The Texas Tribune

Reported earlier today by the Quorum and Burnt Orange Reports ...

The longtime editor of Texas Monthly magazine will team with an Austin venture capitalist to form a nonprofit news Web site devoted to government and politics in the Lone Star state.

With a large bankroll, a staff at the outset of about eight journalists, and the cachet of Evan Smith, the Texas Monthly editor, the new venture, called the Texas Tribune, hopes to be an immediate force on the state’s political landscape, much as Politico became two years ago in national politics. Many local news organizations have cut back on statehouse coverage, and the creators of the Texas Tribune plan not only to post news on their own site, but also to supply it to newspapers around the state.

“This is not about horse race politics, primarily,” Mr. Smith, who will have the title of chief executive, said in an interview. “It’s going to be a lot of deep-dive policy stuff. We have the lowest voting turnout in the country. We have a number of major issues that get no attention or insufficient attention by the people we elect.”

The corporate media has reduced coverage of the Lege due to financial hardships -- closed bureaus, senior reporters let go. Though Kuffner, BOR, and Capitol Annex along with my other brother and sister blogs of the Texas Progressive Alliance do a terrific job, we can't cover the beat full-time. And the Texas Observer -- rest in peace, Molly -- has started publishing op-eds from Dan Patrick. Beyond the bite-sized pieces from Paul Burka and Harvey Kronberg, this concept fills a perceptible void. Something with some meat in it, produced by some of the state's recently unemployed journalistic talent, could be a real winner. There's also a very interesting reveal about the money behind it:

The chairman of Texas Tribune is John Thornton, general partner of Austin Ventures, a venture capital firm, who said he has given $1 million to the project and has raised $2.2 million, and plans to raise $4 million from individuals and foundations by the time it begins, possibly in November. Other nonprofit local news sites in places like the Twin Cities, San Diego, St. Louis and Chicago started with significantly less money behind them.

“We want to have at least two years’ runway, even if there’s no additional revenue, and preferably three,” he said.

An active supporter of Texas Democrats, Mr. Thornton, 44, who is based in Austin, said he is giving up partisan politics for the sake of the Texas Tribune. He said the new venture has quietly approached reporters and editors about joining, and that with many journalists unemployed, and others worried that their employers will keep shrinking, “talent ain’t the issue.”

And the climate forecast is improving:

Texas newspapers and people who follow the state’s politics will have to take Texas Tribune seriously, said Rich Oppel, who retired last year as the top editor of the Austin American-Statesman. “I think this is significant,” he said. “Evan Smith has been an excellent editor of Texas Monthly, which may be the best regional magazine in the country. He’s drawn talent.”

The timing plays into what promises to be a fertile period in the state’s politics. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison may challenge Governor Rick Perry in the Republican primary next year, in what political analysts predict would be the hottest race the state has seen in years.

This is a media development worth watching closely.

One Houstonian's experience with the Texas HHS failure

Reposting in its entirety:

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The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is a disaster. They fail to the needs of the people they are to serve, and indeed increase the pain and difficulty those people are having. There are so many problems with this agency that it is difficult to know where to begin. But I’ll start with my knowledge of problems in the administration of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

For the uninitiated, this is the program colloquially known as Food Stamps. They fail to process applications or renewals in accordance to laws and are having the people wait months for an interview. The agency is strikingly unresponsive. Now in July, they are making appointments to interview people in September that applied or should have been renewed and the Food Stamps delivered in June.

This is not what was intended when the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 authorized USDA to award $5 million in grants for state and local government and private non-profit organization projects aimed at simplifying the SNAP application and eligibility systems or improving access to SNAP benefits by eligible households.

You may ask how am I qualified to berate the Health and Human Services Commission in the Great State of Texas. I have had to become familiar with Texas HHS and the nightmare that agency is. If you take a little bank fraud, employment outsourced to other countries, some health problems w/no insurance and reach the age where nobody wants to hire you, all you have to do is stir. You have the perfect recipe for personal financial disaster.

I moved to Houston because I had family here. Shortly after I moved here, my sister’s husband was transferred, and now I’m the only one who can care for my 89-year-old mom. This is my first diary, and I’m coming out of the Food-Stamp Closet with this story in hopes that I can bring awareness to the problems faced by so many here. I petition anyone reading this to join me in bringing attention to the problems in that agency and to work towards making things better for the many who have no voice.

By my experience, I can tell you:

The public web site doesn’t work. I called Information, 211, and they steered me to the Internet to apply for benefits. I did so, and two months later I spent days and dealt with people all over the state, looking for the status of my application. The application showed on the web as having been submitted, but no one could tell me the status. I spoke to people in Midland, several in Austin, and several in Houston. The final verdict was that my app must have gone into a black hole in their system, as the system didn’t handle applications from Harris County yet. Then why was I sent to this system? And why did this system accept my application when one of the first questions I answered was "County"? What kind system is built so that "records in" aren’t tracked and accounted for? And if there is an error that the system is unable to process, why was three no error message and the requestor not notified?

They cannot process mail. An example of how poorly they handle any mail is a notice I have before me right now, (because I needed to reference it) and the envelope it came in. The notice was dated June 30th and it came in an envelope postmarked July 8th. Personally, I believe the postmark. I’ve learned to save the envelopes because I suspect this particular problem is a deliberate attempt to make applicants fail their response times. Clients have time limits to respond, and if it takes eight days for a notice to get from someone’s out-box to the Post Office, the client can miss their deadlines and loose their benefits. I’ve also taken to sending mail Certified (this is a hefty cost to someone on food stamps). While they can’t deny getting the mail when you have a receipt, I have found that it failed to speed delivery to the recipient (i.e., Post Office" signed for date" does not mean that the recipient got it (or the worker fibbed to me about when it got to their desk)), nor does sending it Certified have any time impact on having the contents processed.

Their phone system is a dreadful. Do you like to wade through a phone tree and wait for a long time listening to messages repeated, to be disconnected and have to start all over? How about when you finally get a person and explain your problem they transfer you to a line that asks for your FAX number to continue? (This was a new one for me. I’ve had a phone tree problem on other phone systems, but HHS’s has been the only phone system I’ve encountered to throw me out because I didn’t have a FAX number.) If you’re wondering why phones are important, consider that Houston is a big place. I live in the northwest area but I’m assigned to an office in the southeast. This is equivalent to having someone in the Bronx go to Brooklyn or someone in Queens sent to Staten Island, except that New Yorkers have a public transportation system that Houstonians don’t.

They do not send notices to claimants even when benefits are ending. They don’t follow normal business etiquette and provide information to clients by mail or phone when there is a major change and frequently don’t reply to the clients at all. I sent one certified letter that never been replied to at all. No letter. No call. Nada. I appealed a decision and got the same treatment: Nothing. I ask, " Is this any way to run a railroad?"

From the start the experience is humiliating. If you can manage to get your application processed you are fingerprinted and they share your personal data with law enforcement agencies. Barbara Ehrinreich, from her op-ed A Homespun Safety Net published in the NYT July 12, says this is making it hazardous for anyone who might have an outstanding warrant — for failing to show up for a court hearing on an unpaid debt, for example — to apply.

Then they check and check and check. Everything you tell them they check. How many times do you have to submit your social security benefits statement and your apartment lease? The answer is: every time they ask for it. The redundant paperwork is incredible.

Right now I’m trying to fix their failure to renew my case in June and this is a rerun of what happened last year. In December 2008, I mailed my renewal info as requested but my case was not processed. In January I started pleading for help as my account was not credited. No notice. Nothing. Just no credit to the account, the same as this time. It took a while before I could get any action, and when I did, they cut my benefits greatly. I had just spent $11.31 in postage to send all the paper they demanded!

I appealed the reduction in benefits. And I suppose I lost. I say suppose, because after the insane "hearing" by phone, which is a horrendous story by itself, I never received the result, which should have been sent by mail. I was told in a month or so. (I could go further into the appeal, but I’ll limit my discussion here).

I’m fortunate in that I can tell the story and point the finger because most of those in need cannot. Many of the people here have nowhere else to go except to the Texas HHS and have no voice at all. It’s not like you can take your need to another agency. Poverty itself can deplete and strain entire social networks, leaving no one to turn to. When the poor get no help, they are forced in a further downward spiral, often falling for the rip-offs of ‘payroll and quick auto loans’ that they can never get paid off. They are the most vulnerable and they suffer the most from many scams. If they can’t pay their credit card, the banks slam them and their car insurance goes up. If they don’t get their food stamps they may not have the cash for a haircut to go on the job interview they worked hard to get.

As the national recession persists and our federal government is striving to help people caught in it, Governor Perry and most of Texas’ Republican lawmakers work overtime to set up barriers to any help that’s made available. Senator John Cornyn voted against the SCHIP program (health insurance for low-income children). I can never understand how the Republicans, who care so much for the unborn, have no heart when it comes to children who are here. Perry refused the federal assistance to the unemployed. He should be ashamed of his record and the punitive bureaucracy he is in charge of, but he’s not.

It’s true, Texans likes to brag. But for those who can face the truth, the quixotic becomes brutal. Eliot Shapleigh, a state senator from El Paso, compiles a report each legislative session called Texas on the Brink (.pdf). Shapleigh's little book of horrors comes fully footnoted to avoid being attacked by partisans. His staff gathers data from the Census Bureau and Texas government agencies. Skimming it will provide more than enough data to show where the Republican leadership, which so proudly brags about its governance, has brought the state. Here are a few of Shapleigh's tidbits about Texas that Rick Perry doesn't want the rest of the nation to know:

1. 49th in teacher pay

2. 1st in the percentage of people over 25 without a high school diploma

3. 41st in high school graduation rate

4. 46th in SAT scores

5. 1st in percentage of uninsured children

6. 1st in percentage of population uninsured

7. 1st in percentage of non-elderly uninsured

8. 3rd in percentage of people living below the poverty level

9. 49th in average Women Infant and Children benefit payments

10. 1st in teenage birth rate

11. 50th in average credit scores for loan applicants

12. 1st in air pollution emissions

13. 1st in volume of volatile organic compounds released into the air

14. 1st in amount of toxic chemicals released into water

15. 1st in amount of recognized cancer-causing carcinogens released into air

16. 1st in amount of carbon dioxide emissions

17. 50th in homeowners' insurance affordability

18. 50th in percentage of voting age population that votes

19. 1st in annual number of executions

Given these numbers, need I explain?

There are a lot of Texans that need help. If you qualify for food stamps you should be able to get them. The state government should be held accountable.

The Houston Chronicle reported that our lawmakers cleaned out the public schools’ piggy bank so it could replace it with federal stimulus money in Stimulus, or better yet, status quo.

Note that Texas is last in voter participation of all the states. Now try to square this with the fact that the Republicans spent much of their effort during the last legislative session working on a bill to make voting more difficult, (to require Voter ID). Should they really work so hard to defend their position of dead last?

Sometimes you need a laugh.

Nick Anderson, editorial cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle, did one of his toons about it: He has a crossing guard stopping Traffic so that a Mother Duck and her little duckies can cross the road. While allowing a string of ducks to cross the road is normally a kind, humanitarian act to be admired, Nick’s crossing guard is a big elephant, holding his hand up to stop Emergency Trucks "Children’s Health Insurance", "Windstorm Insurance Reform" and "Unemployment Benefits", so that V (momma duck) could lead the little ducklings o,t,e,r—I,d across the street.

In the same Off the Wall vein he did one of an angry looking Nancy Pelosi sitting behind a desk piled high with stacks of Budget, Health Care, Economy, etc. papers, saying," Beat it!", with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the background grandstanding a ‘Congressional Resolution Honoring Michael Jackson’, with her own portable spotlights.

In yet another, he has Perry slurping stimulus funds out of a straw while pushing an unemployed back with, "STOP, It’s Tainted".

To quote Barbara Ehrinreich from the article cited above:

So far, despite some temporary expansions of food stamps and unemployment benefits by the Obama administration, the recession has done for the government safety net pretty much what Hurricane Katrina did for the Federal Emergency Management Agency: it’s demonstrated that you can be clinging to your roof with the water rising, and no one may come to helicopter you out.

Even the help that has been sent doesn’t make it to the citizens of Texas. That’s due to a state government that undermines it and sets up roadblocks to its use. And if Texas doesn’t address its Health and Human Services problems fast, things are going to get a lot worse.

West Side Story II: White Republican Man's Burden

Revenge of the Senate Nerds

Let's go to the MoDO ...

A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not know that a gaggle of white Republican men afraid of extinction are out to trip her up.

After all, these guys have never needed to speak inspirational words to others like them, as Sotomayor has done. They’ve had codes, handshakes and clubs to do that.

Pick your bastard. I'll take Lindsey Graham of South Carolinah:

Graham read Sotomayor some anonymous comments made by lawyers about her, complaining that she was “temperamental,” “nasty,” “a bit of a bully.” Then he patronizingly lectured her about how this was the moment for “self-reflection.” Maybe Graham thinks Nino Scalia has those traits covered. ... Graham said Sotomayor would be confirmed unless she had “a meltdown” — a word applied mostly to women and toddlers until Mark Sanford proudly took ownership of it when he was judged about the wisdom of his Latina woman.

That tops Tom Coburn's impression of Ricky Ricardo (do you think the senator from Oklahoma knows the difference between Cuban and Puerto Rican?) and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's cornpone-and-hayseed-flavored bullshit. Our own John Cornyn's monotonous and repetitive droning actually comes in fourth in the competition. Some however will say it was his time to shine.

Damned liberal media.

The Marfa Lights "Shimmer"

Updated: Moving this post to the top for today's event. And click on the "Comment" icon at the end -- it's the tiny little cloud on the left -- and ask Spacedark what size he thinks they are.)

(Note: Author David Morrell -- whose sponsorship of this blog appears at right -- will be signing copies of "The Shimmer" at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet, on Tuesday, July 14 at 6:30 p.m.)

Football-sized lights hover over the dark horizon outside Marfa, Texas, bouncing, shimmering, even changing colors. Some can see them, others can't. Theories abound as to what they are, but no one seems to know for sure.

A newspaper article about this real-life mystery inspired David Morrell to give it his own, very creative spin. The result is "The Shimmer," a high-caliber, one-of-a-kind action thriller only the creator of "Rambo" could have conceived and executed to perfection.

In the novel, Marfa becomes Rostov, but otherwise, the two towns are almost identical. Like the real town, Rostov is located in grassland near the Mexican border. Standing a short distance away are a radio observatory, an abandoned World War II airfield, and an observation platform to view the lights. As the author says in the afterword, the novel contains a "surprising amount of 'reality.'"

The story begins as Dan Page, a sheriff's deputy in Santa Fe, N.M, receives a phone call from the Rostov police chief: His wife Tori, missing for two days, has been found there. Page, a private pilot, hops on his Cessna and flies to the small town. He finds Tori on the observation platform, but before he can have any significant conversation with her, a man appears with an AK-47 and begins shooting toward the lights, shouting "Don't you see how evil they are?" He then turns the gun on a crowd gathered around the platform, killing a dozen.

More here.

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for this week's Texas Progressive Alliance highlight reel.

Off the Kuff suggests that a pro-science PAC could do a lot of good, nationally and in Texas.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson reminds us that despite the brouhaha over transportation during the recently passed legislative session, TxDOT is still broken.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is outraged at the way Texas Republican crony capitalism whips patients in hospitals and psychiatric facilities.

Nat-Wu at Three Wise Men takes a look at the nation's unemployment picture, and finds it's even worse than the numbers make it appear.

Over at Texas Kaos, Lightseeker shares an email indicating Big Insurance doesn't just want to maximize the profits it makes from its members, it wants them to help protect them from competition. No, REALLY. Big Insurance Wants YOUR Help to Block Competetive Reforms.

Barfly at McBlogger takes a look at an exciting new movie coming out soon that's sure to draw in every douchebag you know.

With the news that the CIA concealed a clandestine counter-terrorism program from Congress on direct orders from Dick Cheney, the recently loquacious former veep has once again clammed up and disappeared. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs notes the turnabout.

Teddy at Left of College Station asks whether or not soon to be former Governor Sarah Palin is going with the flow, swimming upstream, or flopping on the shore? Teddy also answers the question of whether or not Congressman Murphy can push through legislation that would be the beginning of the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Also, Left of College Station covers the week in headlines.

Neil at Texas Liberal watched a 35-year-old rerun of All In The Family. In the episode Neil watched, George Jefferson called Archie a honky.

WhosPlayin posted video of an inappropriate campaign solicitation at Congressman Michael Burgess' recent town hall meeting.

The GOP's politics of resentment

Another blistering from Frank Rich:

Sarah Palin and Al Sharpton don’t ordinarily have much in common, but they achieved a rare harmonic convergence at Michael Jackson’s memorial service. When Sharpton told the singer’s children it was their daddy’s adversaries, not their daddy, who were “strange,” he was channeling the pugnacious argument the Alaska governor had made the week before. There was nothing strange about her decision to quit in midterm, Palin told America. What’s strange — or “insane,” in her lingo — are the critics who dare question her erratic behavior on the national stage.

That's going to sting for a few minutes.

Sharpton’s bashing of Jackson’s naysayers received the biggest ovation of the entire show. Palin’s combative resignation soliloquy, though much mocked by prognosticators of all political persuasions, has an equally vociferous and more powerful constituency. In the aftermath of her decision to drop out and cash in, Palin’s standing in the G.O.P. actually rose in the USA Today/Gallup poll. No less than 71 percent of Republicans said they would vote for her for president. That overwhelming majority isn’t just the “base” of the Republican Party that liberals and conservatives alike tend to ghettoize as a rump backwater minority. It is the party, or pretty much what remains of it in the Barack Obama era.

That’s why Palin won’t go gently into the good night, much as some Republicans in Washington might wish. She is not just the party’s biggest star and most charismatic television performer; she is its only star and charismatic performer. Most important, she stands for a genuine movement: a dwindling white nonurban America that is aflame with grievances and awash in self-pity as the country hurtles into the 21st century and leaves it behind. Palin gives this movement a major party brand and political plausibility that its open-throated media auxiliary, exemplified by Glenn Beck, cannot. She loves the spotlight, can raise millions of dollars and has no discernible reason to go fishing now except for self-promotional photo ops.

There's a lot more to sink yourself into, including the inevitable comparison to Dick Nixon and the "kick around" speech.

(Let's try to remember that Nixon did make a big comeback, before he scowled away into history as America's worst president ever ... until, of course, the most recent Republican.)

Sunday Funnies

"Efforts to reach Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful."

That's the most surprising news in the article, frankly:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Recall that Seymour Hersh was the guy who reported on Cheney's death squads, commanded by Stanley McChrystal, that allegedly took out Benazir Bhutto and the Lebanese prime minister and so on and so on. Obviously that's not information Cheney would want Congress to find out about directly from the CIA.

What would the Republicans in Congress do if the Justice Department chose to prosecute the former veep? Oh, right ...

My guess is Kay quits

The race for governor, not her Senate seat. Harvey Kronberg, yelling again:

PERRY LEADS HUTCHISON BY 12 POINTS IN NEW TEXAS POLITICS PROJECT POLL

For second time in as many weeks, a survey of Texans shows Perry with double-digit lead.

A new horse race poll out today has Gov. Rick Perry with a double-digit lead over U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for the GOP nomination for Governor next year. Perry leads Hutchison by a 38 percent to 26 percent margin in the survey conducted by UT’s Texas Politics project.

Perhaps more notable is that this is the second survey in as many weeks to show Perry with a significant lead over his Republican rival. In late June, the Texas Lyceum released a poll showing Perry leading Hutchison, 33 percent to 21 percent.

But if the Hutchison camp can find something heartening, it’s the high level of Texans who have yet to pay attention to the horse race. The Texas Lyceum poll found 45 percent of those surveyed undecided about their choice for Governor. That number was down significantly in the UT poll but 34 percent still said they either would vote for someone else or were undecided.

If I'm wrong, and she quits the Senate soon to focus on this ill-fated attempt to be governor, then I believe that Rick Perry will take John Cornyn's advice and appoint Greg Abbott to fill the unexpired term. I don't think the governor likes Dewhurst as much; his good buddy Roger Williams (despite the love from Paul Burka and Roger Staubach) probably doesn't have enough name recognition to close the deal, and I think Perry is too afraid of his base to nominate a black man to the post.

And if I'm wrong again and Dewhurst does get the seat, then Abbott runs for lieutenant governor. We're not going to rid ourselves of that guy no matter what.