The Weekly Wrangle

It's Monday and it's time for another Texas Progressive Alliance blog roundup.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is sick of cronies running our cities our state and our country!

WCNews at Eye On Williamson on more GOP shenanigans: Republicans, hypocrisy, the stimulus, and more Carter "nuttiness".

Off the Kuff notes that as Texas' unemployment rate continues to rise, we are now in the position of having to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to fulfill our unemployment insurance obligations. Heckuva job, Governor Perry!

John Coby at Bay Area Houston has posted a A How to Guide for Illegal Immigrants to Vote in Texas Elections.

Xanthippas takes on more disability-as-diversity nonsense. Also, on a side note, his blog Three Wise Men's 5th anniversary is this Tuesday. We'll be putting up a special post in commemoration.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at how the NTTA will be raising rates because volume is down. So much for supply and demand theory.

This week, an old author returns to McBlogger with a true story about dogs. Completely unrelated to politics and nothing but funny.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a video of him reciting the words of the 1848 Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" as a ship passes behind him on Galveston island. Coming up this week at Texas Liberal will be a video shot at the San Jacinto battlefield.

Upon the arrival of Fashion Week in Austin, Mean Rachel wants to know "Does this city make my butt look hot?"

Citizen Sarah at Texas Vox expresses disappointment, to say the least, that the Public Utility Commission denied Sylvester Turner's petition to protect our most vulnerable from dangerous summer heat.

Teddy at the fourth estate will be able to survive the economic recession and into the new digital age. Left of College Station also reviews the week in headlines.

The Texas Tribune, a new media project headed up by soon-to-be-former Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith, is an idea that shows lots of promise. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has more details about it.

Just as during the campaign, malicious emails are being sent, especially to the elderly. One paticularly nasty one is entitled: SENIOR DEATH WARRANTS. Over at TexasKaos, lightseeker takes on piece of electronic hit mail and offers some ideas on fighting back in his diary, Healthcare Scare Mail and what You Can Do To Help.

Sunday Funnies

See, it's not "affordable health insurance" that the American people need. It's AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE. Tell your Congress critters that. Especially if they are conservative (Blue Dog or worse).

Walter Cronkite 1916 - 2009

Another iconic figure of my formative years goes into that good night.

Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at his home in New York. He was 92. ...

From 1962 to 1981, Mr. Cronkite was a nightly presence in American homes and always a reassuring one, guiding viewers through national triumphs and tragedies alike, from moonwalks to war, in an era when network news was central to many people’s lives.

He became something of a national institution, with an unflappable delivery, a distinctively avuncular voice and a daily benediction: “And that’s the way it is.” He was Uncle Walter to many: respected, liked and listened to. With his trimmed mustache and calm manner, he even bore a resemblance to another trusted American fixture, another Walter — Walt Disney.

That photo to the right is how I remember him: his hair and sideburns a little longer in the style of the '70's. A little whiter also. I don't remember "the flash from Dallas, apparently official" or his declaration that the Vietnam War was lost. I don't really remember the Apollo missions or the conventions he covered. I just recall that his was the voice of reason and authority in our house. At a time when there was only thirty minutes of national news a day, beginning promptly at 5:30 p.m. Central -- and you had three choices where to get it -- he was 'the gold standard', as longtime producer Don Hewitt has said. He certainly invented the post of broadcast news anchorman, though he referred to himself by a newspaper term, managing editor. (In Sweden, newscasters are actually called Kronkiters.)

Some viewers thought Cronkite was liberal, and they were right. But he wasn't a Democrat. (A personal aside: mine was a Democratic and union household growing up, but my wife's was Cuban-born and Republican. She said her father suspected his political leanings, and thus they were presumably a Huntley-Brinkley home.) Cronkite lived during an era when "liberal" and "conservative" applied to both political parties evenly.

Now, of course, all the thinking conservatives have abandoned the GOP. But I digress.

On Oct. 27, 1972, his 14-minute report on Watergate, followed by an eight-minute segment four days later, “put the Watergate story clearly and substantially before millions of Americans” for the first time, the broadcast historian Marvin Barrett wrote in “Moments of Truth?” (1975).

In 1977, his separate interviews with President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel were instrumental in Sadat’s visiting Jerusalem. The countries later signed a peace treaty.

“From his earliest days,” Mr. Halberstam wrote, “he was one of the hungriest reporters around, wildly competitive, no one was going to beat Walter Cronkite on a story, and as he grew older and more successful, the marvel of it was that he never changed, the wild fires still burned.”

Rest in Peace, Uncle Walter.

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:

=================

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.