Git along, little bloggies

Time for this week's edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance weekly blog round-up, wrangled as always by Vince from Capitol Annex.

As a special note, the TPA is preparing to announce the 2007 Texan of the Year. This year's process will be a little different than in years past: we have a full slate of Texas Silver Stars (Honorable Mentions), four runners-up (Texas Gold Stars) and of course a Texan of the Year. We'll begin by announcing the Texas Silver Stars on Friday, December 7. Then each day from December 10 through December 13 we'll announce a Gold Star, followed by the Texan of the Year on Friday, December 14. So be sure to check your favorite TPA blog starting this Friday to see the picks for Texans of the Year!

What happens when it rains and containers holding lethal chemicals overflow into creek beds? See How Are Injection Well and Gas Coupling Inspections Alike? for another example of RRC negligence that puts Texans at risk, brought to you by TXsharon at Bluedaze.

Refinish69 from Doing My Part For The Left shares his memories of a loved one lost to AIDS in his World AIDS Day diary and podcast.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News observes the devolving of Texas Education.

Jaye at Winding Road asks "What if abortion is outlawed in a Republican administration?"

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men informs you that when it's the National Football League versus Big Cable, the only loser is you.

Vince at Capitol Annex takes a look at the interim charges for committees of the Texas House in the 80th Legislature in three posts, as well as Tom Craddick's views on the charges.

The Texas GOP is gearing up a sophisticated voter suppression effort for the 2008 elections. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs forwards the Lone Star Project's comprehensive report.

The Texas Cloverleaf tells us that TxDOT can no longer plead poverty! It just received a Christmas gift of $3.197 Billion from NTTA for the rights to build the SH-121 toll road.

Hal at Half Empty reports that the Republican Party of Fort Bend County has taken a radical shift to the right as neoconservative evangelicals have taken over their leadership.

Lightseeker at Texas Kaos looks at the mess Texas Education Agency has become with TEA: We must remain neutral on junk science theory. This should be enough to make parents either vote or move to get their kids out of the Texas school system.

Matt Glazer at Burnt Orange Report talks about the Texas Internet Revolution and the good publicity TexBlog PAC has been getting recently.

Stunned about the tuition increases at UT Law? So was Closet Purist at McBlogger who takes a detailed look at how UT law compares to Harvard and Yale and asks, what do you get for the money?

You may have heard the right-wing echo chamber saying that the surge is working in Iraq, or that things are going better now. Texas Toad at North Texas Liberal gives us the real deal in "Some Perspective on the Surge."

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that federal rules allow ferry
security guards to sleep on the job. Republicans say they care about security, but prove they don't.

Off the Kuff exercises his privilege as a blogger to nitpick an article about the rise of the netroots in Texas.

Eye On Williamson takes a look at the retirement of his statehouse representative in Why We Won't Have Mike Krusee To Kick Around Anymore.

Undocumented persons are NOT a health care burden on the US

The University of Texas-Medical Branch is considering, in the words of the local xenophobes, "kicking illegals off the welfare rolls":

(UTMB) might stop offering cancer care to indigent, undocumented immigrants, a policy that would save money but run counter to the medical school's mission of treating the poor.

If the medical branch turns away undocumented immigrants, the Harris County Hospital District likely will see an increase in its patient load, said King Hillier, vice president of public policy and government relations of the district that operates Ben Taub General, Houston's largest public hospital.

Making health care a business decision -- the monetizing of American health -- is where we went off the rails many years ago. In SiCKO it was revealed, in a conversation between John Erlichman and Richard Nixon, that Edgar Kaiser (he of the nation's first HMO) had an idea both men were fond of : rationing healthcare for profit. Recall also that Michael Moore took a group of sick Ground Zero New Yorkers to Cuba, where they received treatment denied them in the United States.

But back to the point here, there simply needs to be more pushback on the lies constantly advanced by the Nativists:

Illegal Latino immigrants do not cause a drag on the U.S. health care system as some critics have contended and in fact get less care than Latinos in the country legally, researchers said on Monday.

Such immigrants tend not to have a regular doctor or other health-care provider yet do not visit emergency rooms -- often a last resort in such cases -- with any more frequency than Latinos born in the United States, according to the report from the University of California's School of Public Health.

Let's wait for the "California liberals/bias" shouting to stop.

Now then ...

About 8.4 million of the 10.3 million illegal aliens in the United States are Latino, of which 5.9 million are from Mexico, the report said.

Recall my previous posting regarding these numbers. With this kind of disparity who knows what the correct numbers/ratios actually are at this point? Continuing ...

"Low rates of use of health-care services by Mexican immigrants and similar trends among other Latinos do not support public concern about immigrants' overuse of the health care system," the researchers wrote.

"Undocumented individuals demonstrate less use of health care than U.S.-born citizens and have more negative experiences with the health care that they have received," they said.

Italic emphasis mine. What do you suppose that means? That the doctors understood their patients' situations and gave them less than the best care?

There is no way that "socialized medicine" could be any worse (based on the demonstrated delivery of health care in other countries, including Mexico).

No. way.

Sunday Funnies for brunch

Texas GOP voter suppression efforts gearing up for '08

The Lone Start Project again brings the disgusting news of the Texas Republicans' efforts to thwart the vote (bold emphasis is mine):

Academic studies, media reports and fact based voter analysis consistently demonstrate that systematic, widespread or frequent voter fraud in Texas, or anywhere else in the United States, simply does not exist. Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, however, has directed a State House committee to conduct an interim study on voter fraud with the clear intention of recommending legislation to limit the ability of thousands of eligible Texans to vote. (See the order here)

At the same time, former Tom DeLay aide and current Tom Craddick ally, John Colyandro, who remains under felony indictment for money laundering and other charges, has formed a "think tank" that is already using faulty data and illogical statistics to justify vote suppression tactics.

These most recent Texas Republican efforts to suppress voter turnout are consistent with Texas AG Greg Abbott's taxpayer-funded phony voter fraud enforcement unit that the Lone Star Project has exposed and reported on extensively here.

Why do Tom Craddick and other Texas Republican leaders want to spend taxpayer resources to examine a problem that doesn't exist? Clearly Craddick, Abbott and others are attempting to justify dramatic changes in Texas law and election practices, including voter photo ID requirements, senior mail ballot restrictions and voter roll purges, that will reduce overall voter turnout as demographic changes take place in Texas that are increasing the influence of minorities in Texas elections.

Go here to see the facts about GOP voter suppression and the indicted felon running the show.

Vince has more on this, including the interim charges by Speaker Craddick (a list of goals for the 81st legislative session, to begin in January 2009). I'll snip a piece:

2. Examine the prevalence of fraud in Texas elections, considering prosecution rates and measures for prevention. Study new laws in other states regarding voter identification, and recommend statutory changes necessary to ensure that only eligible voters can vote in Texas elections. Specifically study the Texas mail-in ballot system, the provisional voting system, and the various processes for purging voter lists of ineligible voters.

I won’t even go into the whole Voter ID argument here. I’ve already made it, and if you read this blog regularly, you can recite it six ways from Sunday. If you don’t read regularly, go here for an education on this topic. As for the mail-in ballot and purging stuff, that’ll be some interesting study, I’m sure. Leo Berman will no doubt have Karl Rove on speed dial. Of course, what the committee does with this will (be) subject to some debate. The committee’s “swing vote,” or alleged swing vote during the 80th Legislature, Kirk England of Grand Prairie, is now a Democrat. Of course, the worst vote of his career was his vote for voter ID in the 80th Legislature. If he doesn’t come around on Voter ID during the interim charge process, then…well, you know.

And I owe a relatively long, minutia-filled posting about the sophisticated voter caging operation in place in Harris County, managed by the Republican tax assessor/collector Paul Bettencourt. That's forthcoming.

Rudy's Sex on the City scandal

Now the photoshoppers are gettin' busy: