Corporate greedheads give in; janitors strike ends

After the appallingly bad publicity associated with the police crackdown (and additional unconscionable behavior by an assistant Harris County district attorney) on striking janitors over the weekend, the companies involved settled with the SEIU and the five-week-long strike came to an end today.

Bill White made sure he got some of the credit. Not for forcibly clearing the intersections of the city, but for "making many phone calls behind the scenes" to bring the strike to a close.

I call bullshit (until I hear differently from people in the union). White was out to lunch for the last month -- as he has been on nearly every issue requiring even the slightest confrontation during the past year. ( Let's do give him credit for taking on that badass Jordy Tollett, though.) The mayor is doing almost as good a job of wasting his political capital as George W. Bush. Oh, and FWIW, unnamed sources on a "blog" -- especially a corporate media-owned one -- don't impress me much.

And Miya Shay really sucks at blogging, too. Somehow though, she managed to get at least two of the more progressive Texas blogs to pick up on her meme that the strike was pointless. Nice going, fellas. Something about that reminds me of the Texas Democratic Party making sure everyone understands well in advance that they can't win a statewide election.

So if you work in an H-Town office building, thank the person who cleans your bathroom and empties your trash and mops your floor. They won a small victory for their families today against the formidable forces of our local Fortune 100's greed, not to mention surviving the thuggery of Houston's Finest.

Houston's business and governmental leaders distinguished themselves in this matter. Not in a good way.

"Houston can’t go on like this, with so many living in poverty."

We sat down in the intersection and the horses came immediately. It was really violent. They arrested us, and when we got to jail, we were pretty beat up. Not all of us got the medical attention we needed. The worst was a protester named Julia, who is severely diabetic. We kept telling the guards about her condition but they only gave her a piece of candy. During roll call, she started to complain about light-headedness. Finally she just collapsed unconscious on the floor. It was like she just dropped dead. The guard saw it but just kept going through the roll. Susan ran over there and took her pulse while the other inmates were yelling for help, saying we need to call somebody. The medical team strolled over, taking their own sweet time. She was unconscious for like 4 or 5 minutes.

They really tried to break us down. The first night they put the temperature so high that a woman -- one of the other inmates -- had a seizure. The second night they made it freezing and took away many of our blankets. We didn’t have access to the cots so we had to sleep on a concrete floor. When we would finally fall asleep the guards would come and yell ‘Are you Anna Denise Solís? Are you so and so?’ One of the protesters had a fractured wrist from the horses. She had a cast on and when she would fall asleep the guard would kick the cast to wake her up. She was in a lot of pain.

The guards would tell us: ‘This is what you get for protesting.’ One of them said, ‘Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much.’ The other inmates -- there were a lot of prostitutes in there -- said that they had never seen the jail this bad. The guards told them: ‘We’re trying to teach the protesters a lesson.’ Nobody was getting out of jail because the processing was so slow. They would tell the prostitutes that everything is the protesters’ fault. They were trying to turn everybody against each other.

I felt like I was in some Third World jail, not in America. One of the guards called us ‘whores’ and if we talked back, we didn’t get any lunch. We didn’t even have the basic necessities. It felt like a police state, like marshal law, nobody had rights. Some of us had been arrested in other cities, and it was never this bad before.

Rest of the story here.

HB-129 seeks to end blogging as we know it

I'm going to sample a good bit of Vince Leibowitz' research and re-print his Q&A regarding one of the bills pre-filed for the Texas legislative session opening in January:

House Bill 129, filed by State Rep. Vicki Truitt (R-Westlake) for consideration by the 80^th session of the Texas Legislature is legislation that will drastically impact writers for whom the World Wide Web is their primary medium of distribution.

House Bill 129 is legislation that would amend Texas' Civil Practices & Remedies Code by adding Section 73.0045. This section would provide statutory provisions in Texas law under which the authors of websites (including blogs) can be sued for libel, slander and defamation in the same manner as print or broadcast media. It also provides mechanisms that allow courts to order website authors to remove the offending content.

But aren’t websites and blogs already subject to libel and slander law?

Yes. Since the popularity of the Internet began to rise in the mid-1990s, courts across the country have held that website authors can be held to the same or similar standards as newspapers, radio and television stations when it comes to libelous, defamatory or slanderous statements. In Texas, web writers and websites (including blogs) have been sued successfully on a number of occasions.

If the Web is already subject to libel law, then what's the big deal?

Good question! There is a very big difference to the manner in which websites and their authors can be held accountable currently and what would happen if HB 129 became law.

Presently, websites and blogs are subject to the libel and slander provisions of the Civil Practices & Remedies Code because federal and state courts have consistently held that web-based content is similar to other media and must be held to the same standards. And, web writers have no problem with that. Courts have been the ones to make these decisions and determinations because, when the Civil Practices & Remedies Code was originally written, the Internet was not the major force in society that it is now. As is the case with patent law, copyright law, election law and numerous other areas of state and federal law, when the law does not specifically cover a new medium or area that develops as a result of emerging technology courts make determinations about the applicability of that law to new mediums.

The 'big deal' is that, although House Bill 129 codifies the already established fact that websites in Texas can be sued for libel and defamation, it fails to provide web-based writers with the same protections as other mediums are afforded under Chapter 23 of the Civil Practices and Remedies Code.

What are these protections?

Print media is specifically protected by Section 73.002 of the Civil Practices & Remedies Code when it comes to a concept called "privileged matters." House Bill 129, though it codifies that websites may be sued for libel, does not further revise the CP&R to indicate that websites are subject to these protections.

Specifically, the privileged matters clause protects print writers from lawsuits for defamation in certain instances relating to coverage of public events. This is especially important for bloggers, who often function as citizen journalists.

In short, fair, true and impartial accounts of judicial proceedings, legislative or executive proceedings, and other official proceedings and public meetings (like city council meetings and county commissioners court meetings) is protected from libel action. The coverage is considered "privileged" so long is it is fair, true and impartial.

The privileged matters clause also protects commentary (opinion and satire) related to public officials and other matters of public concern so long it is "reasonable and fair."

House Bill 129 fails to amend the CP&R Code to provide the necessary and appropriate protections to bloggers and citizen journalists.

I'm not a blogger, I just have a MySpace page. How does this apply to me?

Whether or you are a blogger, have a MySpace, Xanga, or Facebook site, or a regular website, House Bill 129 poses a significant danger to you.

Because the term "website" is not defined by House Bill 129 and is overly broad, social networking sites are covered. Almost everything on the web could be included in the term "website." Technically, under the changes House Bill 129 would cause, email messages in an archive on sites like Google Groups, Yahoo Groups could result in actionable libel claims.

A comment you leave on a MySpace page, something you write on a friend’s "wall" on Facebook, or a message you send to Google Groups will be wide open to frivolous lawsuits from anyone you happen to offend, and you could find yourself paying thousands of dollars in legal fees just to have a frivolous lawsuit thrown out of court.

I am a blogger, but I'm very careful about what I write. Why should I care?

Whether you blog about your Labrador retriever or Texas politics, House Bill 129 should scare you into action.

As noted previously, those of us writing on web-based mediums have been subject to libel and defamation suits for years. However, once it is codified in Texas law that writers and owners of such sites can be sued, you could find yourself answering for even the most nonchalant blog post in court.

Consider this: A blogger or MySpace goes to a national chain retailer like Wal-Mart and has a bad experience with a rude cashier; the blogger blogs that Wal-Mart has horrible customer service on their blog. Wal-Mart can now sue you for libel. Will they win? It’s doubtful, but under House Bill 129, a major retailer could use your offhand comment about their store as a test case to scare off other web-based writers from making similar statements.

For political bloggers on the "left" and "right", the danger is far worse. Because we don't get the protection of the "privileged matters" clause, we could find ourselves sued every time we write about a politician or political candidate no matter how careful we are. A simple post about staff being fired from a congressional office or a state representative accused of ethical violations or sexual harassment could result in a multi-million dollar lawsuit being served upon you because you have no protection when writing on matters of public concern no matter how unbiased and accurately you report. While your unbiased manner and accuracy may mean a jury might not find you actually libeled someone, it will cost you thousands of dollars in legal fees and you may be bankrupt by the time a verdict is returned in your favor.

You should also care because you could be held accountable for things you didn't even write.

If you are the owner of a blog of website with comment capabilities, you could be held responsible for what others say in the comments section or on the bulletin board section of your website. Because you own the website, and HB 129 codifies the ability of websites to be sued for libel, you bear the ultimate responsibility for every word that goes on your site. You can be sued for comments.

So what do we want?

Since bloggers and web writers have already been successfully sued in Texas, the addition of websites to the Civil Practices & Remedies Code is somewhat moot. Our complaint isn't that reality has been codified. It is that reality has been codified without citizen journalists being given the protections they rightfully deserve.

What we want is either a defeat of HB129 or to see it amended such that web writers, bloggers and citizen journalists are offered the same protections under the "privileged matters" section of Chapter 73 of the Texas Civil Practices & Remedies Code.

What should we do?

Contact your state legislator -- Senator and Representative. Ask them to oppose HB-129.

Demon seed

You just know that poor child is so conservative she'll never be able to smile anything but crooked...

Bail set for striking janitors at $888,888 *UPDATE: Bail reduced

This is the justice you get when all of the law officials in the nation's third most populous county are Republicans.

People arraigned on murder charges have had bail set as low as $30,000, but if you're making $5.00 an hour and sit down in the middle of a Houston intersection, you get intimidated -- at best -- by a mounted Houston Police officer, arrested, charged with a Class B misdemeanor, and thrown into jail with your bail set at "send-a-message" level.

Update (11/19) : "Bond rates were later reduced by a magistrate judge to $1,000 per person."

Houston and Harris County truly feels like the belly of the Neo-Fascist beast today.

More at MyDD, Daily Kos, and The Agonist.

Update (11/19): Matt Stoller stays on the story:

Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee, Henry Waxman, John Lewis, Al Green, Senator Ted Kennedy, Reverend James Lawson, Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis, Texas State House Representative Garnet Coleman, Houston City Council Member Ada Edwards, Reverend James Orange, and Reverend William Lawson have all spoken out.

If I were Chevron, Exxon, and Shell Oil - all of whom make billions and any of whom could end the strike - I would be nervous that Henry Waxman is asking you to intervene. A few million dollars in extra salary and health care benefits for the people cleaning your offices is a really small price to pay to prevent Waxman from really scrutinizing your business practices. He plays hardball, he dislikes corruption, and he's pushing global warming legislation.

HPD gets violent with SEIU protestors

Photos here.

We've seen this sort of hyper-aggressive police action, particularly with mounted officers, previously (at the Halliburton protest last year).

Update: The Washington Post has more, or you may click on the image of Ercilia Sandoval on the right. And Easter Lemming, who shot the video above has even more, including the link to the Justice for Janitors blog.

Moneyshot Quotes of the Week

Reviving this irregular series as a result of the newly target-rich environment:

"Ted and I had a discussion. He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn't. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that."

-- Rev. Louis Sheldon, a Christianist from the Traditional Values Coalition, disclosing that he and 'a lot' of others knew about Haggard's homosexuality 'for awhile ... but weren't sure just how to deal with it'.

Obviously the best way to address the troubling issue of the nation's leading evangelical being gay and a drug abuser was to say and do nothing while continuing to rake in the cash from the gullible fools who buy their lies.

"It cannot be just a matter of friendship. It will have to become almost a confrontational relationship. You've got to confess your sins and you've got to have a group of people around you who will not let you whitewash the issue. From the Christian perspective, we think in terms of prayer, we think in terms of what we call godly counsel, where godly men who are clean themselves insert themselves in the life of the one who is struggling."

-- H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, on the spiritual 'restoration' of Ted Haggard

Did he actually say that a gay evangelical can be cured by other 'clean godly men inserting themselves' into him?

Isn't that how all this trouble began?

"Bob Sherwood's seat (in Pennsylvania) would have been overwhelmingly ours, if his mistress hadn’t whined about being throttled."

-- Grover Norquist, excusing Karl Rove for the GOP's electoral wipeout one Congressional seat at a time

Hear hear, Grover. If those bitches would just keep quiet and take their strangling from their Congressmen, the House of Representatives might've retained another Christian soldier to carry on the fight for God and Dubya.

"Our party does not suffer the affliction of being a boiling mad collection of fringe interests with notions so cockeyed that they ultimately rub each other raw and make average Americans cringe."

-- Rep. Joe Barton (R - Batshit Crazy, TX)

'Rub each other raw', Joe? You're really going to miss Mark Foley's Christmas party, aren't you?

"I still consider Santorum and Allen among the best and most appealing conservatives on the scene. I believe Santorum has national appeal, despite his loss in Pennsylvania. And although Allen's campaign was knocked off stride, nobody will care much."

-- Mark Levin, National Review Online

Don't you need to be the guy running the RNC, Mr. Levin? Are you by any chance gay? That would be an advantage...

And finally, an old photo needs a new caption:

I'll open the bidding:

"Man, last week was really shitty."

"Dude, don't get ME started..."

It's only been a week ...

... and I'm still not as happy as everybody else about the election results in Deep-in-the-Hearta.

I believe the elation some feel comes from their proximity to Dallas County, or Hays County, or how much work they did in Ellen Cohen's or Juan Garcia's or Valinda Bolton's campaign. And to be clear, the following is not at all meant to rain on their victory parade. Those wins are certainly sweet, and those candidates and their campaigns deserves congratulations for their hard work.

But I believe the overabundance of enthusiasm for last Tuesday's election returns in some quarters simply comes from having met an extremely low set of expectations:

"We made a practical decision," said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist who is helping rebuild the state party. "It was the most efficient way to spread the resources. It wouldn't have been a rational decision to do otherwise."

Mr. Angle said the party focused its resources in 17 House districts, half of those in which Democrats mounted a challenge against Republican opponents.

I just don't recall Matt Angle being elected by anyone to develop and execute the Texas Democratic Party's election strategy. I also don't believe that anybody at the SDEC level of governance approved or even consented to a plan of focusing all of the party resources on just 17 statehouse races.

Furthermore, I have it on good authority that the party officials at the highest level repeatedly assured candidates who were NOT in one of the afore-mentioned 17 contests that the words Matt Angle is quoted above speaking -- about concentrating on just a few selected races -- was absolutely NOT the case; that there would be no narrowly-targeted strategy in 2006.

In other words, somebody lied. And in any event, their deeds spoke louder than their words.

The Texas Democratic Party, such as it is, long ago chose a minimalist strategy for 2006. Big-dog contributors like Walter Umphrey and John Eddie Williams sent six-figure checks early on to Carole Strayhorn, apparently thinking she was the only Democrat capable of defeating Governor MoFo. Potential Democratic candidates stayed away from filing for office in droves. It took a late leap by three members of the Dirty Thirty -- Bob Gammage, Ben Grant, and Fred Head -- to make things interesting. But none of the members of the "Dream Team" from 2002 stepped up to support anyone or anything on the Democratic slate. The only thing John Sharp ultimately did, after having his name published repeatedly as the only Dem with a snowball's chance of being elected Governor, was to join Rick Perry in a bipartisan education funding initiative. Charles Soechting abruptly abandoned the chairmanship in the middle of the campaign season, setting up a protracted fight at the convention between old-guard and new-school factions. The most positive message conveyed to the media all during this time was: well, we're going to have to lower our sights somewhat. And guess what? The media picked up on the defeatist attitude of the bigwigs who call themselves Democrats and ran with it. Over and over.

The state party -- the tattered shards of it, anyway -- was so impotent that it gave up on all of the statewide races long before the party's convention in June of this year. All of the enthusiasm generated by the grassroots in Fort Worth for the slate of populist candidates was wasted on the small band of elitists and insiders pulling the strings and moving the money around, who had long since determined -- and telegraphed to the media -- that there was no hope this year.

They didn't even do a good job of going through the motions. Their overt acts of capitulation contradicted their mealy-mouthed expressions of support. Well, most of the time that was the case, though I frequently heard the following:

"We have limited resources." "We can't concentrate on every race." "This is a rebuilding year." "We need more staff and better databases in order to rebuild our infrastructure so we can be competitive in (pick one: 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014)."

In that respect, the men in charge of the Texas Democratic Party -- that would be Fred Baron and Matt Angle -- did exactly what they said they would do.

Performance met expectations. I suppose congratulations are in order. What do you think, Boyd?

"There's enough credit for everyone involved in the effort," state Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie said. "But certainly the (Texas Democratic) trust created an atmosphere where we could organize, plan and execute."

Can't wait to see the game plan for 2008, fellas. Here's a question for Freddy Bosshog: do you think John Edwards can carry Texas as the presidential nominee? Can he at least win the Texas primary in March of year-after-next, or will he be an Iowa-only kinda guy (he IS lookin' good in the Hawkeye State, for whatever that's worth)?

Hey Matty All-the-Angles: who are you recruiting to run against Senator Box Turtle? Oh wait; that's Boyd's job -- allegedly. Can Nick Lampson hold that seat in 22, ya think? And who's gonna challenge Ralph Hall, Boyd? Got anybody in mind besides you?

Boy, I'm stoked. *belch* *fart*

Update: Burka says ...

Opportunities like 2006 only come along once in a generation, and Democrats failed to make the most of this one.

Bush's Brain Damaged

"How could one notice," you're thinking. Not referring to the one encased in his skull, in this case:

President Bush had many explanations for what he called the "thumping" his party took on Tuesday, but the most creative was the notion that his chief strategist, Karl Rove, had spent too much time reading books.

"I obviously was working harder on the campaign than he was," the president said at (the Wednesday November 8) East Room news conference. The reporters laughed. The Architect, who had challenged Bush to a reading contest, wore a sheepish grin and stared at his lap.

Newsweek piles on:

Rove's miscalculations began well before election night. The polls and pundits pointed to a Democratic sweep, but Rove dismissed them all. In public, he predicted outright victory, flashing the V sign to reporters flying on Air Force One. He wasn't just trying to psych out the media and the opposition. He believed his "metrics" were far superior to plain old polls. Two weeks before the elections, Rove showed NEWSWEEK his magic numbers: a series of graphs and bar charts that tallied early voting and voter outreach. Both were running far higher than in 2004. In fact, Rove thought the polls were obsolete because they relied on home telephones in an age of do-not-call lists and cell phones. Based on his models, he forecast a loss of 12 to 14 seats in the House -- enough to hang on to the majority. Rove placed so much faith in his figures that, after the elections, he planned to convene a panel of Republican political scientists -- to study just how wrong the polls were.

So a reputation as 'genius', painstakingly constructed over nearly a lifetime, washed away in a single wave.

I built a sandcastle once, too. Only took me a few hours though. And boy was I crushed when the tide came in that afternoon.

I can only imagine how sick Karl must be feeling these days.

Houston's Veterans

From yesterday's parade here:



From Arlington West (in California):



Arlington West is the Veterans for Peace project to acknowledge the loss of life in Bush's Iraq war.

Yesterday in Houston, the Veterans for Peace contingent marching in our parade received a great deal of positive feedback, but there were a few boos and heckles of "peace is cowardly" and so on. (We have the classiest conservatives around here.)

Images above courtesy Houston Chronicle. See also this story about the younger veterans and how they were impacted by their participation in the parade. Be sure also and click on the moving multimedia entitled "Three Generations of War".