The last-week-of-summer-vacation Wrangle

Despite the oppressive heat, the Texas Progressive Alliance is enjoying the final week before school begins as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is amazed at how much Republicans like John Cornyn hate our Constitution and the freedoms it accords us.

Off the Kuff continued the 2010 interview series with conversations with state representatives Scott Hochberg, Sylvester Turner, and Jessica Farrar.

Neil at Texas Liberal noted that you can register to vote in three languages in Harris County. No matter what the Republicans and the Tea Party folks hope for, we live in a diverse city, county, state, nation and world.

Bad news for Barnett Shale residents: methane + sunlight + oxygen = formaldehyde. Considering the constant, massive fugitive emissions, it's no wonder we have "astounding" high levels of formaldehyde. Brought to you by TXsharon at Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

The latest broadside from the Back to Basics PAC, "Hands OFF our land!" is a wedge issue for Bill White. It's effectively separating Rick Perry from rural (mostly Caucasian) Texans. Read it -- and watch it -- at PDiddie's Brains and Eggs.

Over at TexasKaos, libby shaw chronicles the latest embarrassment from Louie Gohmert in Gohmert Has Meltdown on CNN. With no evidence to support him, Louie did what he does best -- spew and sputters. Check it out....

This week at McBlogger, we start our long-awaited transfer to WordPress and a new design. Come by, check it out and see what Sleazy Todd Staples is up to now.

Hot Damn! More Funnies

John Cornyn: Mosque-eteer

Add Senator Box Turtle to the ever-growing pile of TeaBaggers for Freedom*.

"With emotions so high on the issue do you think this becomes an election issue 79 days to go before the mid terms?" asked (FOX News' Bret) Baier. "Will you be telling your candidates to make sure what the Democratic opponents how they stand on the particular issue?"

"I think it does speak to the lack of connection between the administration and Washington and folks inside the Beltway and mainstream America, and I think this is what aggravates people so much," answered Cornyn. "I agree with [Sen. Jack Reed], this is going to be a local decision. I would like to hear what the elected officials in New York, the two United States senators and other local officials think about this and the American people will render their verdict."

"So yes, it becomes an election issue?" prompted Baier.

"Whether you are connected to people or listening or lecturing to them, this is sort of the dichotomy that people sense that they are being lectured to and not listened to and that is why people are upset about Washington and to that extent, yes," said Cornyn.

The Republicans have opened a new front in the War on the Parts of the Constitution We Don't Like, adding the First Amendment to the Fourteenth and the Tenth.

Remember: the terrorists -- like John Cornyn and his ilk -- hate us for our freedoms. America can only truly be free if we curtail our constitutional rights.

*does not apply to women, brown people, non-Christians, forriners, and libruls

South Texas Chisme has a similar take, and Hal at Half Empty examines the repeal of the Bill of Rights.

Saturday Funnies

Riddle and Gohmert

Once more, Texas Republicans represent themselves as complete fools.

Texas Republican state legislator Rep. Debbie Riddle was not prepared for Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Riddle appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" to discuss the threat of "terror babies" — a supposed threat in which terrorist organizations send pregnant women to the United States to have their children, who would be US citizens but trained and raised abroad to be terrorists and could enter and leave the US without raising suspicion.

Riddle based her claims on her conversations with "former FBI officials" but Cooper demanded evidence.

"What former FBI officials?" he asked. "What evidence is there of some sort of long-term plot to have American babies born here and then become terrorists?

"Well, at this point, I don't have the hard evidence right here in front of me," Riddle responded. She would not reveal her ex-FBI sources or the basis for their claims, and then tried to change the subject to porous borders and the threat of dirty bombs.

"Border security is certainly an issue, and it's a good topic," Cooper said. "It's not the topic, though...I'm just asking for proof. You say you're still gathering it from unnamed former FBI people."

"When your folks called me in the preliminary, that was part of the conversation," Riddle responded. "They did not tell me that you were going to grill me for this specific information that I was not ready to give to you tonight. They did not tell me that, sir. "

Former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes then appeared on Anderson Cooper's program the next evening to describe Riddle's claims as "ludicrous" and "absurd". Elise Hu at the Texas Tribune also followed up.

I made an open-records request for any records related to communication between Riddle's office and former FBI agents. Her chief of staff, Jon English, replied this afternoon, saying no such records exist. "Unfortunately we don't have any records or emails that could be reproduced for your inquiry," English wrote in an email. "Everything Rep. Riddle was referring to has been in the form of private conversations she has had, although she shares those with myself and our district director."

Then last evening, Cooper had Congressman Louie Gohmert of the 2nd 1st Congressional District of Texas, on presumably to save Riddle's bacon. Watch this:



One excerpt:

COOPER: What research? Can you tell us about the research?

GOHMERT: You are attacking the messenger, Anderson, you are better than this. You used to be good. You used to find that there was a problem and you would go after it.

COOPER: Sir, I am asking you for evidence of something that you said on the floor of the House.

GOHMERT: I did, and you listen, this is a problem. If you would spend as much time looking into the problem as you would have been trying to come after me and belittle me this week --

COOPER: Sir, do you want to offer any evidence? I'm giving you an opportunity to say what research and evidence you have. You've offered none, other than yelling.

These two clowns are among the worst of the Texas Republican contingent. Riddle's general election opponent is Brad Neal. Gohmert -- his district is adjacent to the infamous Winnebago precincts -- has no Democratic challenger. And that may be the saddest fact of all.

Wayne Slater at TrailBlazers has more, and Kuffner collects the snark.

"Hands OFF Our Land" is White's wedge

It's also a Caucasian one. That in a moment.

Back to Basics is moving swiftly to drive a wedge between rural Texans and Rick Perry, and to that end has re-opened a battle front on one of his weakest flanks, the Trans-Texas Corridor.



Just look at the quotes:

The huge government land-grab would have paved over 2,400 square miles of prime, productive farmland and displaced a million Texans from their homes and businesses.iv

The project was rife with corruption from the beginning:

• Perry signed the law allowing free roads to be converted into toll roads.^v
• A former top aide to Perry lobbied for the Spanish consortium – led by CintraConcesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. – that won the lucrative contract to build the first segment.^vi
• Even losing bidders got a government payout, totaling millions in wasted taxpayer dollars. ^vii
• Companies who stood to profit contributed over a million dollars to Rick Perry.^viii

Citizens of all political persuasions were outraged by this government overreach.^ix

Let's look at the checklist: yep, there's Big Government, Big Government Waste, the ubiquitous Perry crony capitalism, and even a dash of 'foreigner' bigotry ("a Spanish company") all nicely mashed together. And this, tying in the importance of a legislative block to executive authority -- and no, we ain't talking about D.C. now...

The legislature tried twice to stop the TTC boondoggle.

First they passed overwhelmingly a moratorium ending the Trans-Texas Corridor. But Perry vetoed that bill, and he refused to sign the law until he succeeded in forcing lawmakers to slip in exceptions to some of his pet projects –- including an exception to allow construction for parts of the Trans-Texas Corridor.^x,xi

Then the legislature tried to protect families with a bill preventing eminent domain abuse. The bill would have placed limitations on the government from taking private property for the gain of another private party. Although lawmakers passed these protections overwhelmingly with the support of land and homeowners across the state, Perry vetoed the law.^xii

And the future threat to Texas farms and ranches, from South Texas to Central Texas to East Texas (that is a lot of  rednecks err, the conservative base, folks) ...

“I don’t think it was a mistake at all to have a vision of how to move people and produce safely and expeditiously in the state of Texas,” he said during the debate.

— Perry on TTC and eminent domain

That could make Perry’s sales job easier in 2011, when, if re-elected, his aides said he would try to put Texas back on the path to private toll roads. “Absolutely, the governor is going to keep pushing, pushing for putting this tool back in the box,” Heckmann said. “If he had waited for the Legislature to raise taxes or for Congress to send us back an even return on what we send to Washington in gas taxes, then nothing would ever get built.”

— Kris Heckmann, Perry’s deputy chief of staff and transportation expert

Of course this is entirely the wrong political environment for a Republican incumbent to be supporting a massive government project, and that Perry problem, as we all know, is just for openers.

The "Rick Perry lives in a ten-grand-a-month rental mansion and reads Food and Wine magazine" meme also exploits his wealthy elitist tendencies, and he just can't shoot enough coyotes to overcome it.

If you also note that Perry fucked up his race card play yesterday, while at the same time recognizing that Bill White continues to focus on religious conservative -- well, Methodist anyway -- themes, then you can clearly see that the Democratic nominee for governor is slowly succeeding in peeling off Republican base voters.

(Let's see how many of Perry's lickspittles actually read this blog. Note to self: if the governor is eventually compelled to address the lingering concerns surrounding the TTC, then White has already won.)

Perry declined border briefing from Napolitano

The man is is just an ass.

(Rick) Perry greeted Obama at the foot of the stairs from Air Force One, clapping for the president as he descended. The two shared a hearty handshake before Perry pulled the letter out of his suit pocket and handed it to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, who was standing behind the president.

A White House official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sent Perry a letter last week describing the administration's border security efforts and offered him a "top-level NSC briefing." The official said Perry declined.

What a jackwagon. Let's dispatch him to the border with his Coyote Special  -- after we boot him out of the $10 grand-a-month rental governor's mansion in November.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is pretty sure its invitation to President Obama's events in Texas were lost in the mail, and we will keep saying that to ourselves as we bring you this week's blog highlights. (Regular -- or more frequent, at least -- posting to resume here in short order.)

Off the Kuff continued his interview series with Congressional candidate Ted Ankrum and State Representatives Senfronia Thompson and Garnet Coleman.

Staggering levels of formaldehyde in Barnett Shale air and the attempted cover up, breaking news by TXsharon on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

This week on Left of College Station, Teddy reports that the Republican electoral strategy is to conceal their policy agenda, and notes that Congress should do nothing because the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire. LoCS also covers SMUT and says Texas Dominates the Recession at a price.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wonders why Republicans like John Cornyn want to take us back to pre-Civil War days when blacks were not full citizens of the United States.

What part-time governor is also a real estate genius or maybe instead a sleazy grifter? Read Libby Shaw's take at TexasKaos in Rick Perry Stuffed His Pockets with $500K from Murky Land Deal.

NatWu at Three Wise Men says that however bad the economic news seems these days, things are actually much worse.

WhosPlayin stepped in it this week by pointing out how the local school district is giving an across-the-board raise to all administrative personnel, many of whom are already highly paid, while some highly-experienced teachers could go without raises this year.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has been skewing the child support statistics to his favor, reports PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.

On a day trip to Galveston, Neil at Texas Liberal took a picture of a portion of the seawall mural that showed workers in hazmat suits cleaning up muck from the sea. While Galveston is a great place to spend a day and spend a few dollars, the folks there are long acquainted with toxic spills.

Friday toons: rights edition

Prop 8 declared unconstitutional

It's been a real bad go-round for conservative attempts to codify discrimination. Last week, Arizona's SB 1070 mostly nullified; this week, a New York city commission approved the location of an Islamic community center near the site of the former World Trade Center, and California's Prop 8 is rendered a massive fail at the hand of the Ninth Circuit's US Judge Vaughn Walker.

Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause, as excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

Rather, the evidence shows that Proposition 8 harms the state's interest in equality, because it mandates that men and women be treated differently based only on antiquated and discredited notions of gender.

Moreover, the state cannot have an interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular.

A private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples is not proper basis for legislation.

Here, the purported state interests fit so poorly with Proposition 8 that they are irrational. … What is left is evidence that Proposition 8 enacts a moral view that there is something "wrong" with same-sex couples.

The evidence at trial … uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples.

Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians.

I would really like to see how a conservative SCOTUS argues to overrule this decision. And if it should dare to do so, the corresponding outrage and backlash.

As my friend Neil noted elsewhere...

Yes to birthright citizenship. Yes to the "mosque" in NYC. Yes to gay marriage. Yes to universal coverage. Yes to an inclusive, decent society.

Houston Votes

Last week I lunched with Houston's political blogger nation -- Kuff, Neil, Stace, Martha, David and also Big Jolly -- and the traditional media, Rick Casey -- as well as representatives of the League of Women Voters (Christina Gorczynski) and Texans Together's Houston Votes project (Fred Lewis, Maureen Haver, Sean Caddle). Their goal is to register 100,000 modest- to low-income citizens of Harris County, and then get at least 50,000 of them back to the polls in November. A vigorously non-partisan affair, their mission is to give voice to the historically disengaged.

In Harris County, as you may already now, this is a sizable problem: the best estimates are that 600,000 eligible adult citizens are not registered to vote, and they are mostly disadvantaged minorities; Asian-American, Latino and younger voters along with those in the lower-income strata. Houston Votes conducted this work for the first time here in 2008, registering 24,000 and turning them back out to vote at a 65% clip (without any allegation of impropriety).

The door-to-door-canvassing is happening now. This mobilization is an added effort to their storefront registration drives (which was their only point of contact two years ago, thus the more ambitious registration goal this cycle). The HV project extensively trains all deputy voter registrars, carefully checks collected voter reg cards,  and otherwise closely monitors the process. Once the registration deadlines passes they will call or contact at the door every person registered, encouraging them to vote and providing poll location information.

A couple of events around this effort:

-- Tonight, Thursday August 5, the Kickoff Party at Pearl Bar.

-- Saturday September 18, at the George R. Brown: the LWV will co-sponsor with the ASCE a candidate meet-and-greet for the public. Every single candidate on the Harris County ballot, from governor to precinct constable -- Democratics, Greens, Libertarians and Republicans -- have been invited to attend. After an early evening reception there are two debates currently on tap: candidates for county judge and tax assessor/collector will square off.

(Thanks to Big Jolly David Jennings for the comprehensive post -- despite his obvious misgivings -- as well as for many of the links I used here. His post on the LWV event is worth a click also.)

Abbott's child support statistics skewed to his favor

In my conference call with Barbara Radnofsky last week, she alluded to a developing scandal within the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's department of child support collection. Theodore Kim of the Dallas News broke the story today.

"During my tenure as attorney general, the child support division has been elevated to the No. 1 national ranking," Abbott, a Republican, said in an interview last month in his Austin office. "And it is recognized around the country as being the top child support agency anywhere in the land."

Yet the full slate of numbers provides a more varied picture.

Texas lags in the percentage of overdue support it collects, according to an analysis of federal data by The Dallas Morning News. Delinquent cases and amounts owed are rising faster here than in many other states.

And Abbott's critics, including Democratic rival Barbara Ann Radnofsky, accuse the state of chronically underreporting how much child support is owed. State officials deny the charge.

"This attorney general is very bent on making his numbers look as good as possible," Radnofsky said.

Abbott's signature issue -- he ran millions of dollars of television ads in his re-election campaign of 2006 about his success in the endeavor of 'bringing deadbeat dads to justice' -- employs 2600 people and has an annual budget of nearly $300 million.

But he cooks the books.

Abbott, above all, underscores Texas's top rating, which the federal Department of Health and Human Services determines by comparing amounts collected with collection costs. The federal government rewards high-ranking states with additional money.

In fiscal 2009, Texas took in $9.80 in child support for every dollar it spent. That was more than double the national average of $4.73, federal statistics show. California collected $2.10 per dollar spent, putting that state 48th.

Abbott credited the statistics to a streamlined corporate culture and a caring workforce.

...

Comparing Texas with other states is difficult since each state collects child support and child support data differently.

Abbott says his numbers account for only the most challenging cases. Other states include all cases in their reports to the federal health agency, which gathers the data.

In truth, many problem-free cases are included in Texas's numbers.

Most big cities – including Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio – automatically add all child support cases, including ones involving willing payers, to the attorney general's database. Parents must opt out to avoid inclusion.

It gets worse, though.

Ginger Weatherspoon, who was fired from the attorney general's office in 2008, blamed the state for relying on a computer system that she says misinterprets state law and has generated widespread discrepancies.

"The state is collecting money that they are not owed, and they are not collecting money that is owed," said Weatherspoon, now in private practice. "There are major problems that need to be addressed."

There's also unnecessarily suspended payments to families.

Monica Attura, 44, of Plano has a different view. She and daughter Beatrice have received support for eight years.

But when a judge increased her ex-husband's biweekly payments from $600 to $750 earlier this year, Abbott's office began withholding payments as it verified the change.

Attura said she has not received child support for nearly two months, despite her attempts to resolve the matter. Her bills are adding up.

"It doesn't make sense to me, what is going on," said Attura, an interior designer who makes about $35,000 a year.

And apparently "liberal" definitions of what constitutes a father's income. From the comments there (typos left uncorrected):

(Abbott) looked at my Annul income based on a W2 form, and never consider my other child support in Oklahoma city. and Oklahoma did the same. So now I pay $975.00 a month in the State of Texas and $975.00 in the State of Oklahoma. And guess what? with the economy being the way it is overtime is scarce, and I haven't seen one bonus. Your next story should be "Those faithful fathers and mothers who pay child support in the State of Texas now living under bridges".

It seems Abbott's version of the truth leaves a lot to be desired by all parties involved in the child support matter. The big finish:

Radnofsky, Abbott's general election opponent, accused Abbott of issuing misleading numbers.

She argued that the state has incorrectly calculated the amounts owed for a large number of families since a 2002 change in state law.

"All of the bragging of success depends on ignoring the failure of the attorney general to collect or even acknowledge the legal debts that noncustodial parents have had written off," Radnofsky said.

Abbott intends to challenge the comprehensive healthcare plan passed into law earlier this year; he blustered about doing the same thing regarding legislation to cap greenhouses gases (no longer under consideration in the Congress). He wades into every fundamentalist conservative issue from gay marriage to the Ten Commandments on the state Capitol grounds.

He has a big fan club of enthusiastic freaks supporters.

Greg Abbott -- and I've been writing this since 2006 -- is the most dangerous politician in Texas.

It's long past time to elect an Attorney General who is capable of representing more than the most extreme faction of the Texas Republican party.