Harris County's plan for voter registration

I like the sound of this, so let's keep an eye out for how effectively it is implemented:

County Tax Assessor-Collector Leo Vasquez has put together a coalition of private organizations and large employers to make sure that residents who move within or to the county get an on-the-spot chance to fill out fresh voter registration applications.

Moving into an apartment or buying a dwelling involves signing lots of papers. Now the Houston Apartment Association and the Texas Land Title Association will make sure the papers include voter registration forms, Vasquez said Wednesday.

Continental Airlines and the Houston Independent School District are the first employers to join the coalition by ensuring that registration forms go to workers who update their personnel records with new addresses.

“Let’s hit people when they are trying to make one of those moves,” said Vasquez, who was appointed in December to succeed fellow Republican Paul Bettencourt, who resigned from his elected post.

Some poor word choices there, Leo, but the effort seems to be well-directed:

Vasquez said he created the voter registration coalition without regard to such controversies. He also said he does not plan to play a partisan role.

Registered voters who move without updating their registrations can, in most cases, vote on Election Day at the polling place for the precinct where they formerly lived. With the rise of early voting participation, where voters live within the county matters less because they can vote at any early voting station.

Having to return to an old neighborhood to vote sometimes discourages voters from casting ballots, Vasquez pointed out, so updated registrations make participation easier.

Vasquez also hopes the program will make the volume of voter registrations more consistent through the year. Typically, address changes and other registrations peak a few weeks before each election. These spikes lead to last-minute errors by those who fill out the cards and a processing backlog at the voter registrars’ office, according to Vasquez.

Fair enough. Let's see how it goes.

John Hope Franklin 1915 - 2009

As an author, his book ''From Slavery to Freedom'' was a landmark integration of black history into American history that remains relevant more than 60 years after being published. As a scholar, his research helped Thurgood Marshall and his team at the NAACP win Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that barred the doctrine of ''separate but equal'' in the nation's public schools.

''It was evident how much the lawyers appreciated what the historians could offer,'' Franklin later wrote. ''For me, and I suspect the same was true for the others, it was exhilarating.''

Franklin himself broke numerous color barriers. He was the first black department chair at a predominantly white institution, Brooklyn College; the first black professor to hold an endowed chair at Duke; and the first black president of the American Historical Association.

He often regarded his country like an exasperated relative, frustrated by racism's stubborn power, yet refusing to give up. ''I want to be out there on the firing line, helping, directing or doing something to try to make this a better world, a better place to live,'' Franklin told The Associated Press in 2005.

In November, after Barack Obama broke the ultimate racial barrier in American politics, Franklin called his ascension to the White House ''one of the most historic moments, if not the most historic moment, in the history of this country.''

''Because of the life John Hope Franklin lived, the public service he rendered, and the scholarship that was the mark of his distinguished career, we all have a richer understanding of who we are as Americans and our journey as a people,'' Obama said in a statement. ''Dr. Franklin will be deeply missed, but his legacy is one that will surely endure.''

More bad newspaper news

-- The Houston Chronicle canned 12% of its staff yesterday (and today), including Clay Robison in the Austin bureau and Richard Stewart, whose East Texas columns I've read for thirty years, going back to when he wrote them in the Beaumont Enterprise-Journal. Hair Balls and Banjo Jones have more.

It looks like Steve Swartz is really determined to earn a bonus in his first year.

-- There is no longer a newspaper in Ann Arbor and three other small Michigan cities.

-- Gannett is furloughing employees and cutting pay rather than go through another round of layoffs -- for the time being:

The pall looming over U.S. newspapers grew even darker Monday as Gannett Co. informed most of its employees that they will have to take another week of unpaid leave this spring, while a Michigan daily unveiled plans to close its print edition after 174 years.

And The Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, also ordered pay cuts and 10-day furloughs for nonunion employees Monday to cut costs as advertising revenue drops.

The moves were just the latest sign of the distress afflicting newspapers across the country as they try to cope with a dramatic shift in advertising that is forcing publishers to figure out how to survive with substantially less revenue.

Signaling it doesn't see an upturn anytime soon, Gannett wants virtually all of its U.S. employees to stay at home and forgo at least one week's pay before July. About 6,600 workers outside the United States won't be affected by the furloughs.

Executives and many workers making more than $90,000 annually will sacrifice two weeks pay in hopes that Gannett _ the owner of USA Today and more than 80 daily newspapers _ will be able to avoid more layoffs after jettisoning 4,000 jobs last year.

This will mark Gannett's second round of furloughs this year. The company, which employs about 41,500 people, saved about $20 million by imposing one-week furloughs during the first three months of this year.

No end in sight.

Update: The NYT and the WaPo as well ...

Two of the most respected U.S. newspaper publishers, The Washington Post Co and The New York Times Co, are embarking on new cost cuts in the face of dramatic declines in advertising revenue.

The Times said it laid off 100 workers and is cutting non-union salaries. It is also asking unionized employees to accept similar concessions to avoid layoffs in the newsroom.

The Post is offering a new round of buyouts to newsroom, production and circulation employees, and said it could not rule out laying off staff.

"This was a very difficult decision to make," said a memo signed by Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Chief Executive Janet Robinson. "The environment we are in is the toughest we have seen in our years in business."

The moves come as a host of other U.S. newspaper publishers have reduced staff, declared bankruptcy or shuttered once-vaunted newspapers, as readers seek news online and elsewhere and as the recession crimps advertising spending.

GOP predicts "doomsday" if Obama budget passed

They really did use the word "doomsday".

Well, actually they said 'this country will go bankrupt' and 'fast road to ruin'; our liberal media translated that as "doomsday".

Where were Judd Gregg and Richard Shelby when Bush was spending $4 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In the Senate heartily voting 'aye', of course.

Anyway, this is a repeat of 1993, and does anyone remember what kind of economy we got after the Republicans finished whining and the United States finally got a budget?

Then I don't suppose anyone can recall that Clinton's '93 budget, which raised taxes, reduced the federal deficit significantly either.

Seriously though, let's allay their deficit concerns and raise taxes on the wealthiest 5% NOW, instead of 2011.

"Heavens to Murgatroyd! That would be Socialism!"

Continuing to provide a forum -- some would say, 'outlet' -- for the bleatings of the naysayers isn't quite as stupid as ascribing drops in the Dow to the president speaking -- indeed, lying about it --or writing an article about the Employee Free Choice Act without ever seeking a comment from a representative of labor.

If we're going to play 'point/counterpoint or 'tit-for-tat' then it needs to be a two-way-street all the time.

The Weekly Sweet Sixteen Wrangle

With the arrival of spring, a legislative session in Austin, municipal campaigns revving up around the state and Texas' primaries less than a year away, the blogs of the Texas Progressive Alliance continue to bring you insights from our members around the state. Here's a roundup of what we've been reporting:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas is now saying that the economic downturn has landed full force in Texas. Spared from the worst job losses during the first 6 months of the current recession, Texas is shedding jobs at an alarming pace. Wcnews at Eye On Williamson looks at the trends and offers a sobering assessment of the hard-line-let-'em-crash mentality of Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas GOP.

Off the Kuff points to a bill by state Rep. Dwayne Bohac to demonstrate that the push for voter ID really is about vote suppression.

If Republicans really cared about election integrity, then why do we still have non-auditable electronic voting machines? CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know.

BossKitty at TruthHugger sees an opportunity to get a degree in the dark arts in If Texas HB-2800 Passes, I Want A Masters Degree In VooDoo.

In a post that took some work and came out well, Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about what Google searches miss. Also, Neil read the bird sermon of St. Francis to a dancing duck chicken.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston writes about Why Ethics Reform is Needed in Texas.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at a few local Twits in the GOP. Twittering Republicans, that is.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw tells us that in Hutchinson's world, "It's All About Me". So she is going to run for governor, keep her Senate seat and give the people of Texas absentee representation. Whatever makes her happy. Heaven forbid she should put her constituents first.

WhosPlayin examined HB 4441, an attempt by Rep. Yvonne Gonzalez Toureilles to solve some problems related to pipelines.

nytexan at BlueBloggin is stunned that Obama Taps CitiGroup Economist For Treasury Spot. So, how does Washington's logic work? They offer a job, at the Treasury Department, to Lewis Alexander of CitiGroup. The Global Marketing Division that Alexander heads up was just fined $2 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for trade-reporting violations, including publishing flawed quotations. Let me know how that works out for you!

Xanthippas at Three Wise Men has some thoughts on the goals of American foreign policy, and is wondering if the war in Afghanistan is winnable, at least as we appear to be defining victory.

Molly Ivins warned us years ago about AIG, "too big to fail", and Phil Gramm. So says PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

McBlogger takes a look at the valuations being placed on the evil CDO's. Lots of laughs, of course, follow.