Tuesday, April 14, 2020

The TexProgBlog Wrangle, Part 2

Part 1 is here.


The COVID-19 pathogen will likely put off the US Census.


TXElects parses the meaning of the delay for us.

The Trump Administration may be seeking to delay key Census deadlines as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Commerce Secretary Wilber Ross said in a call with several members of Congress that Census field operations would be suspended until June 1, according to a statement issued by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Maloney said Ross would seek federal legislation to delay the deadline to deliver apportionment counts to April 30, 2021, from December 31, 2020, and to deliver redistricting data to the states to July 31, 2021, from March 31, 2021. Those deadlines are set by federal law and would require congressional approval.

[...]

During the last redistricting cycle, the U.S. Census Bureau delivered its 2010 state population totals for apportionment on December 21, 2010, and the block level population data on February 17, 2011. In the prior redistricting cycle, the totals for apportionment were released on December 28, 2000, and the actual Census 2000 enumeration data was sent to the states on March 6, 2001. Only the first of those two events would occur during the 2021 regular session under the Administration’s proposed timeline.

If the total state population for apportionment is sufficient to trigger “publication” of the census, then the Legislature could take up redistricting in the regular session. If “publication” is triggered by the block-level detail, then the next regular session would be 2023.

Update: Scott Braddock at Quorum Report has some thoughts about this.  My best guess is that a special session to tackle redistricting in 2021, or waiting to do so until 2023, depends on whether the state's Republicans feel their opportunities to control the outcome are better sooner ... or later.  Expect litigation aplenty either way.

With respect to legal action ...


The Lone Star State is indeed a loner in one regard, according to an April 11 filing by Planned Parenthood in the US Supreme Court.

Texas, like other states, has declared an emergency due to the coronavirus crisis, halting nonessential activities. But it’s gone further than any other locale in limiting family planning services, leaving women with no choice but to remain pregnant or travel out of state instead of sheltering in place, even to seek nonsurgical abortions that simply involve swallowing “two pills.”

Over the weekend, the healthcare providers turned to the highest court in the land for help, saying that “Texas has exploited the Covid-19 crisis as a pretext to target abortion.”

Again, the only thing we can be sure of is more lawyers filing more lawsuits.

In spite of the shattered state (and national and global) economy, there are doubts as to whether restarting it now is the right idea.


Coronavirus grifters are gonna grift.



Update: A Texas Railroad Commission hearing yesterday was, in Trump's words, 'a ratings hit', but once again Texas Republican elected officials chose to do nothing.  Quorum Report:

Texas energy sector appears to reject the idea of state intervention in production

All-day RRC hearing draws 20,000 viewers online; it became clear a Texas-only decision could lead the nation but without a national strategy the needle would only be moved marginally

Two of the state’s energy producers have proposed a return to a limitation on oil production in Texas for the first time in almost 50 years as a way to stem the economic hemorrhaging of the oil & gas industry.

The idea got a lot of attention.

Today’s virtual hearing of the Texas Railroad Commission – with only proration on the agenda – drew more than 20,000 viewers. Statistics were so startling that AdminTexas.com posted that the hearing -- still going (late last) evening -- had significant viewership from Korea, Canada and Russia.

The proposal, in short, would be to cut Texas energy production, by possibly as much as 20 percent, to push up the sagging price of oil. Pioneer Natural Resources and Parsley Energy want it. Marathon Oil Corp. and many others pressed against it even with the promise that the cuts on production would be limited to top pumpers.



Kuff has an update to that weird "ghost candidate" story from the HD142 primary.


Housing news had several Texas bloggers' attention.


"A massive wave of evictions is coming":

(The COVID-19) crisis has struck the United States at a moment when millions of people were already living perilously close to eviction. Because of stagnant wages and rising rents, one out of four renters spent over half of their income on housing. Among rent burdened households -- defined as those that spend more than one-third of their income on housing -- half have less than $10 in savings.

Nearly a third of the American workforce -- some 41.7 million people -- earns less than $12 per hour and has limited access to health care, paid sick days and paid family and medical leave. The mandatory stay-at-home orders and forced closing of business will force much of this population, even with the help of unemployment insurance, to choose between paying rent or buying groceries.

Some landlords have delayed eviction and even canceled rent for their tenants. Others, however, have been less sympathetic. The Daily Beast recently reported on the case of a Las Vegas nurse who was evicted because her landlord worried she might potentially spread covid-19.

The problem is simply too consequential to be left up to landlord discretion. And if evictions are merely delayed, not permanently stopped, that could lead to a resurgence of the virus, after stay-at-home measures "bend the curve" of infection. Evicted families end up in homeless shelters, where people eat and sleep next to each other -- the opposite of social distancing.

People experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to upper respiratory illness including to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Well before the pandemic, sprawling tent encampments had experienced outbreaks of medieval diseases like typhus and trench fever.


Last year, the Current and the San Antonio Heron collaborated on a lengthy analysis of gentrification's sweep across the West Side, including the scheduled demolition of the Alazán-Apache Courts.

In a couple of follow-ups to postings from last week's Wrangle, Rice University's ventilator is all ready to go ...


... and Half Price Books is about to go out.


In the wake of furloughs ordered by parent company Gannett, and with print media facing a troubled future, the Austin American Statesman turns to ... radio.


And to conclude another week of the best of the left of Texas, here's few lighter-side pieces.


Save Buffalo Bayou is enjoying tending their garden during this self-imposed spring exile.
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Monday, April 13, 2020

The Weekly 'Flatten the Curve' Wrangle *updates

The Texas Progressive Alliance remains committed to flattening the curve as it brings you the best of the left of, about, and from around the Great State over the past week.


Gerald Parker, who served in the Bush administration and is now at Texas A&M, says that we are just at stage two of this five-stage pandemic.


Phase Three would be (a second stage of) containment before we have a vaccine to deploy. I’m optimistic that in three to six months we’ll have (a better treatment for coronavirus symptoms), a therapeutic in our toolkit that can rescue those who become severely ill.

But it's going to be at least 18 months, I believe, before there's a vaccine available to deploy in any meaningful way.

While we wait for a vaccine, we’ll enter a second stage of containment. During this time, we need to restart our economy -- and we need to do it safely.

What's essential to go the next phase is greatly expanded lab testing -- both the antigen and the antibody lab testing -- so we can have a much better view of what's happening in our community. Despite the rapid advancement that's occurred in lab testing over the last month, we're still catching up. And without the lab testing, we're still almost blind to what's really happening in our community.

I think everybody is now familiar with the epidemiology curve -- the curve from “flattening the curve” -- and its peak. Once we’re on the other side of the peak, once we're seeing a decreasing number of cases, we'll be back in a position where we can attempt to contain the virus in our communities with surgically applied social distancing measures -- not community-wide social distancing measures.

We’re going to have to target new infections more aggressively. We’re going to have to isolate those and do contact tracing. It takes a lot of resources to do that.

Our public health authorities don't have the manpower to do this. We need a lot more public-health soldiers.




It's not just the statistics that are lacking ...


Some of our so-called leaders are short on empathy.


Perhaps we should send him a copy of the newspaper.


COVID-19 is not an equal opportunity infection.




And the discrimination goes far beyond the numbers.


In a second Wrangle coming tomorrow, we'll have the latest on the legal developments regarding Ken Paxton's outlawing of women's reproductive freedoms.

Ross Ramsey of the TexTrib via Progrexas asks the right question: is in-person voting during a contagion really the best we can do?

It’s plainly ignorant to tell people to stay away from one another and then to require them to gather in their precincts to cast votes.

Jim Malewitz, a former Texas Tribune reporter who now works for Wisconsin Watch, was on hand this month when that state required many of its voters to line up or shut up. He tweeted a Kenosha News photo of a voter outfitted for the occasion. You should go look.

Voting by mail is well established in other states, but you don’t have to look far to find politicians -- Republicans in particular -- who think it’s a bad idea. Start right at the top, with President Donald Trump, who voted by mail in the last election: “Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” he tweeted Wednesday. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”

[...]

There are arguments, debunked by election experts, that voting by mail is more vulnerable to fraud. And some argue, with some evidence, that it could be difficult to handle a vote-by-mail election without big investments in voting processes.

That last one is just a good reason to start early instead of waiting until September to make some decisions.

[...]

Maybe it’s not the IQ of voters we’re testing here.


Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, feeling better and back on a regular blogging schedule, has the latest on Abbott's court battle to stop prisoners from being released due to the pandemic.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court of Texas on Saturday issued a temporary stay on Judge Livingston's temporary restraining order, meaning Abbott's order for now is back in effect. The court has requested briefings on the subject, with responses from the litigants due on Monday. See coverage from the Texas Tribune.


SocraticGadfly notes that the Freedom from Religion Foundation had a court win over Greg Abbott upheld on appeal, and as with the original filing, it's a case he wishes both could have lost.

The Texas Signal worries about the rise of anti-Asian racism.


And the TO announces their new EIC.


One of Ahtone's last pieces of work at High Country News -- along with several others -- detailed the appropriation of indigenous peoples' lands for public colleges.


And closing out this Wrangle with the lighter side ...

The Lunch Tray deconstructs stress eating and "anxiety baking".  It's Not Hou It's Me shows you where to pick up beer to go in Houston.
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Sunday, April 12, 2020

Sunday 'Male-In' Funnies




News item, 2016: "A Tweet from Hydrox Cookies possibly led to Trump's Oreo protest"







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Thursday, April 09, 2020

Withdrawals


-- Lincoln Chafee, from the Libertarian Party presidential primary.

(That wasn't the news you've been mourning/celebrating?)

When Hillary Clinton dropped out of the presidential race in 2008, she did so in an immaculately choreographed speech before of a mass of supporters at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, where she boasted of putting “18 million cracks” in the political glass ceiling. When Bernie Sanders dropped out in 2016, he did so on the biggest of stages -- at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. But on Wednesday, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont ended his second and likely final campaign for president under far more demure circumstances: a 14-minute address to the nation via livestream, from an office in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont.

The announcement -- the day after a primary in Wisconsin that his campaign not only didn’t contest, but actively discouraged voters from participating in in-person due to the coronavirus pandemic -- came weeks after the race was effectively decided and long past the point when Sanders himself had begun to shift his focus from winning votes to making a point. The pandemic crystallized “what this campaign is about,” to use his favored turn of phrase, even as it made the campaign itself unfeasible.

Joe Biden, who is now the de facto Democratic nominee, had already announced his intention to skip the next debate and had begun discussing his vice presidential picks. Officially, the Democratic primary ended (yesterday). But it felt like it ended a long time ago.


-- And so ... on to the next.


SoO doesn't speak for me, sarcastically or seriously.  I doubt, in fact, that he speaks seriously for any Berner.  But you can decide for yourself.

Now, Matthew Walther at The Week ... he's a snarky bastard.

Barring some unforeseen accident or a top-secret Zoom convocation of party elders bent on replacing him with Andrew Cuomo, Biden is going to be the one to run against Donald Trump in November, regardless of whether thousands of minor functionaries end up assembling in Milwaukee for a week of pointless roll-call votes and binge drinking. The general election has already begun.

I do not think it is even a slight exaggeration to say that Biden is the weakest nominee fielded by a major political party in the modern history of this country.

[...]

(I)n addition to Biden's now-forgotten history of handsy behavior, the recent allegations of what we bloodlessly refer to as "sexual misconduct" (about which there has been media silence so ubiquitous it is all but conspiratorial), his seemingly unacceptable record on issues from foreign policy to race to health care, his undeniable cognitive decline, which becomes more pronounced every time he attempts to communicate, he is a victim of circumstances. Biden is totally irrelevant to the news cycle and will remain so for weeks and perhaps even months to come in a way that no candidate has been since the emergence of the primary system. There will be no travel, no speeches, no closed-door fundraisers with mega-donors, no campaign headquarters or extensive meetings with potential running mates or cabinet members. His campaign is an idea, something that exists on Wikipedia and occasionally on CNN when there is no breaking pandemic-related news, not something that demands the attention of every living American.

In my last WH Update, I mentioned that Joementia is in a hole financially, has a significant enthusiasm gap, and is unlikely to unite the party's left, center, and right wings.

So, putting my betting cap back on, I will agree with Yglesias at Vox that Biden's general election strategy -- as prepared by Ron Klain, that mastermind of Algore's 2000 campaign -- is to mumble "NotMeUs" and mutter 'FUnastyBerniebros' out of the other side of his mealy mouth.

Rather than spend time on a likely fruitless effort to court the left, Biden might want to accept that he’s going to take a lot of crap from the Berniesphere no matter what he does and just lean into his moderate brand. If he does, the left is sure to howl that he’s betraying progressive values -- just as they predicted.

But realistically, he’s going to be seen as a likely betrayer no matter what he does, simply because a certain quarter of the left sees the Democratic Party establishment as a constant source of betrayal and there’s no way for Biden to get away from the reality that he is a lifelong, dyed-in-the-wool member of the establishment.

Matt knows us well, but he hasn't been looking at the polling.

Most Sanders supporters are inclined to back Biden in November, but the former vice president will have some work to do to solidify those figures. The latest Morning Consult poll tracking the Democratic race, conducted March 30-April 5, found 80 percent of Democratic primary voters who said Sanders was their first-choice candidate would vote for Biden in a head-to-head matchup against Trump, while 7 percent said they would defect and back the incumbent Republican. The gap is bigger than among Democratic voters as a whole, but is less than the 12 percent of Sanders supporters estimated to have done so in 2016.

But Yglesias says us defectors are only worth half what a GOP convert is.

The level of defections to third-party candidates, by contrast, really does change a lot from year to year and could make a big difference in November. But every voter on the margin between Democrats and Republicans is worth twice as much as every voter on the margin between Democrats and the Green Party.

So it really doesn't matter what we do, right?  We'll get all the blame, just like in 2016, when Joe is defeated by Trump, but if he should pull off a stunner of an upset, the shitlibs will gloat about not having needed our votes anyway.  It's a lose-lose!

Homie don't play that game.  I won't be choosing between Jonald Bimp or Doe Truden.  I'm not voting for the lesser of two rapists, and the Supreme Court is 5-4 now -- with Biden directly responsible for Clarence Thomas -- so 6-3 without RBG or 7-2 (minus Breyer too)?  Go bitch to Chuck Schumer.


Your weak-ass Jedi mind tricks don't work on me.

-- So: Burn it Down, Cave In, or walk away i.e. #DemExit 2.0 ?  (Sam Husseini at Counterpunch also advocates for a VotePact strategy.)

Here are some options I'm considering:




Read more about the MPP at the end of David Collins' post here.  My good friend edgarblythe, who blogs at Pages of Victory, is assessing Mark Charles, who's been mentioned here several times.  I really like him as well, but do not know his ballot qualification status in Texas.


Cartoonist Ted Rall says let's go for a New Progressive Party.

Among socialist options, there's Gloria la Riva, Alyson Kennedy, Joseph Kishore, and Seattle council member Kshama Savant's baby, Socialist Alternative, which is not running a slate this cycle but building for the future.  Here's their explainer on the difference between them and DSA.



Like Charles, these candidates must petition for signatures in order to qualify on a party line or as a write-in, and the status of each at this time is not known to me, but I will be posting their updates as the news develops.
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Tuesday, April 07, 2020

The TexProgBlog Wrangle, Extra Edition


So much wrangled we needed another pen.  The first one, yesterday, is here.

From Angela Valenzuela of the Ed Equity, Politics, and Policy in Texas blog:

Late breaking COVID update just now in the Austin American-Statesman. Not covered, however, are the South Texas counties getting hit by COVID.  According to the Corpus Christi Caller Times and The Monitor out of McAllen, the virus is impacting the following cities: Mercedes, Mission, La Joya, McAllen, Donna, Alamo, and San Juan -- that is, in Hidalgo and Cameron County.

In my West Texas hometown of San Angelo, as of two days ago, 20 have it while many others are getting tested.

And from her link to the AAS:

More than 1,153 people are being treated for COVID-19 in Texas hospitals, an increase of more than 300 people from Friday, Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference Monday.

[...]

His latest news conference comes after the coronavirus’s death toll in Texas surpassed 100 over the weekend, rising to 140 fatalities Monday, according to the latest data from the Department of State Health Services. The daily count is a 13-person jump from Sunday and a 50-person increase from Friday.

More than 85,000 COVID-19 tests have been given in Texas, a 20% increase from the day prior, according to Abbott. Less than 10% of those have tested positive for the virus, he added.

[...]

Abbott for the first time on Friday revealed the number of ventilators — a life-saving device for critically ill patients — available for use statewide: 8,741. By Monday, more than 6,000 ventilators were available, but Abbott said 7,350 anesthesia machines with ventilators “could be used if needed.”

In its daily count Monday afternoon, Department of State Health Services reported 702 fresh cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The state’s total of known cases is 6,812, an increase of 464 cases from the day prior.

Now, 157 out of 254 Texas counties are reporting cases of the coronavirus.

Harris County has 1,395 cases, the most of any county. Dallas County follows with 1,112, and Travis County comes in third with 418, according to agency data.

Much of the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas and lower parts of the Panhandle still have no known cases of the coronavirus, according to the department’s data.

Here is an interactive dashboard from the Department of State Health Services (very cool), and here's some maps.  The Texas Signal has a few charts.  And here's more on the effects of the contagion in the RGV.




Those who are concerned about the spread of the virus in immigrant detention facilities at the border -- and in Houston -- have plenty to be worried about.



With respect to the incarcerated population in Houston and surrounding ...


The emotional burden of outlawing women's reproductive freedom is exacting a painful toll.



Domestic violence cases have seen one of the largest increases on the police blotter.  And the overt rage toward Asian Texans worsens.


Those with the least always seem to be hit the hardest.


And the state flexes its authoritarian muscle at the Sabine.


Meanwhile, Zoombombing troubles the more fortunate.


And the undercounting of us all means we will pay some price -- likely a heavy one -- for the pathogen through the next decade.


So it's important to find some bright spots among all these dark clouds, and I have a few here that I hope will help.

This story, from LareDOS, about the missing history of the Revilla Rebels, and specifically the Gutierrez de Lara brothers, provides us what public school texts do not: a pre-1836 Texas history that upends the TXSBOE's Anglo Saxon-slanted Sam Houston/Stephen F. Austin narrative.

Environment Texas gives links to explore nature online.

Clay Robison at the TSTA Blog prefers to trust the experts over the blowhards.  In that vein, Better Texas Blog highlights the role of policy in fighting hunger during a crisis.

Shari Biediger at the Rivard Report notes the surge in sales of baby chicks as egg prices have risen.

And The Bloggess wants you to remember you are not alone.
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Monday, April 06, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle, Cabin Fever Edition

We're three weeks through (what we all hope will be) a 6.5 week lockdown, and some members of the Texas Progressive Alliance have been feeling a little claustrophobic, while others are sewing their own masks in preparation for a supply run.

By contrast, some of us have adjusted just fine.


Here are some of the best blog posts, Tweets and left-centered news collected from around the Great State over the past week.

The COVID-19 global pandemic is impacting our lives in many ways, and that was the focus of everyone's thoughts and reporting this past week.


Our good guvnah remains above the fray, keeping his social distance from us, fiddling while Texans in (Carthage, London, Athens, Paris, Florence, Geneva, Dublin ...) Roma and Rhome burn.



Federal funding from the recently passed legislation is on the way.


But the state's economic woes will last for a long time.


Among the many industries suffering through the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus, Lone Star print media is taking it on the chin.


“We’re f—— trying to keep the ship afloat in the apocalypse,” said Tim Rogers, the editor of D Magazine, which laid off fifteen employees last week, including editors, designers, sales people, and administrators; all remaining employees are taking salary cuts. Its freelance budget has been eliminated. San Antonio’s long-running alternative newspaper, the Current, laid off ten people and cut everyone else’s salaries. The Houston Press, which became a digital-only operation in 2017, instituted another round of pay cuts and slashed its freelance budget in half. Although it has so far avoided layoffs, the Austin Chronicle has temporarily gone from a weekly print publication to an every-other-week schedule. It has also reduced staff hours by ten to thirty hours per week. Southwest Magazine, the beloved in-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines, has closed for good.

Texas dailies are also feeling the pain. On March 30, national newspaper chain Gannett, which owns the Austin American-Statesman, announced company-wide furloughs and pay cuts. Newsroom employees making more than $38,000 a year will be required to take one week of unpaid leave each month in April, May, and June.

SocraticGadfly mourned another casualty of the pathogen, possibly fatal -- Texas icon Half Price Books -- and wondered if it can survive as even a shell while reminiscing about many years of shopping there.

But some businesses are adjusting quickly.


And the state's colleges and universities are helping, too.


To date the most severe rate of infections have occurred in Texas nursing homes.



And the ripple effects to our elections are being felt.


Texas has one of the most restrictive absentee ballot laws in the country. Even under ordinary circumstances, this means many Texans will have a tougher time casting a ballot than voters in most other states.

During a pandemic that could prevent millions of voters from venturing to the polls, however, Texas’s law could wind up disenfranchising much of the state.

The law only allows Texas voters to obtain an absentee ballot under a very limited list of circumstances. Voters may obtain an absentee ballot if they plan to be absent from their home county on Election Day, if they have a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents them from voting in person, if they are over the age of 65, or if they are jailed.

It is far from clear that a healthy person who remains at home to avoid contracting coronavirus may obtain an absentee ballot.

Texas Democratic Party v. Hughs, a lawsuit filed by the state Democratic Party, seeks to fix this law — or, at least, to interpret the law in a way that will ensure healthy people can still vote. But the lawsuit potentially faces an uphill battle in a state court system dominated by conservative judges.

All nine members of the state Supreme Court are Republicans, and Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit — a sign that he intends to resist efforts to prevent this law from disenfranchising voters.

The stakes in this case are astoundingly high. As Texas Democrats note in their complaint, voters are “now heavily discouraged” from even leaving their homes “by various government orders and are being discouraged in an enormous public education campaign.”

Even if the pandemic were to end by July 14, when the state plans to hold several runoff elections, “certain populations will feel the need and/or be required to continue social distancing.” Millions of voters could potentially be forced to choose between losing their right to vote and risking contracting a deadly disease.

Kuff looked at the potential for expanded vote by mail in November.


There'll be more on COVID-19 aftershocks in Part 2 of the Weekly Wrangle, coming later today or tomorrow morning.   Here's some news from the environmental circuit:





And even in the middle of a contagion pandemic, we need to keep an eye on the Gulf.


Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast provides an update on his health (it's good news), and Keri Blakinger sends him a post for his blog collating criminal justice developments.

And I'll close this early edition of the Wrangle with some lighter fare.



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