How LBJ changed the makeup of the two political parties, and more Friday reading

As the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement ends its commemoration at the LBJ library in Austin, here's a great take on the conflicting legacies of Lyndon Johnson from the Field Negro.

LBJ was a complex fellow, who no doubt, like the Vice President before this current one, did some shaky things to amass wealth, grab power, and gain influence.

Yet still, as president, he presided over our government's effort to take care of the least among us in America. And it was his signature as president on the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. He helped to get those bills passed "against all odds" at a time in this country when it was cool to be a bigot.

"Historian Alan Brinkley has suggested that the most important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the civil rights movement into law."

This is true. And, to his credit, he knew that the passing of The Civil Rights Act would cause the Democratic Party to lose the Southern white vote forever. And it did.

BTW, if it is true that he actually made this statement: "I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years" (which I honestly think is a wingnut version of an urban legend), it actually worked. Because when white Southerners left and joined the Republican party, black folks knew where they weren't wanted. Equal rights for all was something that should have been easy to embrace, but it wasn't simply because of the history of racism in this country. Now the two political parties reflect the racial divide that still exists. 

Read the rest.

-- I'm amused that conservatives are reacting badly to the news that Stephen Colbert will take over The Late Show from David Letterman next year.

While many people responded to the news with pleasure and excitement, right-wing talk-radio king Rush Limbaugh was quick to offer his two cents, saying that Colbert’s hiring was a declaration of war on the American “heartland” by CBS.

And as a perusal of the right-wing Twitter community shows, Limbaugh was hardly the only conservative to greet Colbert’s promotion with anger and dismay. Indeed, the sentiment on the right in response to the news can be summarized like so: Stephen Colbert’s being chosen to succeed David Letterman shows that liberal media bias is real. And, also too, Colbert’s not funny, anyway.

Still not getting the joke.  Still the butt of the joke.  Don't you ever change, cons.

-- Kathleen Sebelius, stepping down as HHS secretary, did manage to accomplish some things in her tenure. Putting up with the daily Republican bullshit for the past five years is a star in a crown all by itself.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision invalidating Obamacare’s compulsory Medicaid expansion, most Republican-controlled states refused to extend health care coverage to residents below 133 percent of the poverty line. But Sebelius traveled the country, urging Republican governors to reconsider. As of today, eight GOP-controlled states have approved expansion — in no small part because of the flexibility Sebelius and her team provided.

To convince political opponents like Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) or Arkansas’ Republican-controlled legislature to adopt one of Obamacare’s most significant coverage provisions, HHS approved alternative proposals that allowed states to use federal funding to cover their low-income uninsured populations with private insurance. Similarly, Sebelius permitted Oklahoma to continue using federal Medicaid dollars to subsidize private health insurance for low-income workers and extended to Indiana a one-year extension of its pilot Medicaid program, which provides coverage for low-income residents. Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder also signed a Medicaid expansion bill into law after receiving a federal waiver for cost-sharing provisions for Medicaid beneficiaries from the federal government.

The flexibility extended beyond Medicaid. Sebelius and her team convinced red states to form partnership health care exchanges in which the federal government and the state would share responsibilities in running the marketplaces. They routinely presented GOP governors with information on all other state models and waivers, assuring them that they could customize reform to their specific state needs. As a result, several Republican-dominated states bucked the national party and chose to run their exchanges either on their own, or in collaboration with HHS.

The solutions became politically tenable to Republican lawmakers because they could claim that they were covering their residents on their own terms, using unique state-tailored solutions that rejected the “one-size-fits all” prescription of Obamacare. Sebelius’ policy flexibility provided conservatives with enough political cover to implement key parts of the law.

She worked her ass off.  Hats off.

-- With all the feuding among the members of KISS leading up to last night's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, the reunion itself was pleasant, even kind.

But absent the performances even in tribute to the masked/unmasked rockers, it was Nirvana that stole the show.

Almost exactly 20 years has passed since Nirvana singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain took his life, and Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl (now the frontman for the Foo Fighters) haven't played Cobain's songs together in all that time.

[...]

The band was introduced by (R.E.M.'s Michael) Stipe, who delivered an eloquent speech that addressed the power and historical importance of the band as part of a counterculture that somehow became mainstream. "Nirvana tapped into a voice that was yearning to be heard," he said. "In the '80s and early '90s, the idea of a hopeful, democratic country had practically been dismantled by Iran Contra, by AIDS, by the Reagan, Bush Sr. administrations. With their music and their attitudes, Nirvana blasted through all that with crystalline, nuclear rage and fury. Nirvana were kicking against the system to show a sweet and beautiful, but fed-up fury coupled with howling vulnerability. They spoke truth, and a lot of people listened. They were singular and loud and melodic and deeply original. And that voice… That voice. Kurt, we miss you."

Peter Gabriel, Linda Ronstadt, the E Street Band, Cat Stevens, and Hall & Oates went into the HoF also.  The (hopefully edited) five-hour ceremony will air on HBO on May 31.

Greg Abbott showing up on milk cartons, but nowhere else

Thanks to John Coby for that. And the Lone Star Project for this.

Why is Greg Abbott avoiding the media and canceling appearances?

Every campaign has occasional scheduling problems. Sometimes events or appearances have to be cancelled for a variety of legitimate reasons.

But over the last several weeks, Greg Abbott has cancelled a number of events and has rarely taken press questions at the events he does attend. Clearly something is going on inside the Abbott campaign that’s affecting his willingness to appear in public or personally answer questions from the press.

-- Abbott has refused to meet with editorial boards both during and since the Texas primary.

-- Abbott spent more than three weeks (March 6 – 29) without any public events.
During this period (March 9 – 24) he refused to personally answer any questions on equal pay, even questions regarding salaries within his own AG office.

-- Abbott canceled an April 4th scheduled and publicized address to the Texas Renewal Project, an organization of Christian pastors (I posted about this conference here).

-- Abbott declined an April 5th opportunity to address the Texas AP Managing Editors Association in Padre Island.

-- Abbott’s campaign scheduled an April 7th press conference and Abbott simply failed to appear, not even bothering to send the press a cancellation notice.

It would be easy to imply, and reasonable to assume, that Abbott's campaign is wilting under pressure – especially the ongoing bad press over his bungling of the equal pay issue and his disastrous education policy rollout.

If it is something else – campaign personnel changes, pressing official business or a family issue – then Abbott needs to be forthright and explain in some detail.

If something is seriously wrong, Greg Abbott should say so, and everyone will know what to expect going forward. 

Greg Abbott is running a Steve Stockman-styled campaign at this point.  And we all know how well that turned out for Stockman.  Abbott came out of his self-imposed lockdown long enough to challenge Wendy Davis to appear in Austin today at the Civil Rights Summit with Obama.  She's going to be there.

So where is Greg Abbott hiding?  And more importantly... why is he hiding?  I mean, we all know what he is hiding (his association with undesirable supporters and the poor judgment it reflects).  But why is he afraid to be asked about it?  Why won't he stand up for what he believes?

Oops, sorry. That was insensitive.

Houston's proposed NDO making a cool spring warm

Lone Star Q and Texpate and Texas Leftist are leading the reporting on this development, and I will cede future breakers to them.  But it's clear that while the vote won't come until May, April is going to be excessively warm for a handful of wishy-washy council members.

Reposting my last update...

CM Bradford called shortly after 9 a.m. (on 4/9) to say essentially the same thing he told Noah at Texpate and John Wright at LSQ; he is supportive but wants to see what the ordinance says (it is still being drafted by the mayor's office).  No callback yet from Larry Green -- my district council member, by the way -- nor Kubosh.

And from the TL link in the first graf...

Even with this cautious response from a staff member, sources close to Texas Leftist say that Council Member Kubosh would be likely to support a Non-Discrimination Ordinance that extends to private employment. Said source worked with Kubosh on this issue prior to his election to City Council, and have spoken with him recently as well. 

Finally there's Kuff, this morning.

It’s not inconsistent for a Council member to say they support the principle and the idea of the ordinance, but they want to see what it actually says before they can confirm they’ll vote for it.

Nonetheless, everyone listed above is on record saying they would “vote in favor of a non-discrimination ordinance, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in employment, housing, and public accommodation”, and they will be expected to do exactly that. If they want to make arguments about making it stronger, that’s fine. That list above is more than enough to pass the ordinance, so there should be no waffling, no fretting about vote counts, and especially no fear of a backlash. When the time comes, everyone needs to keep their promises. Now would be an excellent time to call your Council members and let them know you look forward to seeing their vote for this NDO.

A couple of things...

1. It may not be inconsistent, but it certainly is cagey.

2. I'm not a fan of the HGLBT Caucus constantly pushing their weight around, but they have a righteous beef in this case.  If a council member says one thing to them and then does something else -- like Jackass Christie, for example -- there should be a political cost extracted for prevaricating like that.

3. Mayor Parker remains publicly uncommitted to including private sector protections in the ordinance.  This is her established pattern, but she's in for her own little world of hurt if she is too cautious here.

4. The reason there is so much waffling on a human rights ordinance by so many of our local policy-makers is because the conservatives at city hall -- Republicans, Democrats, black and white -- are getting pressured by the pastors.

As referenced yesterday, the preachers are terrified that Houston might be the next place Hell's fire and brimstone erupts.  They are determined to push back against the Sodomites, and are busily exercising their First Amendment rights to those council members riding the fence... just as the voices of tolerance are.

I'm sure Dr. Steven Hotze will weigh in at any moment.  He's finally getting the national attention he so richly deserves.  (Remember: even Big Jolly calls him the "crazy uncle".   That first link just bowled me over, if you recall.)  This would be a jihad for he and his minions.

So, as Charles K suggests, now is the time for those who have an opinion on this matter to express it to your CMs.  And to keep doing that for the next month.  This includes making sure Mayor Parker writes the ordinance so that it includes private-sector employee, housing, and service-oriented business protections (such as prohibiting restaurants, etc. from refusing to serve homosexual customers on religious grounds, for example).

I feel the warm weather already.  Don't you?

The moral apocalypse is nigh, according to Mike Huckabee and Texas pastors

The Texas Renewal Project, a conclave of the state's evangelical pastors, is increasingly fearful that the fire and brimstone of Hell is welling up (again) to swallow us all.  They gathered in Austin last weekend to quake and exclaim, and Chris Hooks went to observe.

Hundreds of pastors have traveled from all over Texas to the conference, which, according to the invitation penned by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, aims to address the fact that ”our Judeo-Christian heritage is under attack by a force that is more destructive than any threat America has faced in decades.” There are speakers, and information sessions ...

The message on offer is grim and fearful. This is a room full of people that are falling out of love with their country. It used to be a place that held promise for them and their cohort. But it’s changed, dramatically and for the worse, and the pastors don’t know if they can get it back in time.

The night’s speakers give them no comfort. There’s former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts, who tells diners that America is “not great enough that we can shake our fist in the face of a holy god and expect to get away with it.”

You really should go read the whole thing.  More:

“We can’t just go to church on Sunday and pay our tithe and leave it up to Washington. Washington is a Babylonian system,” says Watts. (According to Revelation 17:5, Babylon is the “the mother of harlots and of the abominations in the earth.”)

Babylon’s enforcement arm is the Internal Revenue Service, which Matthew Staver rose to speak on. Staver, the dean of the Liberty University School of Law, took time to reassure the pastors on one point: The IRS is impotent. There are strictures on tax-exempt churches engaging in political activity, but you can easily work within them. And if you break them outright, it doesn’t matter. “The IRS doesn’t have any teeth in this,” he said. [...]

Religious leaders encouraging the breaking of our nation's laws?  And they worry about the moral failings of others?  I wonder how they feel about undocumented immigration.  Probably not as forgiving as Jeb Bush.  Anyway...

It’s your duty, he told the pastors, to engage in political activity to the maximum extent you are able. Have candidates speak in your church, acknowledge them in sermons, have candidate forums and debates.

“Voting is a prophetic witness to the community,” he said. “No church has ever lost their tax exempt status for lobbying or for political activity. You’ve got to replace the muzzle that the world has placed on you.”

When he shifted to why the muzzle must be removed, things got dark. Staver spoke about legislative restrictions in New Jersey and California on “pray-the-gay-away” counseling services.

“If a minor comes to you and is struggling with same-sex attraction—maybe they were molested by the likes of a monster like Jerry Sandusky—and they have this self-hatred, they want to kill themselves because they have these desires that they don’t want, the desire to act out in the manner that they’ve been acted on,” Staver said, “and they come to a Christian counselor and say, help me, that counselor can’t help that child with those thoughts and behaviors. They have to sanctify that behavior as natural, normal, and good.” The crowd murmured.

Staver stepped back.

“I never thought I would ever say this,” he said.

And I never thought I would ever hear it said.

His trip (to Peru) culminated in another appearance, at a 70,000-seat soccer stadium, packed full with Peruvian Christians. When the first speaker addressed the crowd, Staver said, he carried a stern warning. “Any nation that supports or proposes laws that are contrary to God’s natural created order is cursed and will cease to exist.” Back at the Hyatt, audible gasps. A man in the audience yells “that’s true!”

Staver continued: “Tears began to roll down my eyes, because I began to think about the United States of America—the country that I was born in, that I love.” He added: “What we are doing now is not only destroying this country, but we are working to undermine Christian values in Peru and in countries around the world. This country is doing that. Under our watch! We can no longer be silent.”

Don't miss reading this if you want a glimpse inside the mind of today's Christian conservative Caucasians.  To be clear, there are Republicans who understand history; who for example know that -- once upon a time, not too long ago -- America's Christian fundamentalists were pro-choice.

... (P)olitical conservatives and Protestant evangelicals were relatively warm toward pro-choices causes until the ‘70’s. The nation’s most liberal abortion rights legislation prior to Roe v. Wade was signed into law by California Governor Ronald Reagan. Sen. Barry Goldwater was staunchly pro-choice across his entire career.

In 1971 the Southern Baptist Convention endorsed abortion rights for women in a remarkably bold statement for the time. The Baptists responded to Roe v Wade in 1974 by re-affirming their previous statement in favor of abortion rights.

There's more good reading there at that link.   At this point I would simply say (as someone who has come to the belief that God is a figment of man's imagination) that there's much work to be done just to slow down the spread of this pernicious mythology and its influence on our governance.  And there's a lot of good reading at that link also, depending on how open your mind is.

Barry Goldwater was right.  He would also be excommunicated from today's GOP for heresy, were he still with us.  The problem, as we know, is that the Tea Party (not particularly religious but very libertarian) cares as much about history as it does science.  And even less about hypocrisy.

More developments breaking bad for Texas conservatives

-- Battleground Texas won in court yesterday, and the loser was James O'Keefe.  (He's one of life's losers, as we know, and this is confirmation of that.)

Two special prosecutors have rejected public complaints that Battleground Texas violated election laws while registering voters in San Antonio last year.

Three people had alleged that a Battleground Texas staffer violated state election law by mining voters' personal data. The Democratic group has steadfastly denied the allegation as a fiction from conservative activist James O'Keefe III, who's been criticized for dubious and even criminal tactics.

After reviewing a YouTube video based on hidden-camera recordings from O'Keefe's Project Veritas, the prosecutors — one Democrat, one Republican — described it as “political disinformation.” The lawyers said there was “no applicable criminal offense for the alleged act and insufficient evidence to suggest potential offenses.”

Based on their finding, a state district court judge dismissed the case on Friday, officials confirmed Monday.

My emphasis above.  More from KXAN and Media Matters.

-- UT regent Wallace Hall likely committed impeachable offenses, an investigation by the Texas House of Representatives reveals.

A report summing up a House investigation of embattled University of Texas regent Wallace Hall states Hall possibly violated state and federal laws and may face impeachment for abusing his office, according to a San Antonio Express News report.

The report states Hall exposed private student data, was “manipulating” the legislative investigation and “coercing witnesses,” according to the Express News. You can read the report here.

Hall is, obviously, Rick Perry's appointee.  Nick Anderson had this primer of Hall's crony thuggery last year.  Texans keep getting the government they deserve, not the one they (don't) vote for.

-- Houston's city council appears to be one vote shy of passing Mayor Parker's human rights ordinance.  Lone Star Q...

Parker’s fear, according to reports, is that if the ordinance covers employment in the private sector, it won’t have enough votes to pass the City Council.

The proposed ordinance would prohibit anti-LGBT discrimination in housing and public accommodations. But as currently written, it would only cover municipal employees and city contractors when it comes to employment, leaving out the private sector.

It was Texpatriate's post that revealed the whip count.

As I currently understand it, there are eight supporters of the private employment provision (Annise Parker, Stephen Costello, David Robinson, Jerry Davis, Ellen Cohen, Ed Gonzalez, Robert Gallegos and Mike Laster) and five opponents (Jack Christie, Brenda Stardig, Dave Martin, Richard Nguyen and Oliver Pennington). The remaining four Councilmembers (Michael Kubosh, C.O. Bradford, Dwight Boykins and Larry Green) are somewhere in the middle.

Green, Bradford, and Kubosh got a phone call from me this morning asking where they stand.  I'll update here if and when they respond to my request.  I expect this watered-down version to pass, but it needs to be stronger, as Texas Leftist has noted.

Why can't this first version of the ordinance include private employment? In short, the answer is simple politics. Sources say the Houston ordinance will lose votes on Council if it affects private employers. It's true that any step is a step forward, especially in these times of heightened contention in politics. But if a Council Member wants to allow discrimination to continue, they deserve to be put on record with a vote. Instead of protecting them, Parker and her administration should let them deal with the Progressive community's ire.

Lone Star Q cited both TPA blogs in their report, and also TransGriot.

You know as a native Houstonian I believe it's past time we do so, and have already spoken to Houston City Council twice urging them to pass such an ordinance. 

I'm betting the conservahaters lose this one.  Just wish the mayor would stiffen her spine and fight the good fight, and not settle for these half-loaves.

Update: Lord of Entropy in the comments provides a link that shows that Boykins, Green, Bradford, and Christie all said -- during the HGLBT Caucus candidate screenings last year -- that they would support a non-discrimination ordinance.  (None of the three whom I called this morning have yet returned my call.)

Update (4/9): CM Bradford called shortly after 9 a.m. to say essentially the same thing he told Noah at Texpate and John Wright at LSQ; he is supportive but wants to see what the ordinance says (it is still being drafted by the mayor's office).  No callback yet from Larry Green -- my district council member, by the way -- nor Kubosh.  I'll shoot them an e-mail and see if that gets a response.

-- Last, Greg Abbott loses again in federal court.

By way of an eight-page order [.pdf] issued late last week, U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos has directed the State of Texas to serve the U.S. Department of Justice with documents that relate to the question of whether "state legislators, contrary to their public pronouncements, acted with discriminatory intent in enacting" the Lone Star State's polling place photo ID restriction law.

That law had previously been found to be discriminatory against minority voters in Texas, and thus rejected by both the DoJ and a federal court panel as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. It was then re-enacted by the state of Texas almost immediately after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a central provision of the VRA in the summer of 2013.

As reported by the BRAD BLOG last September, the DoJ and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX) filed separate federal lawsuits (now consolidated into a single case, Veasey v. Perry) in which they allege that the photo ID law enacted by the Texas legislature (SB 14) violates another section of the VRA, Section 2, as well as the U.S. Constitution.

It's mainly the e-mail between legislators they want to look at it.  More from HuffPo.

The United States argued that the emails could be the only existing candid evidence about the purpose of the legislation because Texas Republicans coordinated their talking points on the bill and refused to publicly engage with the concerns of minority legislators. If any of the emails reveal discriminatory intent, the U.S. will still have to argue to get them admitted as evidence during the trial phase of the lawsuit.

Only if the GOP Lege members were stupid enough to make racial comments in their e-mail about the law would this stand a chance of destroying their case.  That's a relatively low standard for them to meet.

Davis presses on education while Abbott hides from media

"Talk by conservative scholar (sic) Murray draws ire at Rice":

A talk at Rice University by libertarian political scientist Charles Murray, whose controversial views have been called racist, drew ire from student organizations Monday, while administrators urged people to gather and protest.

"I really want to pack the auditorium with people who can discredit this white nationalist lunatic," Catherine Clack, associate dean for student life and director of multicultural affairs, wrote in an email to numerous people in the Rice community obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

Much more -- all of it bad for Greg Abbott -- if you can get over the paywall.

Abbott failed to appear at his own press conference yesterday afternoon, probably because of the exploding scandal around his association with Murray.  As with Ted Nugent's remarks, Abbott is forced into running away from the media again (is that insensitive? Should I have typed 'rolling away'?).  Meanwhile Wendy Davis drew a crowd of a couple of hundred for her speech on her education proposal, and a couple of thousand at last night's rally, both here in Houston.

She's right, (the conservatives in) Texas don't seem to have a clue about what's coming.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes President Obama to Texas -- for commemorations that are both happy and sad -- as it brings you this week's roundup of the best lefty blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff analyzes precinct data in Harris County from the Democratic and Republican primary elections.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos learns Greg Abbott has not only invited creeps to advise his campaign, but he has also brought a Tom DeLay-minted crook on board.

Too many Texans who need health insurance are intentionally being kept from getting it. WCNews at Eye on Williamson wants to make sure everyone knows that if you don't have health care in Texas, blame Rick Perry and the Texas GOP.

The social policies of Charles Murray, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified as a white nationalist, serve as inspiration for Greg Abbott's education reform proposal. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is shocked and awed that Abbott is making so many critical mistakes in his gubernatorial campaign.

Texas Democrats haven't claimed a statewide elected office in 20 years, but after a rousing bus tour Texas Leftist is convinced that pharmacist, state senator extraordinaire, and lieutenant governor candidate Leticia Van de Putte has the prescription to change that.

Neil at All People Have Value offers the view that courtesy and a sense of self-worth without a feeling of superiority is a form of resistance in our society. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Kingwood Area Democrat Karen Menke wrote a timely op-ed in the Kingwood Observer about women's rights, reprinted at EgbertoWillies.com.

Texpatriate releases an April Fool's day issue of The Houston New Post.

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

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Texas Redistricting charts the components of population change in twelve Texas counties.

Scott Braddock reports that some legislators are concerned that schools will not have the funds to implement some mandated reforms.

Jason Stanford explains how Texas women can win on equal pay.

Juanita Jean can't help but see the face of Tom DeLay in today's Congress.

Dutch Small celebrated at the wedding reception of Houston Mayor Annise Parker and her wife Kathy Hubbard.

Christopher Hooks tries to pierce the conservative persecution complex that surrounds Republican SD-02 candidate Bob Hall.

M1EK has a simple suggestion for where to locate a rail line.

Sunday Funnies

News that's not breaking

Between the Supreme Court's decision on McCutcheon and the shootings at Ford Hood, a lot of other important developments got drowned out this week.   If you want to read something about those two things, there's plenty elsewhere; you can click away now.  We'll catch up on some lesser news here today.

-- The new CEO of Mozilla was forced out by public protests over his support of the anti-gay marriage initiative in California.  This is another example of the rapid evolution of tolerance in American society, and the haste with which it has happened.  This, and the same evolution of attitudes about marijuana legalization -- not just decriminalization, mind you -- are among the very few things that give me great hope about progressivism in this country.

-- Nate Silver seems to be hearing the critics of his hire of a climate change skeptic for FiveThirtyEight.  But his response is also tepid; he's going to air "both sides" of the issue.  He's already apologizing for the man, and that apology does not include the flawed data that underlie the opinions the man was employed to write.

Silver has growing problems with his "data-driven" analysis model of news outside of polling data.  This summarizes the dilemma.

It's not that Nate revealed himself to be a climate change denier; he accepts that human-caused climate change is real, and that it represents a challenge and potential threat. But he falls victim to a fallacy that has become all too common among those who view the issue through the prism of economics rather than science. Nate conflates problems of prediction in the realm of human behavior -- where there are no fundamental governing 'laws' and any "predictions" are potentially laden with subjective and untestable assumptions -- with problems such as climate change, which are governed by laws of physics, like the greenhouse effect, that are true whether or not you choose to believe them.

In short... Nate Silver has never been so wrong about so much.  An extremely rare, unforced error on his part.  Stick to the polls, Nate.  Or them and baseball.

-- I wonder what new whine the conservatives will be drinking now that Obamacare has served over seven million?  I mean besides "the numbers are skewed".

(Go back to last Sunday's Funnies for the above to have the greatest meaning.)

If Democrats all across the nation do not run on the success of Obamacare -- and the failure of certain states and their governors not to expand Medicaid -- then the chances to overcome their historical disadvantages in midterm elections will be reduced to nil.

This is the issue all Democrats should proudly own.  This is the issue they can win on.

Yeah, kind of in a bad mood today

Because this.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court struck down aggregate limits on campaign donations, offers a novel twist in the conservative contemplation of what Nazis have to do with the way the rich are viewed in America. In January, Tom Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist, worried about a progressive Kristallnacht; Kenneth Langone, the founder of Home Depot, said, of economic populism, “If you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” Roberts, to his credit, avoided claiming the mantle of Hitler’s victims for wealthy campaign donors. He suggests, though, that the rich are, likewise, outcasts: “Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects,” he writes:

If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.

So pick your analogy: when thinking about people who want to donate large sums of money to candidates, should we compare their position to that of the despised and defeated, like the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, in the nineteen-seventies, or of scorned dissidents, like flag-burners, trying to get their voice heard with their lonely donations? 

And this.

The opinion was classic Roberts: professing to make a minor adjustment to the status quo, but carrying the seeds of potential destruction for core legal principles settled for decades. To some, it evoked his decision last year overturning the core of the Voting Rights Act — a ruling that also claimed to toss back to Congress an issue lawmakers have little desire to revisit.

Critics saw the chief justice’s arguments about the leaky nature of current campaign finance rules as cynical and disingenuous, effectively punching yet another gaping hole in the law by citing loopholes his court helped to create or enlarge.

“It’s like the definition of chutzpah: the guy who kills his parents and asks for mercy from the court because he’s an orphan,” said Larry Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice, which favors tighter campaign finance regulation. “Look at what the court has done since 2007 after Roberts came on board, one case after another gradually striking down the laws that are in place and then claiming that, therefore, more has to be done. It’s nonsensical.”

And this.

All of which means, in effect, that the more money flowing through the system the better. Those who, from lack of money, are muted or excluded from the process are simply losers in a fair democratic system.

And also this.

ExxonMobil has 25.2 billion barrels worth of oil and gas in its current reserves, it's going to extract and sell all of it, and isn't expecting any meddling climate regulations to get in the way.

That's the main takeaway of a report the company released this week to its investors, examining the risk that greenhouse gas emissions rules in the US and worldwide might pose to its fossil fuel assets. Exxon made headlines a couple weeks back when it promised to issue the report after facing pressure from shareholders led by Arjuna Capital, a sustainable wealth management firm.

[...]

Exxon's report suggests that its planners don't believe serious carbon limits will be on the books anytime soon, leaving the company free to burn through its reserves of oil and gas. That's a disconcerting vision to come just on the heels of Sunday's new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which predicted a nightmarish future if greenhouse gas emissions aren't slowed soon.

"The reserves are going to be able to turn into money, because they're assuming there isn't going to be a policy change," said Natural Resources Defense Council Director of Climate Programs David Hawkins. "They're definitely saying that no matter how bad it gets, the world's addiction to fossil fuels will be so overwhelming that the governments of the world will just suck it up and let people suffer."

And last, this.

It's hard out there for the 1 percent.

Okay, that's not true at all. But they think it is. If you talk to people on Wall Street, most of them—even, in my experience, the ones shopping for Lamborghinis—will tell you that they're "middle class." Their lament, the lament of the HENRY (short for "high-earner, not rich yet"), goes something like this. You try living on $350,000 a year when you have to pay taxes, the mortgage on the house in a tony zip code, the nanny who knows how to cook ethnic cuisine, the private school tuition from pre-K on, the appropriately exclusive vacation, and max out your retirement and college savings accounts. There just isn't that much cash left over each month once you've spent it all!

Abbott bases education policy on theories of white nationalist

You could not write a better script for the epic disaster that is Greg Abbott's gubernatorial campaign if your name was Wendy Davis.

In his pre-Kindergarten education plan released this week, Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott cites the work of a man who believes that women and minorities are intellectually inferior to white men.

Abbott's plan explains how he'd reform pre-K through third grade in the state. Instead of expanding access to state-funded programs, as his Democratic opponent Wendy Davis has proposed, the attorney general proposes offering additional funds to only those programs that meet a certain standard of achievement.

In the second paragraph of his introduction, Abbott cites Charles Murray, a conservative social scientist and fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

"Family background has the most decisive effect on student achievement, contributing to a large performance gap between children from economically disadvantaged families and those from middle class homes," Abbott writes, citing Murray's book Real Education in the footnote. (Abbott's plan misspells the book's title as "Read Education.")

I thought it was bad enough when Abbott said that spending money on pre-K was a waste.  This is quite obviously a much more serious problem.

In 2005, when economist and then-Harvard President Larry Summers said that women are underrepresented in science programs at elite universities because of their "innate" intellectual differences from men, Murray expanded on Summers' point.

"No woman has been a significant original thinker in any of the world's great philosophical traditions," he wrote. "Women have produced a smaller number of important visual artists, and none that is clearly in the first rank. No female composer is even close to the first rank. Social restrictions undoubtedly damped down women’s contributions in all of the arts, but the pattern of accomplishment that did break through is strikingly consistent with what we know about the respective strengths of male and female cognitive repertoires."

What GOP war on women?  LMAO.  Can you believe Abbott is going to be in San Antonio today promoting Murray's bigoted drivel?

Murray is a very problematic source of inspiration for an education plan. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as "one of the most influential social scientists in America, using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority of the black and Latino communities, women and the poor."

"In Murray’s world, wealth and social power naturally accrue towards a 'cognitive elite' made up of high-IQ individuals (who are overwhelmingly white, male, and from well-to-do families), while those on the lower end of the eponymous bell curve form an 'underclass' whose misfortunes stem from their low intelligence," the Southern Poverty Law Center, which describes Murray as a "white nationalist," writes.

I didn't think anything could top palling around with Ted Nugent, child predator, for bad decisions.  This is is still in second place but it's closing fast.

None of this is really breaking news, though.  As mentioned previously, Republicans just aren't trying to conceal their racism, misogyny, and hatred of the disadvantaged any longer.

Murray's 2008 book that Abbott cites, Real Education, argues that students with lower IQ's are not as educable as smarter children and should be siphoned off to vocational programs instead of sent to college. He estimates that only 10 to 20 percent of young adults are capable of doing college-level work.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) recently cited Murray in his controversial and racially-charged assertion that poverty is caused by lazy, "inner city" men. 

I don't have any better idea than anybody else about what might motivate the prototypical Democratic voter to drag themselves to the polls this November, but if they are paying attention and manage to do so, this race -- and others down the ballot -- would simply be no contest (and not the kind of sweep the GOP usually enjoys in off-presidential cycles, either).  When I said that Greg Abbott needed to make a few mistakes in order for Davis to win... well, he's certainly holding up his end of the bargain. 

Christy Hoppe at Trailblazers has more on this week's unfolding nightmare for Abbott.

The stench of Republican elitism

Wafting in again from the east (not Pasadena; the Right).

-- "Pre-K is a waste".  Greg Abbott actually went to the 'third-world country' of South Texas to tell all Texas children that they just don't matter.

Forget for a moment that even a child too young for kindergarten already knows what Republicans think about them; I did not think it was possible for a man in a wheelchair to stick his foot in his mouth so many times, and so easily (although the premise makes sense if you think about it).  Once again, Wendy Davis seized on his gaffe.

“The hypocrisy is astonishing. It’s completely dishonest for Greg Abbott to be talking about early education at the same time he’s defending deep cuts to Texas pre-k in the courtroom.” ... “Despite the pleas of students, teachers, parents and school boards across the state, Greg Abbott is using his office to undermine Texas’ effort to prepare its students for the jobs of a 21st century economy.”

The cost over two years for Abbott's education proposal is $118 million.  Meanwhile, Davis has proposed an expansion of pre-K classes to all eligible children at a cost of $750 million.  (And I for one hope that cost includes breakfast and lunch.  Because if it doesn't, it should.)

It's hard to be astonished these days by Republican hypocrisy, but Greg Abbott can still pull it off. 

-- The Sheldon primary, the first one on the GOP 2016 calendar, was held this past weekend.

The whole lurid and very Vegas scene was a reminder of the capricious nature of a presidential nominating process where an eccentric old man in an inherently shady business has the power to make a candidate instantly formidable without making much of a dent in his fortune. And for all the talk about Adelson “maturing” (a pretty funny term for someone his age) and learning a lesson from his 2012 flyer on Newt Gingrich, you have to figure he’s tempted to flaunt this power again. How many more times will he have that opportunity? 

Even Sheldon wasn't all that impressed with the command performances.

Adelson — who is not known as a morning person and also was nursing a cold — skipped Saturday morning speeches from (Wisconsin Governor Scott) Walker and former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton. He entered the hall midway through (Chris) Christie’s address, walking with the help of a bodyguard to a reserved seat in the front row as Christie talked about his governing style.

It's much like that debate that David Dewhurst and Dan Patrick had scheduled for the River Oaks Men's Club that turned into a one-man show a couple of weeks ago.  The plutocrats aren't even trying to disguise their disdain for the plebes, nor their intentions.

They don't give a fuck about anybody who isn't rich, white, and male, and they no longer give a fuck about whether it's obvious.  And that includes them not giving a fuck about you, Tea Party, because two out of three ain't good enough.

Can the Republican Party base catch Jeb Bush fever? They may have no choice. According to the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, GOP donors panicked over Gov. Chris Christie’s implosion are going all out to draft the long-ago Florida governor to run for president in 2016.

Jeb Bush is certainly tanned and rested, if not ready: He left the governor’s office in 2006, and has done little since then besides work for disgraced and defunct Lehman Brothers and write a book that reversed his once progressive stance on immigration reform. Rucker and Costa quote a former Mitt Romney bundler saying the “vast majority” of Romney’s top 100 donors would like to see a Bush run.

“He’s the most desired candidate out there,” said Brian Ballard, a member of the Romney 2012 and McCain 2008 national finance committees. “Everybody that I know is excited about it.” (my emphasis)

So to summarize: Bush hasn’t run for office in 14 years; his wife, Columba, is known to be unenthusiastic about a presidential run; his own mother doesn’t think he should do it; and in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, 50 percent of registered voters say they “definitely would not” vote for him -- but the wise men of the party want to draft him anyway. This should all work out fine.

Jeb made time for Sheldon Adelson in Vegas over the weekend, but Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and even Bobby Jindal were all noticeably uninvited.  How does that make you feel about now, TeaBags?

Put on your tri-corn hats, cast your lead balls and load up your muskets, Patriots; there's a revolution you need to start fighting.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is glad that so many people will be getting health insurance -- even if that number should have been much higher  -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff pushes back on some happy talk about the voter ID law.

Dos Centavos reviews the biopic of Cesar Chavez and emphasizes that the radical fringe in Texas would like to keep his name and others like his out of our kids' classrooms.

Horwitz at Texpatriate made the case for anyone but Jim Hogan, including Kinky Friedman, in the Democratic primary for Agriculture Commissioner.

Thanks to James Moore at Texas to the World, Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos learned Ted Cruz is a cheapskate who spends more time in Iowa than in the Rio Grande Valley. Libby also discovered Ted Cruz lied about The Biggest Lie in all Politics.

The Texas Central Railway, the latest effort to launch high speed rail from Houston to Dallas, made their initial plans public this week and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had the advance (before) and the post-press conference report (after).

Texas has a woefully inadequate and unfair tax system, and that puts us in a bind when we need stuff. Because as WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us that stuff costs money.

Texas Leftist is glad Democrats have finally stumbled upon a winning strategy for 2014. The questions now... Can we keep the fire burning through November, and will Greg Abbott and the rest of the GOP weasel out of having general election debates?

Reading a book about the settlement routes of black people in the United States, Neil at All People Have Value wrote about ideas of movement beyond physical migration. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Join Egberto of EgbertoWillies.com on his new radio show Politics Done Right on KPFT 90.1 FM, Monday at 8:00 PM to discuss Obamacare and the 2014 election.

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

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Great God Pan Is Dead wants to know what Rice University has against art.

Cody Pogue asks and answers the question "What is Texas?"

Mark Bennett defines the ethics of decolletage.

Offcite photographs the Alps of Pasadena. No really, it makes sense once you read it.

Nonsequiteuse has a suggestion for those who think the equal pay issue is no big thing.

The Texas Living Waters Project implores you to give your feedback on our state’s water future.

Jen Sorenson, a freelance artist now living in Texas, illustrates her experience with Obamacare.

Texas Vox asks "How many oil spills will it take?" as it marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

And finally, in much happier anniversary news, Amy Valentine celebrates her fifth anniversary of being cancer-free.

Sunday Funnies

Friday Lone Star roundup

-- Greg Abbott once again has a corporation's back, this time against the people who were seriously injured, and occasionally killed -- probably intentionally -- by a neurosurgeon.

This is a pattern.  Abbott doesn't care about you unless you're a company.  Or maybe a fetus.

-- Glenn Hegar, the Republican running for state comptroller (a word he cannot articulate) has proposed replacing state property taxes with a sales tax.  It would need to be a sales tax of about 20-25%, in order to be revenue neutral.  Once he was saying "just do it", but now that the math has been presented to him, he thinks maybe we should go a little slower.

If you can't correctly pronounce the office you seek, and math comes slow for you, then perhaps you don't deserve to be elected the state's accountant.  That's all we're saying.

But the damage was done. Politically, you can’t easily replace the more than $40 billion a year that local property taxes yield by tinkering with state and local sales taxes, which currently produce about $28 billion.

If Hegar wants to be the chief tax collector and revenue estimator, he should know that.

EOW and BOR with more.

-- Leticia Van de Putte kicks off her spring Texas tour.

Van de Putte’s campaign made the announcement in an email to supporters Tuesday that provides a rough framework for the bus tour, which will kick off Sunday in San Antonio and is set to wrap up April 7 in Austin. ...

After San Antonio, the campaign bus tour will dip into the heart of South Texas, making stops in Pharr and Laredo before shifting west and trekking to El Paso. From there, the bus tour heads for events in Midland, Lubbock and Wichita Falls. ...

Van de Putte’s bus tour is also scheduled to make stops in Fort Worth, Dallas, Tyler, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Houston and Corpus Christi before concluding in Austin.

LVDP was extensively profiled in the San Antonio Current recently.  She rolls into H-Town on April 5, when she will meet privately with us bloggers ahead of the rally.  We're getting to be kind of a big deal, in case you hadn't noticed.

Fifth Circuit upholds Texas abortion restrictions

Just as expected.

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld Texas' tough new abortion restrictions that shuttered many of the abortions clinics in the state.

A panel of judges at the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court judge who said the rules violate the U.S. Constitution and served no medical purpose. In its opinion, the appeals court said the law "on its face does not impose an undue burden on the life and health of a woman."

Texas lawmakers last year passed some of the toughest restrictions in the U.S. on when, where and how women may obtain an abortion. The Republican-controlled Legislature required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and placed strict limits on doctors prescribing abortion-inducing pills.

Most Republican leaders in Texas oppose abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk. In passing the new rules, they argued they were protecting the health of the woman.

Greg Abbott Tweeted his delight at the news.  Burnt Orange has a map of the areas in the state where the restrictions are already making it difficult to impossible for women to get an abortion.  While the Fifth Circuit deliberated, women's clinics were closing all around the state.

On to the SCOTUS, and probably to be ultimately settled in a year and a half or so (in other words, just in time for it to become a 2016 presidential election year issue).

More on the Texas Central Railway

Earlier this week a handful of us local blog-types sat down with TCR prez Bob Eckels, outreach director David Hagy, and press spox David Benzion to get an update on the bullet train they're planning for the Houston-Dallas corridor.

I won't bury the lede; color me cautiously optimistic.  If you wish, watch some of Eckels giving essentially the same pitch elsewhere that we got here.



A summary, courtesy to me from Charles Kuffner -- who has led in the early reporting -- because my audio capabilities were somewhat impaired during our gathering:

-- TCR is privately funded and they expect to be profitable if only the proposed Houston to Dallas route gets built. They will build with future expansion in mind and to accommodate connections with future rail systems, including one that is probably highest in priority, linking Dallas to Fort Worth.  (See below for the link to today's press conference with the mayors of H-Town, Big D, and Cowtown.)

-- There will be rail stations in downtown Houston and Dallas, and perhaps a handful of others elsewhere in both cities. Depending on the ultimate route chosen -- there are three possible alignments -- there may be a stop in-between, in Bryan/College Station or Huntsville or some other city.

-- Going private means, among many other considerations, that they could plan the route and station locations without having to take political considerations and consequences into account.  The TCR will be still regulated by the Federal Railroad Administration, and once they submit their intent to build to the FRA (next month), they will go through the environmental impact study and public hearing process just as TxDOT or Metro or any other public agency would. 

-- My question to Judge Eckels in our meeting was about eminent domain.  His response was that they will have that capability, but their preference is to make the kind of offer people will want to accept, as that is cheaper than involving attorneys (and certainly better from a PR perspective).  They will mostly be using existing railroad rights of way and don't expect to have to usurp the property of too many landowners.

Frankly, this response suggests a prescription for some pretty thick rose-colored glasses.  The obstacles will sprout like weeds as soon as their route gets published.  Will the train be elevated in rural areas, minimizing the danger of crossings?  Surely it's not going to be constructed mostly at-grade -- dangerous for country travelers -- or below, which would seemingly be the most expensive and present challenges of unexpected kinds. (These are questions I wished I had asked, and will pose to communications director Benzion.)

-- So far the project has not encountered opposition they have been unable to overcome. When they held a similar get-together with Houston-area conservo-bloggers, the primary reaction there was suspicion that their plan would evolve to securing taxpayer funding.  Noteworthy here was Eckels' emphasis on efforts to keep politics out of the project, and particularly the politics of the far right minimized.  He wants the Railway to neither be tarred with an "Obama" brush nor be touted as some strain of  'Texas exceptionalism'.  This is an admirable goal and a challenging mission, IMHO.

Eckels also says that environmental groups 'like' them, and that they have good relationships with the FRA and with other rail builders such as the one in California.

Again, my initial take here with respect to the ecological concerns is a dash of skepticism.  After our meeting, my brother Neil expressed some regret that he had not asked about the Houston toad, an endangered species that lives in some of the area likely to be transited by the bullet train and already experiencing stress from roadways, pipelines, transmission lines and the construction of all those.

Overall, this "socialist" can get on board with the Texas Central Railway, especially if it expands service to those Texans who are not part of the "luxury" class.  Even if it remains an elite mode of transportation affordable by only the 1%, though, it wins environmentally by getting cars off the road and squeezing yet more efficiency from the airlines.

How the Railway handles their security, TSA-style and along the physical line itself, is a question that still needs an answer.

Mayors Annise Parker of Houston, Mike Rawlings of Dallas, and Betsy Price of Fort Worth are hosting media at Houston's city hall this morning to make an announcement about high speed rail.  Isiah Carey at Fox 26 has posted the press release, and I'll add anything they have that I don't afterwards.

Update: Here's the Chron's take.

The caption of the photo oops, 'photo illustration' above of a Japanese bullet train reads: "The planned high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas would use overhead electrical lines and its own separated tracks to shuttle riders between the two metro areas, through mostly flat, rural land."  I interpret that as mostly at-grade.  I wonder if we will hear the same conservative whining that we have endured for the last decade about Houston Metro's light rail service.

Update II: Posted in the comments to this news in another forum, this Wiki link relates the long, tortured history of high speed rail in Texas.  It should be interesting to see if some of the same old coalitions line up to stifle it again.

Update III: CultureMap covered this morning's presser, and Texas Leftist -- who was with me at the meeting earlier in the week -- filed his story.

"Act like a Texan"

I still have some thoughts to collect from yesterday's meeting on the Texas Central Railway, so let's catch up on Wendy Davis slamming Greg Abbott around (I'm sure someone somewhere might construe that to be insensitive to a man in a wheelchair)...

Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis delivered a strong message to Republican opponent Greg Abbott on equal pay for women Monday morning, telling him to "act like a Texan" and stop letting his surrogates speak for him on the issue.

"I have a message for Greg Abbott today," Davis said at a speech in Austin. "Stop hiding behind your staff members. Stop hiding behind your surrogates. This Texas gal is calling you out. Act like a Texan and answer this question for yourself: What on earth is going on at your attorney general's office?" 

That's vintage Ann Richards right there.  Or maybe Don Vito Corleone.



Everyone knows she's saying "act like a man" (a phrase usually preceded by "Stand up and") and everyone also knows that Abbott has been acting like a man in his business dealings with the women that have been hired in the OAG over the years.

Two of his surrogates stumbled in television interviews on the subject, saying women are too "busy" to think about equal pay for equal work and insisting that the reason women are paid less is that "men are better negotiators." The San Antonio Express-News reported that Abbott's office pays female assistant attorneys general $6,000 less, on average, than men in the same position, and Abbott's campaign said he would veto equal pay legislation that because current wage discrimination laws are sufficient, he would make it easier for women to sue over pay discrimination.

As attorney general, Abbott also successfully defended the state against a female college professor who was being paid less than her employees for the same work, arguing that federal equal pay protections don't apply in state court.

Davis pointed out on Monday that as state senator, she introduced an equal pay bill in a Republican-controlled Texas legislature that would have changed the circumstances under which women can sue their employers for pay discrimination, and it passed. Gov. Rick Perry (R) vetoed the bill last June.

The only thing Greg Abbott has done in the nearly twelve years he's held office -- besides sue Barack Obama, of course -- is act like a man.  Just as every other man has been acting towards the women they hire, in Texas and across the country, for decades.

Keep in mind that it's just an act.  In order to get men like Greg Abbott to act differently -- and also the millions of other men who have kept women down with this pay gap since, I don't know, forever -- enough shame and blame needs to be heaped on their heads and draped around their shoulders until they get it.  Until they start acting better.

Paying women less than men like me for the same job is wrong.  It's wrong even if their experience differs: if they are good enough to be hired, they are good enough to be paid the same.  Underpaying people on the basis of their genitalia is plain old discrimination.  Since so many women are primary breadwinners in their households now, pay inequality affects the children they are struggling to raise as well.

But here's where we are reminded that Republicans don't really care as much about children as they do fetuses.  Once that umbilical cord is cut you're on your own, kid.  Get out there and make something of yourself, like I did.

Especially if you're a man, like Greg Abbott.  Why, you can have a tree fall on you and collect ten million bucks for it, then make certain nobody else -- man, woman, child, or fetus -- ever does the same.

That might be what a real Texan looks like to Republicans.  But it's not how one acts.

A bullet train between Houston and Dallas comes into view

Today our little progblog contingent is taking a meeting with the principal players, including former Harris County Judge Bob Eckels and his comm director, David Benzion, about this.

In Asia and Europe, tens of millions of people have been happily riding high-speed bullet trains for decades. On our own shores, however, the implementation of intercity high-speed rail has suffered from a host of delays. The one system that has managed to get moving, somewhat—California’s—has lately found itself beset by legal problems and public cynicism over rising costs and the use of eminent domain to obtain private land for the rail line’s right-of-way.

The situation has fans of high-speed rail worried. If America’s first bullet-train system can’t get built in high-tech, environmentally progressive California, they wonder, where can it possibly get built?

Hold on to your ten-gallon hats. Texas, of all places, has emerged as the state that may stand the best chance of winning the U.S. race for high-speed rail. That California might lose bullet-train bragging rights to a state governed by a pro-fracking climate-change skeptic may come as a surprise. But a Texas triumph could also provide us with a teachable moment about how to tailor bullet-train projects to the different cultures and demographics of all 50 states.

 Way back in 2012, CultureMap had it first.

Talks of the quick trans-Texas trip have been underway since 2010, when Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) rallied for part of an $8 billion federal grant that President Barack Obama set aside for high-speed rail corridors.

That effort failed, but JR Central has teamed up with the Texas-based company to raise roughly $10 billion in private dollars for the Houston-to-DFW route. Eckels believes federal involvement slows the process and piles on expenses, and claimed that private money would be repaid by riders' fares — "competitive and in many cases less than airfares."

The "no-taxpayer-dollars" thing should be popular with a certain caucus.

Though his company has been working closely with federal and state agencies on safety and right-of-way issues, TCR president Robert Eckels is confident that “our private development approach will be successful for this corridor.” TCR’s market-led approach, he adds, “will be differentiated by the high level of customer experience offered.”

That level is hinted at on TCR’s website, which emphasizes the speed and luxuriousness of the Japanese-built trains that would make up the company’s rolling stock. Clearly TCR hopes to lure the same Texas business travelers who helped make Southwest Airlines a homegrown corporate success story—but who now complain that the time spent getting into and out of airports has made flying between Dallas and Houston not much faster, and definitely not any easier, than driving.

Yes, eminent domain for a private operation such as this might not be a concern here, thanks to a recent development in the Keystone XL pipeline's legal tussle that was resolved in TransCanada's favor and against a Texas landowner.  And when I say 'resolved', I mean the SCOTX declined to hear her case.

The On Earth article has more on the environmental benefits of taking so many cars off the road and airline passengers out of the sky, and here's the bottom line on that.

Mass transit yields an environmental dividend regardless of why people use it. Were the nation’s first bullet train to come about thanks to Texas business travelers—shuttling, ironically, between two capitals of the oil and chemical industries—it could be the best advertisement imaginable. If high-speed rail is good enough for the good ol’ boys and gals of Texas, maybe the rest of America will realize that it’s good enough for them too.

So I'll be anxious to hear what more they can tell us about this development.  I'll have a followup post tomorrow morning.