's a couple of items to make us  -- well, me -- feel a little better.

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