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Tuesday, May 28, 2019

The Sine Die Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance waves adios to the Texas Legislature until January of 2021 (with any good luck).  Now our lawmakers watch, along with the rest of us, to see which of their hard-worked, hard-argued, hard-fought bills become law -- or not -- by the pen of Greg Abbott.


The Texas Tribune, always with the most comprehensive coverage, has a photo gallery and a list of winners and losers from the 86th session.  The Dallas News' Texas Tracker aggregated their Lege reporting (which subscribers can customize to their interests).

Here's just a sampling of the latest from yesterday and the holiday weekend from those two sources:

Gunsense  and gun-nonsense bills made it through at the deadline.  Criminal justice reform advocates ran into one final roadblock in the Texas Senate, as a watered-down amendment was stripped out at the last minute.

After the fate of (House Bill 2754) was decided, state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, added a more limited version of the provision as an amendment to Senate Bill 815, which was a fairly uncontroversial bill relating to the preservation of criminal records. The House approved the bill, with Moody’s amendment about Class C misdemeanor arrests, in an 81 to 52 vote. But the Senate didn't approve the change, and Moody's amendment was taken out of the bill in a compromise report proposed by a group of lawmakers from both chambers.

Moody partly blamed the amendment's downfall on the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) -- one of the top police unions in the state -- who he said "stabbed me in the back and waged an outrageous campaign of outright lies and character assassination." He added that "pressure from the top down" in the Senate ultimately killed the bill.

Grits for Breakfast had the early analysis on this clusterf.

The most significant legislation of the session, the bill that reduces property taxes and adequately funds public schools, reached bipartisan consensus (and self-aggrandizement to the point of overkill).

Lawmakers also signed off on the state's two-year, $250-plus billion dollar budget.

The approved $250.7 billion, made up of state taxes and fees, local property tax dollars and federal funds, marks a 16% spending increase over the two-year budget approved by lawmakers in the tight-fisted 2017 legislative session. ... Facing a cautiously optimistic fiscal forecast, lawmakers expect to have an additional $10 billion or so to spend over the next two years, compared with the previous budget cycle. They agreed to allocate $6.5 billion in new state funding for schools and $5.1 billion to buy down Texans’ local property taxes, which state dollars supplement to pay for public education.

Pay raises for teachers -- not the $5000 across-the-board increase Dan Patrick had promised, though -- and a 13th pension check for retired teachers are included.

Texas Freedom Network made note of the fact that 2018's blue wave, and another one looming in 2020, made divisive legislation more difficult to pass.  Better Texas Blog enumerates five good bills that passed, five bad bills that failed, and five missed opportunities.  Environment Texas also scores the Lege's results as mixed.  Texas Vox blogged that lawmakers punted on taking any action with respect to the chemical fires Houston has recently suffered from.  And the Texas Observer's Candice Bernd wrote that despite efforts to soften the penalties for protesting against pipelines, the Lege passed the bill designating them as felony offenses.  (IANAL, but I would not expect these laws to withstand legal/judicial/constitutional muster.)

There was a raft of election law developments that was good news/bad news: SOS David Whitley caught all the blame for the ill-fated voter roll purge and went unconfirmed by the state Senate, thus forcing him to resign.  Many of the worst bills meant to intimidate voters were similarly defeated; SB9's failure was one of Progress Texas' best moments of the session.  But Houston Public Media reported that Harris County remains one of the most difficult places in the United States for people to both register and vote.

“Registration rates in Texas are among the lowest in the United States. Yet voter registration rates in Harris County are far lower, and increasingly so,” said University of Houston researcher Suzanne Pritzker. “If we look between 2010 and 2016, we see that the voter registration gap between Texas and Harris County has been increasing.”

Meanwhile, Texas Public Radio reported on Bexar County's $11 million dollar acquisition of new voting machines that include a paper trail.

Several bloggers opined about the bill that enables the Texas Green Party to be on the 2020 ballot.  David Collins has been tracking its progress; it's now awaiting the governor's signature.  Socratic Gadfly also had some thoughts prior to passage.  Kuff's take is just as elitist as you would expect from a Democratic establishment suck-up, but at least it's not as whiny as it could have been.  And in other third party developments, Ballot Access News says that an Odessa Libertarian Party member has won a seat on the Ector County Hospital Board.

(Gadfly also looked at the latest woes of the Dallas Morning News.)

Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer has the news about CBD oil's legalized usage for certain medical conditions, but most experts agree that the Lege made the barest measurable expansion of cannabis decriminalization.

There's some 2019 and 2020 election news that Texas blogs and news sources had last week.  First: Joe Biden makes a campaign and fundraising appearance in Houston today.  He's running precisely as you'd expect the front-runner would.


Hillary Clinton also spoke at the Harris County Democratic Party's Johnson Rayburn Richards luncheon last Friday, and in what must have created some awkward moments, it was revealed by Justin Miller at the Texas Observer that Tony Buzbee, a Houston mayoral challenger to Sylvester Turner who donated over $500,000 to two of Donald Trump's PACs in 2016, also gave the HCDP $5000 as a "White Pantsuit" sponsor for the JRR fundraiser.

Early voting begins today in most Texas jurisdictions with municipal runoff elections on June 8.  The Rivard Report highlights the nastiness of the mayoral runoff in San Antonio.  Mark Jones at Rice's Kinder Institute (Urban Edge blog) reminds us that there are less than six months until Houston holds its city elections.

US Rep. Chip Roy single-handedly delayed a $19.1 billion disaster aid funding package, including Harvey relief, that John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump had all approved, drawing universal condemnation.

Texas Standard also reported that Galveston Bay's oyster harvest was halted shortly after the ITC chemical fire caused a benzene spill into the Houston Ship Channel two weeks ago.

Last weekend at Crystal Beach, a Jeep rally got so out of control that even the libertine, libertarian locals were terrified and appalled.  John Nova Lomax at Texas Monthly:

Nobody knows for sure how many Jeeps, lifted trucks, ATVs, side-by-sides, and four-by-fours descended on the Bolivar Peninsula - -a narrow spit of storm-wracked sand between Galveston and Port Arthur -- during last weekend’s chaos. One estimate pegged the number at no fewer than 40,000 vehicles, many with intoxicated drivers zigzagging beaches with no marked lanes or navigating a two-lane highway with lots of construction zones, often with up to a dozen people riding unsecured in the backs of pickups.


Galveston County authorities made at least 100 arrests (most for alcohol-related offenses) as Jeep enthusiasts converged for Go Topless Weekend, an annual car show and campout in Crystal Beach. Of eighteen wrecks in the area, eight were deemed serious. EMS dispatchers were barraged with more than 600 calls for service, and one of the accidents snarled traffic on Highway 87 -- the sole east-west thoroughfare and only way to drive on or off the peninsula --for about six hours. Videos of the weekend’s drunken brawls have been posted to YouTube. A young man emerged from a coma on Monday after his head was run over by a truck from which he’d fallen, and at least a half-dozen injured passengers were evacuated by helicopter to the UTMB hospital in Galveston.


Yet it’s far from just Jeep owners who are to blame for the mayhem. The event coincided with prom weekend for many schools in Deep East Texas, leading to the presence of hordes of young people arriving in jacked-up trucks and zipping around on dirt bikes and four-wheelers. Thanks to a swirl of teenage hormones, copious amounts of alcohol, and the revving of high-powered engines, fights inevitably broke out, and some young women took the event’s invitation to Go Topless literally. The Texas Patriot Network’s MAGA Beach Bash was also taking place nearby, near the town of Port Bolivar, adding to the crowds on the peninsula. On top of it all, a whim of Mother Nature—an abnormally high “bull tide”—forced all this humanity into a narrower and narrower slice of drunken, thrown-together life, hemmed in by saltwater on one side and dunes on the other.


Finally, Pages of Victory has some voting advice for progressives, while Harry Hamid contemplates his reality.
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Monday, April 08, 2019

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the Baylor Lady Bears ...


... and gets its guns up for the Texas Tech Red Raiders in tonight's NCAA men's basketball final.


Here comes the round-up of the best blog posts and lefty news from across the Lone Star State from last week!

With seven weeks remaining in the regular legislative session, Texas lawmakers got down to business, with the House passing major public school finance reform including a raise for teachers.  The Senate decided that a few bigotry bills were more important.

In election-related news ...

The state Senate this week is expected take up Senate Bill 9, an omnibus election integrity bill by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), who chaired an interim committee on election security. Broadly, the bill is the results of that committee’s work and would:

  • Require counties to use “auditable voting systems” that produce a paper record enabling a voter to verify their vote was cast as intended
  • Establish a “risk-limiting audit” pilot program to ensure electronic voting machines are counting votes accurately
  • Strengthen criminal and civil penalties for Election Code violations; and
  • Increase the certification requirements for people providing transportation and curb-side assistance to voters.

The bill passed the State Affairs committee on a 7-2 party-line vote on April 1. Individuals representing Tea Party and conservative interest groups such as Concerned Women for America, Direct Action Texas, True Texas Elections spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing last month. Opponents included individuals representing the Texas Civil Rights Project, Disability Rights Texas, MALDEF, and the League of Women Voters.

CD17: Pflugerville IT manager Rick Kennedy reauthorized his campaign committee for a potential rematch against U.S. Rep. Bill Flores (R-Bryan), who defeated Kennedy, 56%-42%, last year.

CD21: Former Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), the 2014 Democratic nominee for governor, said she will not challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R) and may instead challenge U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Austin). Davis said on a recent podcast that she would support U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio) if he chose to run for U.S. Senate.

CCA: Houston attorney William Demond established a campaign committee for an unspecified seat on the Court of Criminal Appeals, likely as a Democrat. Judges Bert Richardson (CCA3), Kevin Yeary (CCA4) and David Newell (CCA9) -- all Republicans-- are on the ballot in 2020.

Down With Tyranny reports on a rumored primary challenge in TX-33, where state Rep. RamΓ³n Romero may run against Cong. Marc Veasey.  Off the Kuff cheered the impending settlement of the lawsuit over that bogus SOS advisory about non-citizen voters.  Texas Standard found over a quarter-million Texans who experienced difficulties voting in the 2018 midterms.

Based on data (the Texas Civil Rights Project) collected, it identified five main barriers to casting a ballot in the state. They include voting machine malfunctions, non-compliance with voter registration law and inconvenient polling locations.

Law and Crime blogged about a federal judge in Austin who seems inclined to strike down the state's anti-BDS law.  Grits for Breakfast has a load of data about arrests for Class C misdemeanors.  The Texas Observer's Michael Barajas writes about improvements to the Sandra Bland Act.  And since hemp is no longer classified as a dangerous drug by the state of Texas, and as the Lege debates decriminalization, what exactly is legal and what isn't?  This piece in the Dallas News offers some answers and some clues to the future.

Even as another chemical plant in the Houston area exploded ...


... several climate activists went to Austin to testify about the #ITCDisaster.


KUT reports that a battle over renewable energy is brewing under the pink dome.

Before speaking at Rice University last Friday, Vice President Pence stopped by ICE offices in north Houston and tried to find a silver lining in Trump's about-face on shutting the border down.

“The president’s made it clear that if over the course of the next year, if Mexico fails to act we’ll begin by considering tariffs that we impose on cars that come into our country and our president will consider closing portions of southern border,” said Pence. 

Pence also praised ICE officers who arrested 284 employees at a technology repair company in the Dallas suburb of Allen on charges of working in the United States illegally.  No charges were announced for the employer.


PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posted his regular weekly 2020 update, and SocraticGadfly showed why, as he sees it, that Pete Buttigieg is so bad a presidential candidate he could be called Beto Lite.  Progrexas blogs that Beto O'Rourke's charter schools problem isn't going away any time soon.

Dan Solomon at TM has the Croatian who finds art in James Harden's beard.


And Beyond Bones tells the tale of when beer saved the world.
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Monday, November 12, 2018

The 2018 Post Mortem Wrangle

Everybody's got an opinion the week after the landslide, and the Texas Progressive Alliance rounds up the best (and worst) of them in a ride around the Texblogosphere to celebrate the Democrats' big wins -- and mourn the losses -- from last Tuesday.

It's also the day following the Armistice Centenary, or the celebration of the ending of WWI, a hundred years ago.  As Caitlin Johnstone noted, the best way to thank veterans for their service is to not make any more of them.


This synopsis of the US Senate race -- from January of 2017 to last Tuesday -- by Patrick Svitek and Abby Livingston of the Texas Tribune is the best ten-minute read on how the most important election in Texas unfolded.

RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly corrected the knobs at Politico about O'Rourke's shunning the use of political consultants as a reason why he lost.  RG also had the best morning-after quick takes.

Beto's extremely long coattails for a losing candidate were the focus of many stories: Tarrant County turning purple, Fort Bend and Hays turning blue, the appellate courts flipping, the sweeps in Harris and Dallas Counties.

And as several media outlets predicted going back to September, the cult of Beto grows larger with his defeat as 'O'Rourke 2020' trial balloons are being floated all over the country.
While early voting was under way, Politico also took the liberty of introducing us to the next Ted Cruz, aka Lamar Smith's successor in TX-21, Chip Roy.

Jeff Balke at the Houston Press wants to know if Lizzie Fletcher will do for METROrail what John Culberson refused to do.

There will be another chance for voters in Harris County's East End to cast a ballot before the end of the year: the special election to fill the state Senate seat relinquished by US Rep.-elect Sylvia Garcia was quickly set by Governor Abbott for December 11.  Two statehouse representatives, Carol Alvarado and Ana Hernandez, announced their intentions to run for SD-6 way back in March (after Garcia won her CD-29 primary).

A handful of old TPA friends were on the ballot last week: Trey Martinez Fischer goes back to the Lege to represent HD-116, but Nick Lampson came up short in his bid to unseat party-switcher Jeff Branick as Jefferson County Judge.  And the Alliance salutes former blogger KT Musselman on his election as Justice of the Peace in Williamson County.

Socratic Gadfly had a three-part election wrap. First, a look at general hot takes, trends, and issues from various races. Second, he observed that conservative writers at centrist political mags were getting out the long knives for Beto, maybe in fear of a 2020 presidential run. Third, noting successful Democratic Socialists of America campaigns, he wondered if they would stay true to ideals once in office and other issues; above all, the use of the word "socialist."

Grits for Breakfast examined the 2018 results through his criminal justice reform lens.  Scott Henson followed that up with a wrangle of more CJ news, leading off with a profile of Harris County's Judge-elect, Lina Hidalgo, and her reform platform.

For more background: Charles Kuffner interviewed Hidalgo before the election, and here's a profile and slideshow the Chronicle ran this week. Also related, from the Texas Observer: "The midterms triggered a seismic shift in Harris County courts."

Law and Crime talked to State District Judge-elect Franklin Bynum, one of three DSA members elected in Harris County.

Harris County's new Clerk, Diane Trautman, has plans to replace the county's antiquated eSlate voting machines with new ones that provide a paper trail.  The problem, as always, will be finding the money to do so.

Even as Texas House Republicans begin to consolidate support for Rep. Dennis Bonnen as Speaker, a larger Democratic minority will hopefully push the lower chamber -- and the Lege overall -- more toward the political center.

David Collins has three posts on the progressive POV of the election results, all linked at Part I, while Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current has a thirty-second take on how Democrats of a progressive bent hope to build on 2018.

Off the Kuff had some fun with the Harris County Republican Party and its ridiculous whining about straight-ticket voting.

Funnier still were the accusations of 'Communist' by HCGOP leaders against a losing county commissioner candidate.  Jef Rouner at the HP:

The idea that Penny Shaw, who ran against (incumbent Republican Jack) Cagle, is a Communist appears to be a right-wing conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that Shaw, a Democrat, is a member of the Communist Party of Texas. The idea seems to be based on Shaw's attendance at events the Houston Communist Party attends, such as the state Democratic convention this past summer. Sources "proving" her link to communism are either broken or do not actually contain the quotes that some alt-wiki authors contend they do.

In the lousiest political take/least progressive category, we have Blue Dog Democrat consultant Colin Strother making the case for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 2.0.  Sample:

Unlike many politicians, Pelosi doesn’t have an ego.

AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

Therese Odell at Foolish Watcher vents about the Saturday Night Live/Dan Crenshaw apology.

Paradise in Hell interprets the presidential appointment-making process.

And Harry Hamid is in a time machine at the end of the hall.
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Monday, November 05, 2018

Election Eve Wrangle

Whatever happened to 'vote your hopes and dreams'?


There will be a blue wave, unless there isn't.  The red firewall will break the azure tsunami, unless Trump's hate spew has punched suburban holes in it.  The US House flips (but maybe not), and the Senate stays in Mitch McConnell's terrapin-like appendages, except maybe for a systematic polling error, a la 2016.

No wonder Team Donkey is experiencing some cognitive dissonance.



Who, or what, gets the blame if the Ds can't get it done tomorrow?  Voter suppression, from Georgia to North Dakota to Texas college campuses like Prairie View A&M and Texas State?  Voting machines flipping straight-ticket votes (to Ted Cruz?)  There will still be plenty of finger-pointing at Russian hackers and Green candidates, I feel certain.  Even if some dropped out of their race and endorsed the Democrat.

[The old Catch-22: "Greens should run in state and local races and build up to presidential races" instead of playing spoiler (sic) every four years.  "Greens should drop out and endorse Democrats because this is the most important election of our lifetime".  You know, since the one two years ago.  That was their fault Democrats lost.  Blah blah.]

There may be some less nefarious, more legitimate reasons the election will be won -- or lost; for example, the strength of women voters.  Notable for the demographers, moderate Republican women who live in suburban America turning out to cast their ballots against Trump and the GOP.  No, wait; it's the youth vote.  That's it *snaps fingers*, the children are our future.  Either is better than blaming the Latinxs, after all.  We're all tired of hearing that.

Hold on a minute: this is a midterm election, and Texas Democrats who haven't elected one of theirs since, you know, Jim Hightower was Ag Commissioner always lose because they can't raise any money for consultants, advisers, pollsters, etc.  Except they did, a shitpot full of dough, in 2018 -- at least those running for Congress; not so much the statewides save Congressman SuperBeto, whose massive Bernie-like ATM machine reversed both the prevailing Texas narrative and the cash flow, doubling the take of Senator Serpent Covered in Vaseline.


The Cult of RFO'R aims for the upset tomorrow evening.  Rumor has it happening.


So as President Shitler is fond of saying: we'll see what happens.  I'm ready for it to be over; how about you?  Here's your roundup of lefty blog posts and news from the final week before E-Day.

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

One unplumbed premise that the midterms might reveal is whether the strength of the Lone Star grassroots has shifted from one major party to the other, either because of 'outsiders' becoming 'insiders' or because there needs to be a "bad guy" to focus on and motivate the base.

Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, says Democrats nationally — and in some parts of Texas — have unleashed the kind of intensity we used to see from the tea party.

“So the question of whether there is still that ability to motivate Republican voters on the other side is the big question going into this cycle,” Henson said.

Henson believes one reason the tea party’s galvanizing force has slipped in local and congressional races is that conservatives no longer have Barack Obama to target. And Donald Trump has taken over the role of chief agitator of conservatives.

Tea party-backed candidates have also been elected. In Texas, the movement has been changed by that success.

“I think once you have people who are part of institutions, it inevitably looks different, because you aren’t banging from the outside,” Henson said. “Like it or not, you are part of the status quo, and you are part of the establishment.”

Perhaps the only competitive statewide contest down the ballot shows signs of GOP panic, as indicted felon/AG Ken Paxton digs in to the deepest pockets of the friends he has left.

In addition to the TV ads, Paxton’s recent campaign finance filings have indicated that Republicans in high places are tuned in to the race in its home stretch. In recent days, the attorney general has received a $282,000 in-kind donation from Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign; more than $350,000 in in-kind contributions from Texas for Lawsuit Reform, the political arm of the tort reform group; and $10,000 each from two of the biggest donors in the Republican Party: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.

Millard Fillmore's Bathtub linked to a picture of Sweaty Beto, which may have been the Halloween costume of the year.


Stirred by Trump's call, armed militia groups head south to welcome the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free intercept the invading (sic) migrant caravan.

Asked whether his group planned to deploy with weapons, McGauley laughed. “This is Texas, man,” he said.

Off the Kuff examined a pair of statewide judicial races.

In Harris County, the Texas Observer foresees a day of reckoning for Republican judges who have held fast to the money bail system, rewarding their friends and penalizing the poor.

Isiah Carey of Fox26 was first with the news that Houston mayor Sylvester Turner's first announced challenger next year will be former Democrat*, now (?) not-Trump Republican, non-DWI-convict and megawealthy trial lawyer -- Rick Perry's defense attorney, for those catching up -- Tony Buzbee.  *Lookie here, from Texpatriate:

(D)espite being the one-time Chairman of the Galveston County Democratic Party, a two-time Democrat nominee for the State Legislature and the once rumored Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor. However, of late, Buzbee has been appointed to the Board of Regents of his alma matter, Texas A&M University, and become a key financial supporter of both Perry and (Gov. Greg) Abbott.

Durrel Douglas at Houston Justice blogged the 2019 Houston City Council District B early line.  And in an excellent explainer, described how the local activist/consultant game -- getting paid to do politics, that is -- is a lot like having the app on your phone for the jukebox down at the local bar.

Socratic Gadfly, returning from a recent vacation, took a look at a major nature and environment issue that fired up up opposition to Trump — the Bears Ears downsizing — and offered his thoughts on the value of the original national monument site versus critics of several angles, and things that could make it even better.

Therese Odell at Foolish Watcher also leavens the politics with some Game of Thrones news.

And Harry Hamid's midnight tale from last week moves ahead to 1 a.m. (with no accounting for Daylight Savings Time and 'falling back' noted).
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Sunday, November 05, 2017

Sunday Fall Back Funnies


Seeing the Forest:

Voter suppression, coherent message telling voters how their lives will be better, authenticity so they know you mean it, listening to and appealing to all components and regions of the traditional Dem coalition, outreach to new voters, keeping the other side from rigging things like voting machines and voter registration lists and illegal donations and activities and interference like Russia and Comey, and then delivering for your constituencies in order to help the constituencies AND the next candidate who runs. (Thanks, Obama.)

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Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Texas is still a non-voting state

As a reminder, one could read a blog post here on Trump every single day (and two on Sunday with cartoons), and that's what you'll find on most every blog in the right-hand column.  It's my belief, long-held, that the Democratic Party in which I was once a committed activist has fallen down so hard that they have become all but useless as a tool to stop the worst Republican legislation, nationally and most especially in Texas.  So the focus here will remain on what tools there are that can be used to slow the roll of these GOP cretins, and what Democrats should do in order to gain -- or regain -- both the respect and vote of those who, like me, have simply given up on them.

Below, the reveal from Michael Li, via his Twitter feed.


All blame assigned the two million four hundred thousand-plus Texans who chose to vote in 2016 but not for Trump or Clinton should now cease.  Following the blind binary logic employed to claim a victory where none exists in reality, if it was ever the intention of those who voted 'other' to instead cast a ballot to block, not for but against one of the two worst-in-history choices of the red/blue duopoly, then the pie chart above should disavow that false notion.  Partisans of the bipolar persuasion shouldn't spend any more effort trying to shame us into voting for their shitty candidates.  That effort can and should be more wisely spent convincing some of the six million registered non-voters -- you know, the people who don't pay much attention to politics, don't have much of an opinion either way, etc. -- to vote for your shitty candidate.  Less selling/spinning, simpler arguments, higher success and conversion ratios and all that.

Seems obvious to me but apparently not so much to others.

In Texas, just like California and roughly forty other states, the Electoral College outcome is foreordained.  My vote for Jill Stein did not contribute to electing Trump in 2016, any more than my vote for Stein in 2012 helped or hurt Barack Obama from being re-elected.  Someone voting for a minor party candidate is just not something a committed duopolist should be concerned about.  Getting people who are registered to vote, but didn't, to the polls for your man or woman should be the only thing that matters now.  There were over six million of those folks in the state of Texas in 2016, a number 50% greater than those who voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

You have one job in 2018, Democrats.  Focus.

Don't ask why they're not voting, or posit reasons you have divined for a Facebook post.  As odd as it may seem, non-voters actually are voting their self-interest, even if it seems they aren't (conservatives prefer to call them 'values', and are more adept at compromising them for the sake of political expediency, which explains Christians' continuing support of Trump: a Supreme Court that strikes down Roe v. Wade being just one example).  Don't scold them when they don't see things from your POV.  Just get off your couch and go talk to them.  Start with your neighbors in your home precinct.

I'd help, as I have for the past ten years, if you hadn't run me off with your scorn and ridicule for voting my conscience and principles.  You might be calling it my privilege, but that's just one more reason you're on your own now.  Maybe you haven't noticed, but some of the old guard is still doing that.  Shouldn't have to be said, but that's no way for Democrats to win elections.

But if you would rather ... go on and keep whining about the Russians, Russian ads on Facebook, hackable voting machines, voter photo ID, gerrymandering, and the host of other excuses for losing that you really can't do much about.  Until you turn out some votes for your party's candidates, that is.

Twenty-eighteen is going to be a difficult midterm for Democrats; they're likely to lose some Senate seats in Trump states, and Republican Senators once thought to be among the worst are going to be primaried from their hard right and lose, as in Alabama yesterday, or retire and be replaced by someone further right.  John McCain is going to die very soon, and the governor there is likely to appoint someone who thinks like him, thus the GOP votes against Obamacare repeal are dwindling, and that bill will come back sooner than later.

Here in Texas, Beto O'Rourke remains a little mealy-mouthed on Medicare for All.  That's not going to get him over the hump no matter how much Twitter porn Ted Cruz's staff 'likes', as Jon Tilove at the Statesman pointed out.  And there are some Democrats who still can't see any gubernatorial candidates, though there are two: Mr. International Leather and Bernie Sanders in a cowboy hat, as Leif Reigstad at Texas Monthly posted a couple of days ago (disregard the attempts at snark).  It's certainly understandable that these candidates are invisible to the state's ConservaDems; they should concentrate, as I have previously advised, on recruiting Joe Straus to run.  Even Big Jolly's readers want to see it happen, so it would be a bipartisan collaboration.  Clue to the neolibs and the corporate media continuing to ask him: forget about Hamlet Castro.  Please.

And as blogged one month ago (scroll to the very end), the scrum to go up against John Cumbersome has indeed winnowed, by word and by deed.  Alex Triagesyphilis wormed his way right out of contention by reprising the role of Jon Ossoff, raising tons of money while exhorting half-measures on Medicare for All.  (The DNC, and Ben Ray Lujan of the DCCC, approve this message.)  He and corporate lawyer Lizzie Fletcher can go stand next to James Cargas; Laura Moser and Jason Westin are dueling for the Democratic progressive lead.

I like some of the D slate as currently comprised; Kim Olson for ag commish is notable.  Whether or not I can cast a ballot next March in the Blue primary, however, depends on whether the Texas Greens intend to muster some effort to get on the ballot.

So far, that effort is as scarce as a Democrat running against Ken Paxton.
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Monday, July 31, 2017

Scattershooting Karun Sreerama, Stan Stanart, Russian hacks, and Trump's shitty week

-- The drama surrounding the public works director of the city of Houston (Mayor Sylvester Turner's personal choice) has been resolved.  After being outed as a tool of the FBI for the third of three payoffs to convicted felon and HCC board member Chris Oliver -- who is still serving we the people, it should be noted -- Karun Sreerama is no longer.

Karun Sreerama is out as director of the city of Houston's Department of Public Works and Engineering following revelations that he made payments to a Houston Community College trustee who has pleaded guilty to accepting bribes.

[...]

Oliver pleaded guilty to bribery in connection with accepting the more recent payments totaling $12,000, court records show, and in exchange the acting U.S. attorney agreed to dismiss the separate extortion charge tied to Sreerama's earlier payments totaling $77,143.

Sreerama's attorney Chip Lewis said federal authorities directed Sreerama to pay Oliver the $12,000 in 2015 and 2016 after confronting Sreerama about his earlier, independent payments to the trustee. "What he was doing was created, directed and funded by the FBI," Lewis said. "Karun was a cooperating witness as a result of being a victim of Oliver's scheme."

That's an artful deflection, isn't it?

As Lewis described the payments, the first two were made because Oliver claimed he was going through a costly divorce, and then claimed he needed funds to complete the process of adopting a child. Both payments were presented as loans and were not repaid. The third payment took the form of an exorbitant fee Oliver charged after his company cleaned the parking lot at Sreerama's business.

"By the time we get to the third payment and he hadn't been repaid the loans, Karun became worried that saying, 'No, no I've got somebody who already does the cleaning, etc.' could adversely affect his position down the road," Lewis said.

Federal authorities confronted Sreerama in March 2015, a year and a half after he made that final payment, and asked for his cooperation in their investigation, Lewis said.

Two months later -- at the FBI's behest, Lewis said -- Sreerama began a series of meetings with Oliver that lasted through May 2016.

Oliver repeatedly asked if Sreerama was working for law enforcement in their initial May 2015 meeting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Leuchtmann said during Oliver's re-arraignment. Oliver took the first envelope of $2,500 cash from Sreerama days later, and by their July meeting, he'd passed Sreerama a list of all HCC contracts.

Sreerama decided by November 2015 to bid on a pest control project. Oliver later said he continued to delay votes to convince the board to vote on the basis of value, not price, to give Sreerama's company a shot, Leuchtmann said.

Lewis said Sreerama's payments to Oliver during this period "were authorized, provided and directed to be delivered by the federal government." Meanwhile, Sreerama's likely appointment as Houston's Public Works director became a subject of open speculation at City Hall.

Turner finally tapped Sreerama to lead the city's largest department in March, tasking him with managing all city streets, drainage, water and sewer systems on a $2.1 billion annual budget. Sreerama did not tell the mayor or other city officials during the vetting process about his involvement in the federal case, Lewis said.

"The FBI had asked him not to reveal it to anybody," Lewis said, adding that Sreerama called Turner about the case three weeks ago, after he learned it was set to be unsealed the next day.

Just your run-of-the-mill graft/corruption/city hall quid pro quo deal, about which the mayor has plausible deniability of any knowledge or involvement.  Happens every day in cities large and small, all across the land, 99% of them go undiscovered by the law.  Nothing to see here.

We're stuck with Turner and his lickspittles down on Bagby until 2019, so there will be plenty of time for this to disappear down the memory hole.  This makes some members of the Democratic establishment very relieved, so there's that.

-- Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart and Rice University professor Dan Wallach got into a very public pissing contest over the security, or lack thereof, associated with the county's voting machines.  The original article's headline contained the words "Russian hackers" and has been edited by the Chronic to tone down the hysteria, and Wallach made a glaring error by describing the Hart InterCivic e-Slates as running on Microsoft 2000, which has been struck through and corrected to 'Microsoft 7'.

Stanart eventually posted a retort to Wallach, of which you can read the newspaper's account at this link.  It's more CYA by the county's lousiest, most incompetent elected official.

Stanart looks like more than the usual putz in light of this news from DEF CON -- the conference of hackers that takes place annually, this year in Vegas -- and note some disturbing developments contained within a couple of the links that follow.  I've highlighted them in bold.

We already knew U.S. voting systems had security flaws ― the federal government put that nail in the coffin when it repeatedly confirmed that Russian hackers breached systems in at least 21 states during the election last year.
But on Friday, hackers stateside showed us just how easily some of the electronic voting machines can be cracked.
Those who attended DEF CON, a 25-year-old hacking convention held in Las Vegas, were given physical and remote access to voting machines procured from eBay and government auctions.
Within about 90 minutes, they’d exploited weak and outdated security measures to gain full access, The Register first reported. Some physically broke down the machines to reveal their vulnerabilities, while others gained remote access or showed that external ports found on some could be used to upload malicious software. 

None of these accounts mention Hart's e-Slates, in use for over a decade here, but I'm not inclined to take this as good news.

“Without question, our voting systems are weak and susceptible. Thanks to the contributions of the hacker community today, we’ve uncovered even more about exactly how,” Jake Braun, who reportedly came up with the idea for the challenge, told The Register.
“The scary thing is we also know that our foreign adversaries ― including Russia, North Korea, Iran ― possess the capabilities to hack them too, in the process undermining principles of democracy and threatening our national security.”
Some of the machines were reportedly outdated and not used in today’s elections, and attendees said that their various intrusions would have been detected and logged by officials.
But detection is a far cry from interception.
In June, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official again confirmed that Russian hackers were not only “attempting” to gain access to voting systems, they succeeded in at least 21 states and stole undisclosed information. The FBI detected the tampering last year ― though no evidence of changing vote numbers has been found ― but the Obama administration delayed reporting the breaches until Oct. 7, according to the Los Angeles Times.

So this would be an account of Russians hacking the election that I have never read before, and I would be compelled to say that I was wrong all this time; the Russians did perform hacks of significant magnitude into our election systems, even if the proviso that "no evidence of changing results was found" is inserted.

But when I click on those bold links above, I find no data that supports the claims of this HuffPo writer, Andy Campbell.  He has quite obviously jumped to the wrong conclusion.  Read the links for yourself.  Here are some excerpts; read the entire post at both links.

Russian hackers targeted 21 U.S. states’ election systems in last year’s presidential race, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official told Congress on (June 21, 2017).

'Targeted' is not the same thing as 'hacked'.  And this from the second bold link above, dated late September of last year ...

There have been hacking attempts on election systems in more than 20 states — far more than had been previously acknowledged — a senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News on (September 28, 2016).

The "attempted intrusions" targeted online systems like registration databases, and not the actual voting or tabulation machines that will be used on Election Day and are not tied to the Internet. The DHS official described much of the activity as “people poking at the systems to see if they are vulnerable.”

Once more, in bold.

Only two successful breaches have been disclosed, both of online voter registration databases, in Illinois and Arizona over the summer.

While those two hacks were linked to hackers in Russia, the DHS official did not say who was responsible for the other failed attempts, noting that "we're still doing a lot of forensics."

Almost a month ago -- on July 5 -- I wrote and linked to pieces in Vox and in Bloomberg that revealed hacking in attempts in 39 states, and one breach of voter registration data in Illinois.  Two weeks before that, I linked to the report in the FWST about hacking attempts in Dallas County, and on June 2, compiled an extensive listing of the various attempts by the Russkies to influence the election to that point in time, most of which did not make even passing mention of hacking or hacking attempts.

I have followed the story extensively.  I have blogged about it exhaustively.  I still cannot find anywhere in the public domain -- save the mentions of voter database breaches in Illinois, and now Arizona above -- evidence that the Russians hacked anything of significance.  People like Mr. Campbell above do themselves, their publisher, and Democrats at large a great disservice by continuing to promote this false narrative.  It's fake news of the most destructive kind, because those of us that know it's a lie are being driven further away from the Democratic party and its candidates every time the lie gets repeated.  Maybe some day I'll be wrong about the Russians hacking the 2016 election, but that day hasn't arrived yet.

And perhaps Clinton Democrats already intuitively get that the Russian bullshit is a scam of their own invention, which could explain why they've ramped up their insane hatred for an even more implausible, yet always convenient scapegoat: Jill Stein and the Greens.

-- If Democrats wanted to bring Trump down and not themselves, then they'd focus more on the real Russian scandal.  The one Robert Mueller is working on.

Since Election Day, President Trump’s businesses have sold at least 30 luxury condos and oceanfront lots for about $33 million. That includes millions of dollars in properties to secretive shell companies, which can hide the identities of buyers or partners involved in the deals, a USA TODAY investigation has found.

Now, details of some of those deals and other transactions by Trump's family business could be unmasked as special counsel Robert Mueller expands his inquiry into election-meddling by Russia and whether Trump's campaign colluded.

Federal investigators are expected to delve into records revealing some of the President’s most closely guarded secrets, including how much money he makes, who he does business with and how reliant he is on wealthy, politically-connected foreigners.

A half-dozen experts contacted by USA TODAY said they expect Mueller and his team to pursue everything from Trump’s income tax returns to the bank records underlying his companies’ real estate transactions in a quest to identify people who have financial relationships with the President and his business and political associates.

If Mueller gets fired by someone not named Jeff Sessions soon, the pending departures associated with Trump's shuffling the deck chairs his staff on his Titanic ego in the White House, to say nothing of the rats Republicans in Congress jumping off ...


... or even the overdue exodus of his base voters ...


 ... will accelerate as we move closer to the midterms.  But those fallout effects haven't yet taken into account his wink-and-a-nod approval to escalated police brutality ...


... his Tweeted transgender military service ban (that is not official until it is communicated through the conventional means) ...


... and the flaming bag of poo set alight on his own front step.

/div>

Those will all pale in comparison to the Nixonian conflagration of terminating the special prosecutor investigating his Russian business affairs.


The worst is yet to come.

Update: Just a couple of hours after I posted, Scaramouche is shitcanned in favor of General John Kelly, who moves over from the Department of Homeland Security.  Kelly is, for a general, quite the Trump stooge. No rumors floated yet about his replacement at DHS.  Seems like a bad time for that post to be vacant, with all this hacking going on and a war with North Korea about to break out.
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Wednesday, July 05, 2017

Russians may be coming again ... but we've larger voting problems

Before we go to war with North Korea, before the unhinged Right starts killing CNN reporters, before acetamenophin destroys what's left of our empathy ...


When last we tuned in to RT while clicking on Sputnik News, we learned that our antagonists Boris and Natasha Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear (see here and here for the Wiki background) had been hard at work scaring the pants off moose and squirrel everybody from Jameses Comey and Clapper to your friendly neighborhood Dem precinct captain about what, precisely, they had been up to in the summer of 2016.  That is to say, beyond humiliating Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Brazile, John Podesta, Huma Abedin, and the rest of the DNC hacks that got hacked.

We learned that they hacked into 39 states' voter databases -- or tried to, and succeeded in getting into perhaps just one, Illinois.  Alex Ward at Vox has it, with a link over to the original at Bloomberg, and previously and briefly referenced by yours truly in the second half of this aggrepost.

While this is indeed alarming, I still find voter suppression via photo ID and partisan gerrymandering to be greater threats to our republic.  Paper ballots with verifiable paper trails -- something like the Scantron-style electronic voting machines Denton County has just adopted -- would resolve the  Russian problem, but nothing short of a blue tsunami will fix the other two, and unless they can find something to run on besides "Trump is evil/Russia/Impeach",  2018 isn't going to be the cycle the Donkeys are looking for.


(*Ed note: let me pause here and acknowledge my friend Brad Friedman's lasting concerns about anything machine count-related.  Experts appear to disagree on the hackability, or at least the ease thereof, of scanned ballot counters.)

For the benefit of my conspiratorially-minded Democratic friends, let me point out -- as I have repeatedly in the past -- that the key to cracking the Russian code lies not in tracing election hacking attempts but in Trump's still-concealed tax returns.  Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Felix Sater, and the rest of that ilk are the threads special counsel Mueller should be -- and hopefully is -- pulling on.  And if Trump, or Jeff Sessions, or Devin Nunes, or any Republican in the administration or the Congress is found to be obstructing that investigation, then the walls will come tumbling down.


Focusing on the wrong Russiagate is starting to show up in polling as a loser for Democrats.  It's a winner for the corporate media and ratings, however, especially MSNBC.  Before Mika B's facelift became an atrocious but ultimately distracting Tweet -- even Tucker Carlson thinks so, by Jeebus -- Trump usually didn't give half of one solid shit about the other liberal media news channel; he's mobilized his base to destroy CNN, and now even Julian Assange is piling on.

I would like to also point out that the Democratic Party has bigger fish to fry than continuing to demonize Jill Stein, but I'm convinced that unhealthy obsession has become part of their DNA.

So with all that, plus 1) Kris Kobach, 2) a Texas Legislature poised to over-reach once more with a photo ID law that will require a couple of years for the courts to once again nullify, and 3) gerrymandered congressional and statehouse districts thanks to Tom DeLay almost fifteen years ago, as Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker reminded us in his comprehensive and compelling piece "America's Future is Texas"... why are you more worried about what Russian hackers may or may not be doing in the next election cycle?  Your vote barely counts for anything as it is.

On a more positive note, here's an easily attainable goal for those of us in Harris County: #FireStanStanart and replace him with Diane Trautman, and then push the mostly Republican county commissioners to approve and purchase paper ballots for 2020.  Because if Democrats can actually win some elections -- particularly this one -- in 2018, those GOPers will be forced to do so, due to the caterwauling from their base about Ill Eagles voting.

See how easy this is?  Just requires a little focus on the proper thing.
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