Shoe me the Funny

Vasquez likely to replace Bettencourt

I didn't exactly predict it, but it looks like they took my hint:

Leopoldo Vasquez, a corporate finance professional who serves on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice board, appears to be the leading candidate to replace Paul Bettencourt as Harris County tax assessor-collector.

Calling the Yale and Columbia-educated Vasquez "very respected and very intelligent" Commissioner Steve Radack said Friday he planned to nominate Vasquez at Tuesday's (12/23) meeting.

Neither Radack nor County Judge Ed Emmett officially would confirm his selection because court members are barred from polling one another outside of meetings.

But Emmett said Vasquez is definitely on his short list.

"I would call him a very, very great choice," Emmett said

Vasquez, 42, did not return a telephone call seeking comment today.

He is chief financial officer for Maximus Coffee Group and Cadeco Industries. Prior to serving on the TDCJ board, he was a commissioner for the Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation.

I'm guessing he isn't a Democrat, which would violate one of Emmett's own pronouncements. What else would we expect from this bunch, though? Last we heard of Commissioner Toilet Plunger, he was helping Joan Huffman violate election law.

Update: This Houston Press article from 2003 sheds more light on Vasquez.

TDP hearings on prima-caucus in Houston today

Delayed by Ike and a special election, on for today:

The Texas Democratic Party's Advisory Committee on the Convention/Caucus System convenes (this) morning at 9:00 a.m. at the Communications of America Local 6222 Hall (CWA), located at 1730 Jefferson Street, Houston, TX 77003-5028 to hear citizen input before any action is taken by the state party to keep the system, change the system or tweak the system.

Lots of whining about the Texas Two-Step in the wake of the Democratic primary in March that saw Clinton's victory in the daylight voting nearly overcome by Obama's victory in the evening precinct conventions. A variety of allies have complained loudly about it.

I support the present system as is. I believe it rewards grassroots activists for extra participation and helps the state party identify those activists by harvesting their personal contact information.

Its fate will be determined within the next few months (that is, if it hasn't been already).

Coming up short

Despite Joan Huffman's slimy robocalls and election law violations, Democrats in SD-17 still couldn't be bothered to vote in today's special election. They couldn't overcome the stalking-horse Republican Stephanie Simmons who got on the November ballot at the last minute, barely survived a residency court challenge and forced the runoff in the first place. They couldn't overcome the hurdles of a runoff election scheduled nine days before Christmas with no weekend early voting, nor the Harris County EV locations all located in GOP strongholds, nor the wintry weather on Election Day.

No, only 43,000 voters returned to cast a ballot in the special election for state senator (where more than 200,000 did so a month ago), and that enabled the Republicans to turn a 52-48 deficit into a 56-44 victory.

The GOP managed a win in a race Democrats let them have, with a lousy and flawed candidate who will likely face a misdemeanor charge of violating a plain-as-the-wart-on-her-face state election law statute soon after she takes office in January.

Despite a Herculean effort to touch all those Democratic voters multiple times, they just passed on showing up to vote. They got telephoned, they got e-mailed, they got mailed, they had their doors knocked, they received literature at their door, but they still didn't vote early, and they didn't vote late.

Maybe one day they will get fed up with the kind of representation they get in Austin, but today wasn't the day.

"Vote for Chris Bell" Weekly Wrangle

Tomorrow is Election Day in SD-17. Be sure and vote for the only candidate demonstrating real reform. Here's this week's edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's weekly Round-Up.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is amazed that today's America is repeating the 1930s era of economic depression and prohibition. America's Second Biggest Waste, War on Drugs describes how prohibition of medical marijuana keeps profiteering Big Pharma and the greedy military/industrial complex in the money, while hurting legitimate patients. Keeping medical cannabis illegal hurts everyone.

Joan Huffman's campaign for Texas Senate reached new lows during early voting last week, notes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs. First she violated election law by holding a campaign rally down the hall from an EV polling location, and then her campaign made smear robocalls to Democrats in the middle of the night. Let's put an end to this kind of politics and elect Chris Bell.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has the top 10 reasons Paul Bettencourt quit.

jobsanger discusses America's broken and bloated healthcare system, and decides the best solution offered to date is Rep. John Conyers' National Health Insurance Act (HR 676).

Some unsolicited advice for Republicans from CouldBeTrue of South Texas
Chisme.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson discusses the likely federal stimulus and its implications on infrastructure in Texas in their posting entitled "Possible stimulus money for infrastructure creates debate on spending priorities".

This week, Mayor McSleaze at McBlogger takes on Kay Bailey and speculates on who is best positioned to take her on in 2010.

Off the Kuff finishes up his series of precinct analysis posts with a look at CD-10.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at what could have been contained in Rick Perry's suspicious envelope.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted about Houston mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett writing in the Houston Chronicle about cuts in emergency care and job reductions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. These cuts, impacting the uninsured and a city reeling after a hurricane, are a classic Texas story of kicking the little guy while he is down.

Vince at Capitol Annex notes that sources are denying that state Sen. Leticia Van De Putte (D-San Antonio) will be leaving the Texas Senate for a position in the Obama administration.

"This is the farewell kiss, you dog"

The full statement:

"This is a gift from the Iraqis, this is the farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."

It's the height of insult to do anything with your shoes in the Iraqi culture. You may recall that when the statue of Saddam was toppled in Baghdad in 2003, Iraqis took off their shoes and slapped the face with them. Apparently the Iraqi shoe-throwing journalist had a colleague who had been kidnapped and tortured.

That man has more spine than all of the United States Congress.

Huffman smear-dialing SD-17

In the middle of the night, no less. How much lower can she go?

Some Democrats -- I am one -- are getting late-night robo-calls (11:00pm-2:00am) about ethics complaints against an unnamed candidate in the SD-17 runoff. Since this slime is NOT coming from the Chris Bell campaign, it's obviously the latest effort by the usual shadowy group of Republicans who used the same tactic of smear calls and websites on Huffman herself in the general election. The purpose is not to encourage support for Huffman but to simply discourage Democratic voters from going to the polls. The website mentioned in the call, www.texasethicsreport.com, is a poor ripoff of Drudge and is quite visibly shoddy and hastily thrown together. It contains a sham ethics complaint against Bell.

Yet another robo-call is going out to certain voters trying to scare them by saying Chris Bell will take away their guns if elected, another tired conservative bromide and which is also untrue. Bell has never indicated he wants to place additional limits on second amendment rights.

Tuesday, December 16 is Election Day in SD-17. There's only one choice for reform. And decency.

Sunday Funnies

Turmoil at Hearst reflects uneasy state of newspaper biz

Last week George Irish, senior vice president of the Hearst Corporation and the head of Hearst's newspapers group (which oversees Texas dailies in Houston, San Antonio, Beaumont, Midland, Laredo, and Plainview) abruptly resigned from that position to become a director of the Hearst Foundation. I wrote about my personal saga with the man and the company here.

For a 64-year-old who climbed rapidly almost to the top of the company's ladder, that is NOT a promotion.

Irish follows CEO Victor Ganzi out the door, who got crossways with Hearst's board because he apparently wasn't making bold enough acquisitions. This is a truly remarkable amount of turnover for a conglomerate that has had a reputation for being tight-lipped when it comes to, well, all facets of its business, even (especially) how much money it makes. Because the company is one of the largest privately-owned operations on the planet, it has always placed a premium on loyalty and omerta. So to see this kind of drama play out publicly is itself revealing.

My guess is that he pulled the chain because Hearst vice chairman Frank Bennack, 75 -- Irish's new/old boss -- wasn't going to let him sit in the big chair, and running the dying newspaper division for another few years didn't look to be too hot an option either. That rumor is noted in this NY Post "Media Ink" column, reporting Ganzi's departure in June.

So the FNG is 46-year-old Steven Swartz, whiz-bang Harvard guy with the e-newspapers cred. He's got a tough task ahead; revitalize a company's flagship business at a time when the industry appears to be at the brink of extinction. But with his background in Hearst-related ventures such as magazines and yellow page directories, as well an eye for savvy acquisitions, he's probably the CEO-in-waiting.

All the old guys I used to work with in the business are out of it now themselves -- Rollie Hyde in Plainview, Aubrey Webb in Beaumont, Charlie Spence in Midland, and now Irish. My first Hearst boss after Irish, James Thomas, the long-retired publisher of the Plainview Daily Herald, passed away in July of this year at 84.

End of an era, in every way.

Friday Funny: Please Hurry

Sharp and the Senate (and Bill White)

Another development I have resisted posting my opinion about is the fact that Texas Democrats are -- as of this writing -- reduced to a pair of fat, bald, white male conservatives as standard-bearers in 2010. Harvey Kronberg -- who spoke last night at a town hall hosted by my state rep, Ellen Cohen -- says that Bill White is probably going to run for Washington and not Austin:

For almost two weeks now, the political rumor mill has been breathlessly anticipating Houston Mayor Bill White's announcement of future election plans.

While still rumors, the quality have improved and they have moved up the food chain. Reasonably reliable sources tell QR that the current announcement date is next Monday and that Mayor White will announce he intends to run for what may become an open seat in the United States Senate.

We frame this rumor with caveats galore. Truth is, we will find out whether or not it is true next Monday.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a fat, balding, white male myself. I just keep finding myself farther and farther away from 'conservative' with each passing day.

And unlike some in my circle, I'm not in favor of Bill White for anything. He's far, far too conservative for me. He's demonstrated a particular disdain for the Democratic wing of the Texas Democratic Party, from toadying with Tom DeLay to haughtily dismissing concerns about e-voting.

But John Sharp is even farther to the right than White; "pro-life Catholic", an on-again, off-again pal with Governor MoFo all the way back to their Aggie days, and apparently a consort of Texas religious fundamentalists:

He and Mr. Perry were students together at Texas A&M but became politically estranged until 2006, when San Antonio megachurch pastor John Hagee brokered a reconciliation that led to the governor appointing Mr. Sharp to lead a commission to craft a property tax overhaul.

Like Kuffner, I'm at a loss as to where Vince gets the idea Sharp is a progressive.

Neither of these two comes close to my idea of a Democrat ... even in Texas. While White was a disaster as the Texas Democratic Party chair from 1995 -98, Sharp is a two-time loser for lt. governor, in '98 and '02.

The only thing we need now to hit the trifecta is Kinky Friedman.

Surely we're going to be able to do better than this ... ?

Update: Socratic Gadfly has more on the Republican company Sharp keeps. How is White going to top that?

Update II: Mayor McSleaze nails it ...

Who's Afraid Of KBH?

The answer seems to be pretty much everyone these days. Working off the premise that Kay Bailey Hutchison will resign her Senate seat to challenge Governor For Life Rick Perry in the 2010 Republican Primary, would-be senators have been lining up like WalMart shoppers to replace her.

Auto industry slain last night by Senate Republicans

Been holding my water on this for as long as I could. Can't stand it one more minute:

A bailout-weary Congress killed a $14 billion package to aid struggling U.S. automakers Thursday night after a partisan dispute over union wage cuts derailed a last-ditch effort to revive the emergency aid before year's end.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit's beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

The UAW acceded to the politicians' demands to reduce its members' compensation -- they are NOT $70 an hour, by the way; that's another radical conservative urban legend -- just not next year, as Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Richard Selby of Alabama, and a few other tobacco-juice-drooling, slave-owning symbols of the Old South insisted.

That bill — the product of a hard-fought negotiation between congressional Democrats and the Bush White House — was virtually dead on arrival in the Senate, where Republicans said it was too weak in its demands on the car companies and contained unacceptable environmental mandates for the Big Three.

Thursday's implosion followed yet another set of marathon negotiations at the Capitol — this time involving labor, the auto industry and lawmakers. The group came close to agreement, but it stalled over the UAW's refusal to agree to the wage concessions.

"We were about three words away from a deal," said Corker, the GOP's point man in the negotiations, referring to any date in 2009 on which the UAW would accept wage cuts.

...

Congressional Republicans have been in open revolt against Bush over the auto bailout. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky joined other GOP lawmakers Thursday in announcing his opposition to the White House-backed bill, which passed the House on Wednesday. He and other Republicans insisted that the carmakers restructure their debt and bring wages and benefits in line with those paid by Toyota, Honda and Nissan in the United States.

Hourly wages for UAW workers at GM factories are about equal to those paid by Toyota Motor Corp. at its older U.S. factories, according to the companies. GM says the average UAW laborer makes $29.78 per hour, while Toyota says it pays about $30 per hour. But the unionized factories have far higher benefit costs.

GM says its total hourly labor costs are now $69, including wages, pensions and health care for active workers, plus the pension and health care costs of more than 432,000 retirees and spouses. Toyota says its total costs are around $48. The Japanese automaker has far fewer retirees and its pension and health care benefits are not as rich as those paid to UAW workers.

So let's make sure everybody understands: because the US auto industry is almost a hundred years old, because its workers bled and died on assembly lines (and continue to do so today) before they organized for livable wages, affordable health care, and a comfortable retirement -- things the GOP has dismantled in virtually every other American industry over the last 25 years -- they are to be punished.

McConnell, the happy co-killer of labor unions and by extension the willing assassin of what's left of America's middle class, is married to Elaine Chao, the (so-called) Secretary of Labor. You can NOT make this shit up.

Even the massive financial contributions to the GOP by the auto manufacturers over the years couldn't buy them a break, because the Republicans saw an opportunity to bust a union and couldn't resist ...

An action alert circulated among Senate Republicans on Wednesday called for Republicans to "stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor."

In doing so, analysts said, Republicans were planting the seeds for a fundraising appeal to big business -- other than the Big Three, of course -- as they gear up for a major political fight next year over expected legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Even Dick Cheney told the GOP Senate caucus that it was going to be "Herbert Hoover time" if they killed this bill.

I believe the Republicans just sealed their fate as a minority party for a generation, isolated in the Southern region of the nation, policed by radicals and extremists. The homophobes and racial bigots throughout Dixie ought to be be real happy this morning. The poor people in Kentucky and Alabama and Tennessee -- and yes, Texas -- who elected these scumbags may yet live to regret voting against their economic self-interest, but they're probably still too stupid to realize it this morning.

Give them another three months, let the REAL depression settle in. I bet they start to smell the coffee.

Update: BooMan ...

When you've let your anti-union ideology move you far to the right of Dick Cheney, you know you're out on a limb. It appears the Senate Republicans decided to play their own game of chicken with the Bush administration. They said, essentially, 'if you don't want to go down in history as the modern-day Hoover administration, bail Detroit out on your own'. And now it is up to the Bush administration to do just that.

The 18 Senators who voted FOR the $700 billion bank bailout, and against the $14 billion loan to the auto manufacturers. Our very own Kay Bailey is one.

And this:

"I don't know what Sen. Vitter has against GM or the United Auto Workers or the entire domestic auto industry; whatever it is, whatever he thinks we've done, it's time for him to forgive us, just like Sen. Vitter has asked the citizens of Louisiana to forgive him, " said Johnson, president of Local 2166. Otherwise, Johnson said of Vitter, it would appear, "He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers."

-- Morgan Johnson, president of the United Auto Workers local representing General Motors workers in Shreveport