Monday, March 09, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle

You can do a sufficient job of washing your hands in the time it will take you to read this week's Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup.  And you should be doing both.  Perhaps not at the same time.

COVID-19 claims South by Southwest as its most significant Lone Star victim to date.


Austin's annual technology, music, and film festival has been canceled over fears of coronavirus, with the festivities just a week away.

(Tech) giants had already pulled out, creating a dire vibe in the previous weeks: Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Apple, Netflix, Intel, Amazon Studios, Mashable and Vevo ...

The Dallas Morning News reported (Friday) afternoon that the Austin mayor Steve Adler said: “Based on the recommendation of our public health officer and director of public health, and after consultation with the city manager, I’ve gone ahead and declared a local disaster in the city, and associated with that, have issued an order that effectively cancels SXSW.”

Adler's state of emergency, and the festival’s corresponding statement, came despite the fact there were no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Austin (as of Friday, March 6).

Out of concern for the many artists, waitstaff, and others whose livelihoods were dependent on the festival's thousands of attendees to help make ends meet, a campaign to #TipforTwo began.


Ted Cruz placed himself under self-quarantine after he was informed that he interacted with a CPAC attendee who tested positive for the virus.

The pandemic is slamming nearly all sectors of the global economy, and Texas will suffer a pair of body blows as its fossil-fuel based companies take a hit from slumping demand just as the Saudi-Russian agreement to curb supply disintegrates.

While many drillers in Texas and other shale regions look vulnerable, as they’re overly indebted and already battered by rock-bottom natural gas prices, significant declines in U.S. production may take time. The largest American oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., now control many shale wells and have the balance sheets to withstand lower prices. Some smaller drillers may go out of business, but many will have bought financial hedges against the drop in crude.

In the short run, Russia is in a good position to withstand an oil price slump. The budget breaks even at a price of $42 a barrel and the finance ministry has squirreled away billions in a rainy-day fund. Nonetheless, the coronavirus’s impact on the global economy is still unclear and with millions more barrels poised to flood the market, Wall Street analysts are warning oil could test recent lows of $26 a barrel.

With some post-election day news ...


One of the biggest and most disturbing storylines to emerge on Super Tuesday wasn’t about any top-of-the-ticket race, but rather the shockingly long wait times as some Texas polling locations struggled to keep up with increased turnout.


Dallas County Election Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole is asking a district court to authorize a manual recount after her office discovered ballots from 44 tabulating machines were not included in the county’s election results, reported the Texas Tribune’s Alexa Ura. The staff discovered the error when it could not reconcile the number of voters who checked in to cast ballots and the number of ballots counted. It is unclear which precincts, and thus which races, could be affected.

Several primary-challenged Congressional incumbents -- Kay Granger, Henry Cuellar -- survived on Super Tuesday, as Texas Donkeys and Elephants mostly settled for the status quo.  Some familiar names won and some lost.

One candidate who won without a runoff was former state Senator Wendy Davis, who garnered national attention in a bid for governor in 2014. She moved from Fort Worth to Austin to run in the 21st District and easily won the Democratic nomination to face freshman Republican incumbent Chip Roy.

Trump’s controversial former White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, advanced to a runoff in the Panhandle region's 13th District GOP primary, while Pete Sessions, a veteran Republican congressman who lost his metro Dallas seat in 2018, found more luck in Waco, where he too made a runoff.

However, the latest Bush family member to try to launch a political career, Pierce Bush, came up short in suburban Houston.

The Houston Chronicle supplied the results for statewide, Harris County, and Southeast Texas-area Congressional elections.

-- Joe Biden beats Bernie Sanders in tight Texas primary

-- MJ Hegar leads in runoff for U.S. Senate race; Royce West finishes second (Dallas Observer)

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs realized on Election Night that he should have been exposing the other fraudulent Latina in the Democratic primary opposite John Cornyn.

-- Ogg declares victory in Harris County DA race

-- Menefee defeats incumbent Ryan in county attorney Dem primary

Ryan filed suit a week ago against 43 generic drug manufacturers, alleging they are fixing prices on "at least" 181 separate medications.

“These manufacturers routinely and systematically sought out their competitors in an effort to reach agreements to allocate market share and maintain or raise prices,” said County Attorney Ryan. “We intend to hold these pharmaceutical companies accountable for one of the most egregious and massive price-fixing conspiracies in the history of the United States.”

Democrats Mike Siegel and Pritesh Gandhi advance to runoff in CD 10

-- Republicans Nehls, Wall in runoff as Kulkarni clinches Dem nomination in CD 22

-- Ladjevardian will face Dan Crenshaw in CD 2 after Cardnell withdraws from D runoff

And both Progrexas and the Chron noted that being a male judge in the Democratic primary was hazardous to their re-election prospects.

Off the Kuff reported on the latest lawsuit filed by Texas Democrats, seeking to overturn the law against straight ticket voting in time for November.

Dos Centavos explored the story of the ghost of HD142.

SocraticGadfly said that as opposed to fearmongering by Greg Abbott and recent reporting by The Atlantic -- based on worse reporting by the Dallas Snooze -- Texas is not being Californicated.

Paradise in Hell is enjoying the fight between Dan Patrick and George P. Bush over the Alamo.

Durrell Douglas at Houston Justice documents how #ProjectOrange is helping inmates at the Harris County Jail exercise their right to vote.

Rick Casey of the Rivard Report reminds us that Texas was the first Southern state and the ninth in the nation to ratify the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote.

Rick Hasen at the Election Law Blog excerpts Roll Call to tell us that John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, alongside Lindsey Graham, are by far the largest beneficiaries of financial contributions from judicial nominees.  All three men sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is tasked with approving federal judges submitted for appointment by the Trump Administration.


Before they put on their robes, dozens of federal judges appointed during the Trump and Obama administrations made significant campaign contributions to Senate Judiciary Committee members and their home-state senators -- the very people who could make or break their nominations.

And three Republican senators -- Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- got more money than the rest of the Judiciary Committee combined. Virtually all of those contributions came from judicial nominees they ultimately backed.

In the latest environmental developments ...

Houston has ten of the most toxic industrial polluters in the United States, according to a new report by the Environmental Integrity Project.


A deadline in late August has been set for cleanup of a creosote-contaminated Union Pacific railyard in Houston.  The chemical's underground plume, a result of treating railroad ties for decades, was detected beneath more than 100 homes in the nearby Kashmere Gardens/Fifth Ward neighborhood.  There has also been a cancer cluster among residents.

Texas ICE officials are keeping migrants in jail with what appears to be illegal blanket parole denials, according to Felipe de la Hoz at The Intercept.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in San Antonio have been systematically denying parole to large numbers of people who were detained after crossing into the United States hoping to apply for asylum. Instead of being allowed to join family or sponsors and work on their cases in the U.S., many migrants are being held without a chance of release while they wait for court dates.

According to documents reviewed by The Intercept and lawyers working in the area, ICE’s San Antonio field office has been refusing parole for any detainee subject to a new Trump administration policy known as the transit bar, which makes migrants ineligible for asylum if they did not ask for protection in countries they crossed on their way to the U.S. The bar applies to most non-Mexicans arriving at the southern border.

The Texas Central Railway is poised to begin construction, possibly by the end of the year.

David Hagy with Texas Central said the Texas High-Speed Rail, a 240-mile high-speed rail line meant to make a 90-minute commute from Houston to Dallas, is expected to complete its Economic Impact Statement and safety guidelines by this summer.


Hagy said the Texas High-Speed Rail is expected to have $36 billion of positive economic impact on the city of Houston through 1,500 jobs needed for operation, faster economic connections between medical institutions, colleges and businesses between Dallas and Houston and tourism.

“You connect Houston and Dallas and you add in Bryan/College Station, Texas A&M, Blinn, Huntsville and Sam Houston State (University), you’re connecting about 42 Fortune 500 companies, about 83 Fortune 1,000 companies, over 30 academic institutions, meaning medical centers and universities, and over 350,000 graduate and undergraduate students not only fast, but reliably.”

And we'll wrap another Wrangle with some lighter items.


From LareDOS:

Organizers of Matagorda Bay Birdfest in Palacios are in high gear to make good on the promise that the fourth annual educational event connects people, birds, and nature.

Birdfest spans the weekend of Friday, March 27, through Sunday, March 29.

The small coastal town of Palacios on Matagorda Bay and its surrounding wetlands and estuaries offer a rich setting for experienced birders and adventurous beginners.

Blake Earle at D Magazine reviews Stephen Harrigan's Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, questioning its Dallas origin tale.

Nicholas Frank at the Rivard Report tells of a captivating rediscovered novel about WWII-era San Antonio, The Duchess of Angus.  The first excerpt from it is here, with more to come.

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Sunday, March 08, 2020

Sunday 'Mask On, Mask Off' Funnies









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Friday, March 06, 2020

Race for the White House Update

Name change as referenced previously; post appearing later than usual because everybody's now dropped out that is going to (this week).  Which is to mean: Tulsi.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is still running for president, despite low national polling numbers and winning only two pledged delegates in the nominating contests so far.

The Hawaii Democrat's two delegates came from American Samoa, a US territory that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg won on Super Tuesday. (Bloomberg has since dropped out of the race.)

These delegates qualified her for the next debate, March 15 in Phoenix AZ, but the DNC apparently will revise the rules to exclude her.


Gabbard is a gadfly, as we are all aware, and her consequence has been that she's no more feeling the democracy from the Democratic Party than Bernie.

Waiting to post gave me the luxury of not having to reset the entire play-by-play from Sunday, when Barack Obama staged a neoliberal intervention on behalf of Sundownin' Joe.


The "Vote Blue No Matter Who Except for You-Know-Who" crew, particularly in Texas, made their complaints loud and clear.  And their Saviour answered their prayers.

The masses yearning to vote shitlib then obediently turned out, in such numbers that they broke all the voting machines in minority precincts.  There's a joke about sheep and souls and polls that I wanted to make here but thought the better of, so perhaps if your Google is as snarky as mine you can find it.  If not, just infer what you wish.

Bloomer wilted as the seasons turned to spring, his millions buying him a win in the afore-mentioned American Samoa primary, a handful of delegates, and little else.  After first declaring he would stay in, he joined Pete and Amy and fell in line.  And after trying to negotiate something with both Bernie and Biden, Warren did the same yesterday.  Not the endorsement part.


So it's just Sanders and Biden, as we -- or at least I -- have long thought it would be, with Gabbard doing whatever she will do (today she's traveling to Las Vegas to speak at a NORML convention.  That's not meant to be a pun, though you're welcome to take it as such).

The new ads between the two left standing have started rolling, and Biden is calling Bernie a socialist, accusing him of calling black voters the establishment, and a few other smears.

Bernie has tacked to the right as well.

On Tuesday, he began running a campaign ad consisting entirely of Barack Obama speaking in glowing terms of the senator who (infrequently) calls himself a “democratic socialist.”

“Feel the Bern!” the ex-president exclaims in the ad.


The ad is not only a bid for black votes, it is also a signal to the Democratic Party, including the African American party establishment, that they have nothing to fear from his “political revolution.”

This, along with Bernie's insistence that he will do whatever he can to support the Democratic nominee, and his defense of Elizabeth Warren in spite of her craven manipulation of his goodwill throughout the primary, has led me to the conclusion that I needed to prepare my Plan B options.

Which are not the same as Bernie's.


I watched the Free and Equal debates from Wednesday, and found Howie, and Mark Charles, and Gloria la Riva all vote-worthy.  They are in various states of qualifying for the Texas ballot.

I will not be ridin' with Biden.  I'm impervious to the guilt of Jackasses trying to shame me into voting for him, and I can't be shepherded onto a Biden bandwagon by any of Bernie's support network.  Bernie needs to win on the first ballot or the DNC superdelegates will surely steal it from him and give it to Old Joe, or some other candidate they prefer who will be just as centrist-shitty.

I have no faith in Democratic Party unity pledges.  I'm making plans to attend the convention in Milwaukee, if not as a delegate or a media representative then as a yellow vest in the street.
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Wednesday, March 04, 2020

With respect to the Senate Democratic primary


It's clear that I (and others) should have spent some effort dragging the other phony Latina in the scrum to challenge Senator Cornhole.  Forrest Wilder of Texas Monthly, at 5:41 p.m yesterday.


Annie “Mamá” Garcia is one of the twelve entrants in ... the Democratic race to take on John Cornyn. Fun fact: Garcia, who isn’t Hispanic, adopted (the nickname) because she says she has a 'el corazón Latino'. This isn’t quite as ballsy as changing your middle name to “SECEDE” (or your last name from Costello to Tzinztún Ramirez, for that matter) but it does suggest a certain Rachel Dolezal level of hubris.

What else? Her website’s donation button relies not on English or Spanish to solicit money, but rather German: “Ich bin eine Geschäftsfrau.” She walked 420 miles (heh) across Texas to protest Cornyn, and says that the arguments for marijuana legalization are “as varied and nuanced as the number of strains sold at the Bloom Room in San Francisco.” She doesn’t know what colonias are, but she’s learning ...

My edits, beyond the ellipses, are within the parens in the first graf above; the '(heh)' is Wilder's.  And then his update, at 11:03 p.m.

I predicted earlier this evening that ... there would be a surprise candidate, someone who "shouldn't" make the runoff because they were an unknown, underfunded, or just plain goofy (or all three!). This happens with regularity in Texas Democratic primaries. Think Jim Hogan, of goats-eat-watermelons fame. Or perennial candidate Gene Kelly.

Well, as usual, it looks like I’m wrong. Right now, with 40 percent of precincts reporting, Hegar is leading with 24 percent of the vote, followed by veteran Dallas state senator Royce West at 14 percent, and activist Cristina Tzinztún Ramirez at 13 percent. The next two candidates -- Annie “Mamá” Garcia and Houston city councilwoman Amanda Edwards -- are trailing with 9 percent each. ... Well, we’ll keep our eyes on this one. Maybe “Mamá” will make a comeback.

No comeback came.

Obviously Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune picked the wrong unserious candidate.
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Do you believe Him?



How about now?


Still a believer?


As everybody who only glances at the right-hand column already knows, I am very loudly not a believer in Him (or Her), but as they say about blind hogs and acorns and stopped clocks ...

I suppose I'll have a few more specific things to blog about last night later.
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Monday, March 02, 2020

Texas Independence Day and Election Eve Wrangle (with Election Day updates)

(Ed. note: This blog has long been composed in Mozilla Firefox, and this post, using some unique spacing, is best viewed in that browser.)

The Texas Progressive Alliance is celebrating Independence Day today by helping those who waited for Election Day to research your ballot options.


A bit of state history few Texans likely know:

Lorenzo de Zavala designed the Republic of Texas flag. Attesting to its staying power, his creation continues today as the Texas state flag. Said another way, Mexican-born de Zavala is the one who put the star on the Texas Lone Star Flag.



de Zavala, once a high-ranking Mexican government official and consort to Santa Anna, became disenchanted with the president's authoritarian rule and resigned.  Later, he was elected the first vice-president in the history of the Republic of Texas, on March 16, 1836.  His story is complicated, and poorly told by public school texts in today's curriculum, but you can read about it at the Rio Grande Guardian.




With the wrap on early voting, TXElects.

Friday was a record-setting early voting day for the Democratic primary in the 15 counties with the most registered voters. A record 193K people voted in person or by mail on the last day of early voting, the highest one-day total in state primary history, eclipsing the 2008 mark of 173K. Friday’s voters represented a quarter of all early voters in that party’s primary in those counties. Three of the seven highest and five of the 13 highest, single-day vote totals occurred this year ...

Turning to the state’s 30 top counties, Republican strategist and data nerd Derek Ryan’s final early voting report (PDF) indicated that 219K people under 40 voted in the Democratic primary and 58K people under 50 voted in the Republican primary. More than 300K people with no recent (2012-2018) Democratic primary history voted in this year’s Democratic primary (Ryan said that some of them voted in the 2008 primary.) and 123K people with no recent Republican primary history voted in this year’s Republican primary.

TXElects also analyzed the results from the three primary polls last week, as did Kuff.


The South Carolina primary results, a big win for Joe Biden, culled the field for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Pete Buttigieg was on a flight to Austin when he announced the suspension of his campaign, returning instead to South Bend, IN to make a formal announcement.  Earlier in the day he had declared he would not be dropping out, after Tom Steyer, who finished well ahead of him in third, did just that.  There is much speculation and some polling that suggests where Buttigieg's electoral support might go.  Of the remaining candidates, only Amy Klobuchar has not campaigned in Texas during the past ten days.

Update (Tues., 3/3): Klobuchar followed BootEdgeEdge's lead, falling out and then joining Pete in Dallas to endorse Biden.  Beto O'Rourke made it a threesome.  More on these developments in the next 'White House Update' post.

A chorus of Texas Democrats loudly moaned "woe is us"  (in classic Hee Haw style) as the prospects of a Bernie Sanders victory in Texas, in California and other Super Tuesday primary states, and ultimately the Democratic nomination, came into tighter focus.




And we can only imagine how favorable the numbers would be had the pollsters asked about democratic socialism.  We can be thankful that Bernie's proposal for free college tuition will enable Americans to return to school in order to learn the difference without fear of burdensome debt.


Not all Lone Star Donks are doom and gloom, thankfully.

“The truth is that Bernie speaks to people, not party,” (former state Rep. Marisa Márquez, one of Sanders’ most prominent Texas backers) says. “The disenfranchised and marginalized, especially Latinos, have found their voice in this campaign.

“I would encourage the leaders in our state to take a good look at the real change Bernie Sanders’ campaign represents for the people of Texas,” she adds. “Fear will not defeat Trump in November. “

And Sanders’ campaign has stressed that it believes he is the best candidate for a Democratic victory here.

“Texas isn’t a red state, it’s a nonvoting state,” says Kolby Lee, a Sanders spokesman who grew up in Texas. “If we’re serious about flipping the state House and winning in battleground congressional districts, we need a nominee who will inspire grassroots enthusiasm and turn out voters on Election Day.”

And Ross Ramsey at the TexTrib, via Progrexas, reminds us that after the presidentials move on to other states, we'll still have some runoff elections to decide next month.


PDiddie at Brains and Eggs exposed our state media's glaring bias in his pointed commentary on the Texas Senate Democratic primary.

In the pending special election to replace departing state Sen. Kirk Watson (reported in last week's Wrangle), state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez of Austin announced he has formed an exploratory committee to run for the seat.  The committee’s co-chairs are Reps. Gina Hinojosa, Donna Howard, and Celia Israel, all of Austin, and all of whom have previously declared their non-interest in running.


As the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic spreads to the US, Texas gets its first cases, in San Antonio and in Houston.  Update: Greg Abbott responded with practiced indignant outrage at a Washington DC bungle, the only difference being that he didn't blame Trump.  The real news from that link:

The city of Austin is separately in discussions about whether to cancel the annual South by Southwest festival, a weeklong technology, music and film conference, according to Mayor Steve Adler’s office.

SocraticGadfly read Edward Snowden's Permanent Record and was left with lots more questions (about Snowden, not the government) than he had before.

Brooke Lewis at the HouChron celebrated Black History Month as a legacy of endurance.


The TSTA Blog dismissed private school vouchers as a "conservative moral value".  The Texas Signal found another candidate for Worst Republican.  Sanford Nowlin at the SA Current begged to differ, with his own pick.  And Bud Kennedy at the FWST wrote about a paranoid militia infiltrating Texas police departments that is fomenting rebellion.

A revolution-minded, conspiracy-bent militia group named the Oath Keepers is recruiting law officers in Hood County to take up arms in what the founder predicts will be a “bloody civil war” against the U.S. government.

A national director of the Las Vegas-based Oath Keepers, John D. Shirley, moved to rural Hood County in 2015 and has been appointed by county commissioners as a constable, giving him both access to confidential information and a political platform to recruit more militia members.

Better Texas Blog urged those who may be affected by the anti-immigrant "public charge rule" to stay enrolled in public assistance programs.  Lucas Manfield at the Dallas Observer noted the settlement in the case of a Mansfield ISD teacher who was fired for being gay.  And Keri Blakinger, formerly of the HouChron and currently of the Marshall Project, filled in for the ailing Scott Henson and sent him a criminal justice roundup post for his blog, Grits for Breakfast.


If you just haven't had enough of the Astros' sign-stealing scandal, Sean O'Neal's 'Hollywood, Texas' collation at Texas Monthly reports that you may(!) get to relive it as a television series.


The Hollywood Reporter notes that Sports Illustrated writer Ben Reiter will host the first of what will be a whole new franchise of sports documentary podcasts, beginning with this look at the Astros’s now permanently asterisked 2017 season. From there, producers hope to turn that whole saga into a TV series, which will allow Astros fans to relive those cringe-inducing memories as though they’re just another prestige show.

Let's close it out with these.




Wander down a desolate Texas highway in the 1950s, and you might stumble upon one of these Lone Star state jewels called motor court motels. Now there's a boutique hotel tucked away near Austin that is reminiscent of that retro style, Lone Star Court.

An emerging wave of moteliers are now harkening back to the cool heyday of motor courts. Lone Star Court is answering that nostalgic demand in Texas. Hidden away in Austin's neighborhoods to the north, The Domain, Lone Star Court has the aesthetic of Hill Country cool.
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