The Texas Tribune sells all the way out

It was fairly obvious before last weekend's Corporate Republican Whorefest, but this post by Sharon pretty much seals the deal.

I was invited to appear on a panel after the showing of the documentary Haynesville: A Nation’s Hunt for an Energy Future.

I knew the film depicted natural gas drilling in the Haynesville Shale as an economic miracle for folks in north Louisiana and East Texas, with barely a mention of environmental health risks. I said yes, received an enthusiastic confirmation letter requesting my bio, which I sent in, a request to sign the “Talent Agreement,” and a list of the panel members.

Here’s the rest of the lineup:

• Gregory Kallenberg, the director of Haynesville, who according to his answers to these five questions, firmly believes natural gas is the way to go. He talks about his documentary in this video.
• Ian Duncan, Bureau of Economic Geology at UT, who does work for industry. Here is a presentation he did on shale gas.
• Justin Furnace, Chief of Staff and Legal Council at Texas Railroad Commission
• David Blackmon, senior advisor for government and external affairs for El Paso Exploration and Production Company.
• And me, Texas Sharon.

I saw I was the token enviro on the panel, but I’ve been a turd in the punchbowl before. I did want to know how the panel would be structured, and if I would have an opportunity to correct their misinformation.

I sent back the following email:

I am quite surprised that your panel is so unbalanced. I would like to get more information on how this panel will work. I don't mind being the token environmental person as long as I have an opportunity to give my vast experiences living in the gas patch and working with people who are suffering from natural gas drilling that is too close to their homes.

The next thing I know: I received a phone call from the festival coordinator notifying me that I was uninvited to participate. Maybe they would find a more suitable panel for me sometime. Ouch! But, on second thought, I reclaimed my weekend and shrugged it off to the influence from T. Boone Pickens, one of the festival’s financial backers.

Then somebody sent me this poster from the event.

Hmmm. So the Texas Tribune Festival was co-sponsored by America’s Natural Gas Alliance. The Tribune’s website says other sponsors included El Paso Natural Gas and Energy Futures Corp., formerly Texas Utilities. I was starting to put two and two together.

The TexTrib does a fine job with hiring a few good journos at above-scale wages, a great job with maps and data, the occasional blog-styled snark and once in a great while even a breaking news update. They've more or less made obsolete poor Harvey Kronberg's modern-Internet-challenged Quorum Report, though the insiders still pay for Harvey's access to the players. (The Trib is busily fondling that crowd for all it's worth, too.)

But their polling of political races has been absolute shit, and sadly now we know that their integrity is as well.

Then Steve Horn of DeSmog Blog published an investigative piece on Alternet exposing Haynesville as a piece of industry propaganda masquerading as an independent documentary. Turns out Gregory Kallenberg “is actually a well-connected oil and natural gas man, with both a direct and familial financial stake in the ongoing domestic natural gas boom.”

Horn learned that Kallenberg is vice president of his family’s company, Caddo Management Inc. of Shreveport. Caddo Management is an oil and gas exploration company with active drilling operations in Arkansas and Louisiana.

So do you think that when Kallenberg takes his supposed independent documentary to international film festivals he’s upfront about his oil and gas connections and the fact that he’s flacking for the industry? (Even though he makes no mention of them on his website under the “about” section or in “film credits.”)

If you believe that, you probably still believe in the independence and integrity of The Texas Tribune’s shale gas coverage.

Maybe there is an explanation of the Tribune’s behavior that isn’t explained by financial influence of the natural gas industry. But if there is, it is past time for them to make their case. And from where I sit, it better be a doozy.

You just have to understand from now on what you're getting when you read the Trib. You're getting the straight story ... as told by the oil and gas companies' PR departments.

Update: Eye on Williamson is nicer than me, and McBlogger is nastier.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks Alec Baldwin's hair does a pretty decent impersonation of our governor as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff discusses the latest Texas polling data and what a Rick Perry candidacy might mean for downballot Democrats.

On a night during which both Georgia and Texas put men to death, Letters From Texas visits the moral and practical implications.

Amy Price, the progressive running for Houston's city council at large #4 seat, had a great week of news coverage. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected the stories, audio, and video.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson shows how state Sen. Steve Ogden's retirement announcement this week has shaken up the county's politics: The changing election landscape in Williamson County, creating opportunities.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Rick Perry is having a bad week. Boo hoo.

This week on Left of College Station Teddy asks how do you support reproductive rights? LoCS focuses on reproductive rights all this week as the anti-choice '40 Days for Life' protest begins

At McBlogger, we take a sniff around LCRA's decision to privatize some of their assets and don't like the smell.

Neil at Texas Liberal noted a new phone app that will show the amount of forced labor used in many of the everyday things that we buy.

Libby Shaw over at TexasKaos brings us up to date on Rick Perry's limelight moment. Called upon to demonstrate his cool under fire before a national audience at the last Republican debate, he showed his true mettle. He melted down. See all the details here: Rick Perry Bombs Presidential Debate.

Rick Perry clarifies debate snafus, and David Dewhurst as Chupacabra

Via Harold Cook's Letters from  Texas, our governor straightens out some of his mumbling, stumbling statements from last week's debate:



And from the World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Juanita Jean observes some intra-Republican abuse ...

Sunday Funnies, Class Warfare Edition

All about Amy *updates*

Charles Kuffner has posted his audio interview with the Houston City Council candidate of my preference, Amy Price, and she also interviewed this week with Greenwatch TV as well. That video will be linked here as soon as it is posted there. Update: Here it is.



From Kuff's written intro:

Price is a violin teacher and professional musician who has performed with such bands as Gordian Knot, The Buddhacrush, and Orange Is In. She’s also someone I’ve known and been friends with for over 20 years.

I will add that Amy plans on doing some of her LPC-Intern experience toward obtaining her LPC licensure at H.O.P.E. Psychotherapy of Houston, PLLC pending approval of the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors, and is a member of the Houston Professional Musicians Association, Local 65-699 of the American Federation of Musicians.

Amy is, again, running in the At Large #4 contest, challenging incumbent Chief Crime Labford -- err, Councilman CO Bradford, along with Louis Molnar. I have previously documented the distinctions between the two men and Amy here.

If you think that municipal government should NOT be run of, by, for, or like a corporation -- if you think that city services like health inspections at your favorite restaurant and libraries that are open every day, or fixing potholes or collecting garbage or providing safe, clean drinking water should NOT be on a P&L statement -- then you have a very clear choice in AL#4, because Amy will NOT be 'business as usual' at City Hall.

And that's what scares her opponents the most.

Find Amy's website here, her blog here, on Facebook here and on Twitter here, and consider making a contribution to her campaign here.

Update II: From the comments at Kuffner's post ...

I am a fairly conservative Republican, so I attended the Heights area forum tonight to assess the candidates for this position and one other. I have heard hundreds of candidates over the years. This woman was the best informed, best prepared, most thoughtful candidate I have seen in many years.

She had thoughtful answers about job growth, neighborhood concerns, and the City’s dismal crime lab. The organizers of the event allowed Bradford to send a substitute, which is generally unheard of at a candidate forum.

I have never voted for a Green Party candidate for anything. There is no Republican running in this contest, and my thinking is that while I might not want a council dominated by Green Party activists, there should be a place at council table for a thoughtful, well-prepared young leader like this. I plan to recommend her to my neighbors. I am under no delusions about her chances against a well-funded incumbent, but it might do democracy good if he had a closer than normal contest.

Less kooky, more snarky

Whether because of his relative inexperience as a debater or due to a simple lack of serious debate preparation, Perry's attacks seemed to have the unintended affect of making Romney, who clearly has been practicing his debate routine, look good.

But it wasn't even Romney or Perry who had the best debate line of the night. It was newcomer Gary Johnson, who in his first debate appearance, offered a crowd-pleasing zinger about President Obama's handling of the economy.

"My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration," Johnson declared, prompting his GOP rivals and the audience to erupt in laughter. (It later came to light that Johnson had lifted the joke from conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.)

Rick Perry didn't receive a decent applause line until well into Thursday's night's pissing contest, and at times was jeered by the Orlando audience. My perception is that his Ponzi scheme nonesense is turning off voters, particularly the demographic that Florida is full of, and the recent polls seem to be bearing this out.

But my favorite line goes to Crazytown Bachmann, who when asked how much of every dollar should a taxpayer be allowed to keep, said "all of it". Um, then what exactly would you be able to govern, honey? Right. We get it.

Michele Bachmann, who seems to be getting less attention at the debates as her poll numbers fade, did try to gain momentum by repeating two of her previous attacks against Perry: His backing of an executive order in Texas that mandated the vaccination of young girls against HPV and his moderate stance on immigration.

But Bachmann's attacks offered Perry two of his strongest moments in the debate. In response to Bachmann's claims he was influenced on the HPV decision by campaign contributions, Perry looked into the camera and admitted he had been "lobbied" on HPV—by a young woman who had "stage four cervical cancer." ...

On immigration, Perry insisted nobody on the stage understands the subject as he does. Both Bachmann and Romney slammed Perry for backing legislation in Texas that allowed the children of illegal immigrants to attend state colleges and universities at the in-state tuition rates—a criticism Perry slammed as heartless.

"If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," Perry said, as some in the audience erupted in boos. "We need to be educating these children because they will become a drag on our society. I think that's what Texans wanted to do."

Yes, booing. And that was likely before the Floridians in the audience got this news which the TexTrib broke yesterday...

Native-born Texans who were seeking employment likely lost out to competition from immigrants in recent years, according to a conservative think tank that advocates for limited migration to the country.

The data, compiled by the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, may provide some low-hanging fruit for Gov. Rick Perry’s Republican opponents. Perry has been attacked from the right on immigration with his field of challengers alleging he’s been too soft on illegal immigrants in Texas. The study estimates that population benefited from Texas’ job growth the last four years more than citizens.

The center found that of the 279,000 jobs created in Texas since the second quarter of 2007, 225,000 — about 80 percent — went to legal and illegal immigrants. The center says that while “no estimate of illegal immigration is exact,” at least 40 percent of the job recipients were illegal immigrants.

“Of recently arrived working-age immigrants in the state, 113,000 are in the country illegally. The other half of the recently arrived immigrants (112,000) are legally in the country,” the reports says. “This means that in Texas — one of the few states that experienced job growth after 2007 — native-born workers benefited little from this growth.”

It should be noted here -- since the Texas Tribune did not -- that the Center for Immigration Studies is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

FAIR, CIS and NumbersUSA are all part of a network of restrictionist organizations conceived and created by John Tanton, the “puppeteer” of the nativist movement and a man with deep racist roots... CIS was conceived by Tanton and began life as a program of FAIR. CIS presents itself as a scholarly think tank that produces serious immigration studies meant to serve “the broad national interest.” But the reality is that CIS has never found any aspect of immigration that it liked, and it has frequently manipulated data to achieve the results it seeks." (emphasis theirs)

But that won't matter to people who boo gay soldiers.

Not unlike the past debate, the forum included a potentially ugly moment for the party. The presidential hopefuls took a question via YouTube from a openly gay soldier serving Iraq about the possibility of "don't ask, don't tell" being reinstated.

The question was posed to Rick Santorum, but before he answered, there were audible boos in the audience —- something he and other GOP candidates on stage didn't acknowledge.

Video here. The sad thing is that I almost expected it after the cheering of Rick Perry's record-breaking executions and letting uninsured people die, so I wasn't all that surprised to hear it.

The least worst of the three debates this month in terms of exposing the Grand Old Party of Hate, and also the least successful for Rick Perry's career advancement.

Progress?

Update: Related reading ...

FACT CHECK: Slippery assertions in GOP debate

The Not Quite Ready for Primetime Debate

Perry takes lumps for ‘soft’ position on illegal immigration in GOP debate

Perry met cancer victim ‘lobbyist’ after signing HPV order

Huntsman warns conservatives against purity tests

Questions I'd like to see asked in tonight's GOP debate

Via Think Progress.

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

The Republican presidential contenders are meeting in Orlando, Florida this evening for their third debate of the month.

Here are the questions we’d like to see asked and answered tonight.

• Social Security: There are 3,994,280 Floridians between the ages of 40 and 54. They’ve been paying into Social Security for decades based on the promise that they too will receive benefits later. You all support privatizing Social Security and some of you believe it is unconstitutional and may want to abolish it altogether, so how can you guarantee that these workers will receive the benefits that they’ve been promised?

• Medicare: Republicans said the Affordable Care Act would destroy Medicare Advantage because it achieved $500 BILLION in savings by cutting wasteful overpayments to private insurance companies; however, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) noted today that Medicare Advantage premiums in Florida have dropped 26% and enrollment has increased 20% since the Affordable Care Act was passed. Isn’t this proof that the Affordable Care Act is working?

• Taxes: In 2009, 1,470 households with incomes above $1 MILLION paid ZERO in federal income taxes and 40,000 millionaires pay a tax rate of 4.2 percent or less. Why should many millionaires pay a lower tax rate than middle class families?

• Let Them Die? Florida has the fifth highest rate of people without health insurance in the country, with 3.8 MILLION Floridians lacking health insurance. Do you agree with the Tea Party audience at your last debate that society should let these people die if they become sick and cannot afford care or do you think they have a right to health care?

• Rebuilding America: President Obama visited a bridge today to highlight his plan to spend $50 BILLION to rebuild our crumbling bridges, roads, and transit systems which will also create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. The president’s infrastructure plan would immediately invest more than $1.5 BILLION in Florida and create at least 20,500 local jobs. Why shouldn’t we take the $40 BILLION in wasteful tax giveaways to Big Oil and instead spend that money putting Americans back to work rebuilding America?

• Immigration: Nearly one-quarter of Florida’s population, some 4.2 MILLION people, is Hispanic. Does the GOP’s virulently anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy positions risk alienating this large and growing segment of the electorate in Florida and elsewhere?

• Voting: Florida, like many states under Republican control, has passed a strict new voting law that will make it more difficult for millions of students, elderly, minority, and military voters to vote and actually have their votes counted. Since there is almost no evidence of actual voter fraud, do you support these laws even though they are likely to disenfranchise millions of Americans who have the right to vote?

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

The debate begins at 8 p.m. tonight on FOX.