Things to do in Houston this weekend

-- The Houston Auto Show, now through Sunday the 30th, is offering free test drives on dozens of different models -- GMC, Buick, Chevy (including the Camaro), Toyota, and Kia. There are also free gifts for test-drivers.

-- The Chevron Houston Marathon and the Aramco Houston Half-Marathon will run through the streets of H-Town on Sunday.

This lists the street closures, so whether you're spectating or avoiding you'll know where to go. If you need a reason not to go, click here.

-- Sam Houston Race Park's thoroughbred season gets under way with the Connally Turf Cup, a $200,000 affair attracting some outstanding entries.

-- And if that's not enough for you, check out Artopia, sponsored by the Houston Press.

-- In a more partisan vein, the HCDP Comedy Showcase will be Sunday evening from 6-9, in coordination with the Houston Comedy Union.

Recent post updates

Re: More Senate stirrings and The Bush family pushback against the Tea Party ...

-- Dewhurst does DC, so does Leppert (ew):

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, widely presumed to start the race for U.S. Senate as the favorite if he decides to run, was in Washington (last) Thursday to meet with members of the Texas delegation on a range of issues.

Dewhurst was spotted in a meeting with a group of GOP lawmakers over the lunch hour, and a spokesman confirmed that the lieutenant governor was on the Hill to talk policy. ...

Asked if his political future was a subject of discussion during the meetings, Walz would only say that Dewhurst "was encouraged by his meetings with members of the delegation." ...

Rep. Joe Barton, now infamous nationally for apologizing to BP during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, told The Hill Thursday he likely would not pursue a Senate bid if Dewhurst does.

A GOP lobbyist also tells POLITICO that Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert was making the rounds in Washington Thursday.

Leppert, who recently announced he would not run for another mayoral term, is also toying with a Senate bid, but will face the challenge of being a regional candidate with little statewide name recognition.

-- Two Railroad Commissioners join the fray ...

Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams formally announced he would run for the U.S. Senate at a Texas Tribune forum Thursday morning.

During his announcement Williams told the Tribune's Evan Smith that he and former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who's also running, would probably attract some of the same supporters. He blasted the federal government for the Environmental Protection Agency "is sticking its nose in our business." He also said that he didn't feel that Dewhurst was the front-runner in contest.

He made a point of referring to himself as the "big dog" in the primary. He most certainly has the biggest head in the affair. Meanwhile, EAJ makes a little tiny ripple ...

Construction workers Jim Graf of Houston and Stacy Roberts of Conroe know barbecue, which is why they took a break from putting up a new Pizza Hut to chow down on brisket, chicken, beans and slaw at Goode Company Barbecue on Kirby. They didn't know Elizabeth Ames Jones, the Texas railroad commissioner who, coincidentally, was setting up in the parking lot out front on this chilly Tuesday to tout her candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

"State senate or U.S. Senate?" Graf wanted to know.

"Republican or Democrat?" Roberts asked.

Ah ha ha ha ha.  More:

Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones continued her U.S. Senate announcement tour at the Texas Capitol, showing up a bit later than scheduled this afternoon with an anti-Washington message she hopes will take her to Washington....

There wasn't a crowd to greet her, although there were some supporters on hand -- including her husband, two nephews and former Texas Supreme Court justice Craig Enoch -- plus a handful of reporters who asked questions afterward.

Even Big Jolly is less than impressed. Kuffner has a bit more.

Re: The Texas Budget Cluster ... let's just load up the linkage.

-- As Perry bashed Recovery Act, Texas relied more heavily on stimulus funds than any other state to fill budget hole (Think Progress)

... in addition to filling nearly his entire budget gap with Recovery Act funds, Perry also used the Build America Bonds program — created as part of the Recovery Act — to fund billions of dollars in infrastructure projects. He also grandstanded against — and then promptly accepted — federal funding meant to prevent teacher layoffs.

-- Senate Passes Voter ID (Austin Chronicle)

-- The first ten amendments to the Voter ID bill and their fates, and the 11th through the 24th, and the 25th through 38th.

-- What would veteran lawmakers do about Texas' budget deficit? (Dallas News)

Pre-SOTU toons

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance congratulates the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers on their advancement to the Super Bowl -- and notes the delicious irony in that they are playing the game in Dallas -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

WhosPlayin helped organize a cleanup for an historic African American cemetery dating back to about 1845 that had been the target of litterbugs and illegal dumpers. Respect for the dead, and respect for the land are still values that people from left and right can agree on.

Off the Kuff analyzed the initial Republican budget proposal and the utter havoc it would wreak on the state.

TXsharon at BLUEDAZE: Drilling Reform for Texas reported on two important developments on hydraulic fracturing: 1) the EPA is confident gas in Parker County water wells is from the Barnett Shale, and 2) the media took a lie about the EPA and regulating diesel fuel and repeated it without fact checking.

At Letters From Texas, Harold points out that Rick Perry keeps calling things "emergencies" that aren't, and continues to ignore emergencies that are.

Capitol Annex takes a look at a study showing that Texas gets an "F" when it comes to reporting outbreaks of food-borne illness and wonders why the media wasn't paying attention last year when candidates were making an issue of food safety in Texas.

There's a muddy, grunting scrum developing among the Republicans coveting the US Senate seat Kay Bailey is vacating, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs posts an update at a safe distance from the bottom of the pile.

Exactly why does Governor Perry want to insist that you can cut spending and maintain services? McBlogger's pretty sure it's a case of cognitive dissonance.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos gets it dead right whem she tells Goodhair to Man Up Governor Perry. Of course he won't. He has already double-downed on completing the demolition of Texas public education according to everything coming out about the new state budget.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know why Republicans hate people so very much.

TexasVox welcomes guest blogger Jim Hightower as part of a one-two punch on the nuclear waste dump in West Texas: Hightower's Dumping on Texas for Fun and Profit and an expose of Harold Simmons' last-minute contributions to Texas politicians in 2010.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote on the massive budget deficit in Texas, offering the view that Republican mismanagement of the state is not the only reason for the shortfall. Neil also cites poor citizenship by the many Texans who don't want to pay taxes in a state with no income tax, but who at the same time kick up a fuss when government services they use are cut.

Rick Perry's emergencies

If you had the slightest doubt about Governor Zoolander running for president, you can put that aside now.

Legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to first have a sonogram is an emergency that merits expedited consideration by the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry told anti-abortion activists on Saturday.

A bill backed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick will be granted emergency status, Perry told more than a thousand anti-abortion protesters at a rally. They had gathered at the Capitol on the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

[...]

The governor has previously announced four other emergency items for legislators to consider: eminent domain reform, ending "sanctuary city" policies that don't require police to check the immigration status of people they stop or arrest, a voter identification bill, and calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that would mandate a balanced federal budget.

The issues that Perry has given emergency status are important to his base of conservative activists and to the tea party movement.

Harold Cook has the lightest response, but this is really no laughing matter.

Tomorrow the Texas Senate will take up his first "emergency" -- voter ID -- in a 'committee of the whole' session.

It will eventually pass, and the only question is the level of opposition the minority will be able to muster. Whatever that amount is, how intense it may be, it will still only be symbolic.

Voter ID has the sole intention -- no matter how loudly or often Republicans claim it is something else -- of stifling Democratic turnout. Even prominent Republicans say that it will place a likely-insurmountable hardship on many of the elderly. But then that's just how they roll.

Moving forward, Democrats in Texas will have to make sure their voters have proper identification according to the legislation that will be crafted. Voters, for their part, are going to have to accept responsibility for making certain they are "qualified" to cast a ballot ... according to the GOP's definition of the word.

This additional voting requirement still won't stop disqualifications at polls, particularly those run by GOP election judges, nor will it end the thuggish tactics of the King Street Patriot/True the Vote denizens.

But it's going to be the new reality, just like community colleges closing, a hundred thousand teachers across Texas hitting the unemployment lines, and Medicaid patients dying because the the state no longer wants to pay for their care.

This is what a majority of Texans voted for last November. How do you like it so far?

Update: Burka, on the governor's priorities ...

I suspect that most governors, like 48 or 49 out of 50, would be embarrassed to fast-track such proposals when their state was facing a $27 billion budget deficit that is partly the result of the governor’s own policies, but nothing seems to be too blatantly political to embarrass Perry. And I think the reason no one really is wringing their hands over the governor’s upside-down priorities is that we long ago ceased to expect anything more.

And Gary Denton, on the V-ID bill ...

1) The legislation does not provide any alternatives to photo identification examples of identification that will no longer be acceptable to voter include student id cards, Medicaid/Medicare cards, expired driver’s licenses, expired passports, expired military id cards, birth certificates, official government letters, and employer id cards even if issued by a governmental entity.

[...]

9) Implementing redistricting plans and extremely strict photo id laws right before a Presidential election is a recipe for disaster in voter confusion.

The people most impacted by this bill will be students, (those who have) recently married (or) recently moved, very low income, elderly, legal immigrants, handicapped, (and) mainly urban dwellers who don't drive a car. These groups all lean Democratic so the Republicans count this bill as a success, getting any edge possible for elections.

And John Tanner, on why the V-ID bill will not withstand a court challenge.

Sunday Funnies

The final Countdown

Keith Olbermann was MSNBC's most popular personality and single-handedly led its transformation to an outspoken, left-leaning cable news network in prime time. Despite that, he often seemed to be walking on a tightrope with his job. Friday night, it snapped.


Olbermann returned from one last commercial break on "Countdown" to tell viewers it was his last broadcast, and read a James Thurber short story in a three-minute exit statement. Simultaneously, MSNBC e-mailed a statement that "MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract." The network thanked him and said, "we wish him well in his future endeavors."

Neither MSNBC President Phil Griffin, Olbermann nor his manager responded to requests to explain an exit so abrupt that Olbermann's face was still being featured on an MSNBC promotional ad 30 minutes after he had said goodbye.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The shock and awe was apparent in our household as well as everywhere else online I reached for details. Josh Marshall, who had been on the program in the first segment, was no less taken aback than everyone else.

No leaks, even with what must have been a late-in-the-day decision. They all kept a damn good secret, didn't they?

Various reports have Olbermann being let go because of Comcast's swallowing of NBC Universal earlier in the week, that he got fired because he said no to another  extension of his contract ($30 million for four years, signed in 2008 to make sure he was with the network through the 2012 election), and/or that he quit because Jeff Zucker was also shown the door in the wake of the Comcast-NBC merger. Anderson Cooper led his 9 pm (Central) broadcast on CNN with the news and reaction, most of it indicating that KO's mercurial personality had as much to do with his departure as anything else.

I would believe any of those versions. I would also observe that one thing MSNBC has been very good at over the years is throwing out their top talent if it doesn't toe their line. See Donahue, Phil and Banfield, Ashleigh and Shuster, David for evidence.

I'm a huge fan and I'll miss Countdown, but I'm not too concerned about KO's future and not just because money isn't the be-all-and-end-all for the dude (MSNBC is paying him his remaining contracted $14 mil). In six months -- after his non-compete expires -- he'll have an hour on Oprah's network, or HBO or someplace else where they aren't afraid of the brutal truth. He'll be wielding another very large, very loud megaphone, tormenting the Right into another derangement syndrome simply by relentlessly exposing their lies and hypocrisy.

And the same goes for Maddow, and Schultz and O'Donnell and Seder and Uyger and Stein and ...

Enjoy your sabbatical, Keith, and we'll see you when you get back.

Update:

Friday’s separation agreement between MSNBC and Mr. Olbermann includes restrictions on when he can next lead a television show and when he can give interviews about the decision to end his association with the news channel.

[...]

The decision was completed one year to the day from the last time NBC decided to end a relationship with an on-air star: Conan O’Brien. Mr. O’Brien agreed in the deal not to start up a new television show for nine months, and not to grant interviews for five months. The executives involved in the discussions with Mr. Olbermann said his agreement was not dissimilar to Mr. O’Brien’s.

The Texas budget cluster

The news coming out of Austin is so bad it is truly unfathomable.

A Sugar Land prison unit would be closed, funding for Brazosport Community College would be eliminated and thousands of jobs would be cut under a base budget presented late Tuesday night to state lawmakers dealing with a massive shortfall and the prospect of no new revenue this session.

The budget proposes nearly $5 billion less for public education below the current base funding. It is also $9.8 billion less than what is needed to cover current funding formulas, which includes about 170,000 additional students entering the public school system during the next two-year budget cycle. Pre-kindergarten would be scaled back.

Higher education funding, including student financial aid, would be slashed.

The proposal wouldn't provide funding for all the people projected to be eligible for the Medicaid program and would slash Medicaid reimbursement rates for health care providers.

Community supervision programs would be cut and a Sugar Land prison unit would be closed. Funding would be eliminated for four community colleges including Brazosport near Lake Jackson.

Thousands of state jobs would be cut.

The state wants to sell the land where the Fort Bend minimum security facility is located to developers. Let's pick it up from the TexTrib:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, laid out the first grim round of proposed cuts on Wednesday — aimed at balancing the budget without new taxes or tapping the Rainy Day Fund — even some of his Republican colleagues couldn't stifle their objections. House Democrats went a step further, calling the cuts "akin to asking an anorexic person to lose more weight."

Pitts didn't sugarcoat the proposed cuts, which strike a potentially devastating blow to public education and health care, eliminate 9,000 state jobs and shutter two state institutions for people with disabilities, one prison unit and three Texas Youth Commission lock-ups. He acknowledged the cuts are painful, and that this budget proposal slashes every state function that isn't a completely necessary service ...

No new taxes, no existing tax increases, no using the Rainy Day fund, but every state fee that you can think of -- and many you haven't -- is going up. No more sales tax holidays. Traffic violation fees to the state increase 50%. Vehicle license fees, vehicle registration fees, vehicle inspection fees, driver license renewal fees, hunting and fishing license fees, state park admission fees ... on and on.

Even the Republicans are whining about the budget cuts.

No-new-taxes and limited government may be a GOP refrain, but not necessarily when implemented in Republican lawmakers' backyards.

Three of four GOP lawmakers whose community colleges would lose state funding under a starting-point, bare-bones budget proposal publicly decried the proposed losses Wednesday.

Their worries joined broader concerns by Democrats over the proposal that would meet a budget shortfall estimated to be at least $15 billion without new revenue, instead relying on cuts in areas including public and higher education and health and human services.

"Reality has set in today, members. We have seen what the budget is going to look like, and we've got to go from now campaigning to governing this state of Texas," said Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, whose district includes Ranger College, one of those slated to lose state funding. "To me, we've gotten off on a wrong foot."

He called the college-closing proposal "the height of irresponsibility."

Considering that Republicans have been in control of the Texas Senate since 1996, and the House since 2003, and Keffer himself has been in Austin since '96 ... who do you think he's talking about?

The community college flap is a telling slice of the debate to come as school districts, teachers, groups that advocate for vulnerable Texans, lawmakers and others gauge the effect of the budget shortfall. ...

The proposal provides no new funding for growth in any area, including public and higher education or Medicaid, Pitts noted. One school finance expert, Lynn Moak, said the public education cutbacks could cost 100,000 school district jobs over two years.

The only thing that was spared the knife was border security.

"We're already as a state 50th in per capita spending, so you've got to ask yourself when you see a base budget like this, at what point is this budget akin to asking an anorexic person to lose more weight?" he asked.

Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, said, "The leadership has said that we want less government and we want to balance this budget through reduction. … Texans, whether you're old - seniors - whether you're young, in between, you're going to feel the pain. This the paradigm they've created. And now the question is whether or not Texans find that acceptable."

Rural Texas will be hammered the hardest by this budget, as the state and county governments are typically one of the largest -- if not the largest -- employer. Rural Texas went overwhelmingly for the Republicans in 2010.

Thus, Texans who voted for the GOP are getting exactly what they voted for. Texans who did not vote in the last election are also getting it. Hard.

The next two years of this debacle may teach some of them their folly. Then again, with the quality of Texas public education already poor and getting worse, they still may not learn the lesson.

Kuffner has a easy-to-digest list of the budget cuts, some of which are actually good ideas. The NYT's "What's the Matter With Texas?" has four point/counterpoint op-eds from Texas experts (if you count Talmadge Heflin as one of those, that is). And the Legislative Study Group has a five-page summary (.pdf) detailing how the budget cuts will affect Texans, which is the easiest and best resource currently available. Print it out, make a few extra copies, and take it to your next club meeting.

And keep in mind: this is what a very large majority of Texans voted for. They have, in fact, been voting for it for several years now.

Joe Leiberman's Retirement Party

He partially redeemed himself with his support of DADT, but he was smart enough to read the writing on the wall: Joementum long ago turned into Joenertia. One strongly held opinion that matches mine:

My corner of Connecticut was covered in ice today, until news broke of Sen. Joe Lieberman's impending retirement. Magically, a warm glow spread. It was a delicious feeling: the end of the reign of the politician I despise most.

Why do I loathe, loathe, loathe my 68-year-old four-term senator? My feelings are all the stronger for being fairly irrational. Lieberman's views are closer to mine than many politicians on whom I don't expend one iota of emotional energy. This, of course, is his power: He never loses his power to disappoint. Then there is the spectacle of it all: After each act of grand or petty betrayal, each time he turns on his former supporters, the Democratic Party and the Obama administration came back begging for more. Throughout the last Congress, he never let anyone forget he was the 60th vote.

Opposed the public option, supported the war in Iraq (he was on teevee yesterday saying Saddam threatened his neighbors and had WMDs), endorsed McCain, spoke at the GOP convention, joined the Republican caucus after that, switched back to the Dems after Obama was elected in order to keep his committee chairmanship.

It's always been all about him, and that's what I disliked the most about the man. Chris Murphy has announced as a candidate, and it will be a great day when we have a real Democrat in that seat.

More Senate stirrings

On the day that Ted Cruz threw his hat into the ring, a new poll shows Ron Paul in a dead heat with David Dewhurst for the GOP primary's US Senate nomination. Let's go to Politics Daily for the excerpt...

On a call with conservative bloggers Wednesday morning, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz announced he would seek the GOP nomination for the seat.

Cruz told the bloggers he was letting them hear his plans first because they will be at the "frontier" of this race.

Now that's what you call sucking up. Cruz is at the very back of the pack as far as name recognition goes, to say nothing of experience. His single claim to respect from the establishment comes in the form of a million-dollar war chest, raised when he was planning on running for Texas Attorney General before Greg Abbott got cock-blocked by Kay Bailey's resignation two-step over a year ago. But Cruz makes up for his shortcomings with inflammatory Tea-ish rhetoric:

During the call, Cruz called President Obama "the most radical president ever to occupy the White House," and said the election is about "which candidate is best prepared to stand up and fight to stop the Obama agenda."

Yawn. This PPP poll bears out that Cruz has a loooong way to go to get credible in the GOP primary. It's the one that has Dr. No on the lead.

If Rep. Ron Paul decides to seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican incumbent Kay Bailey Hutchison, he would become an instant frontrunner, a new poll found.

The Public Policy Polling survey showed that Paul, the longtime Lake Jackson congressman and two-time presidential contender, would start the Republican primary race in a statistical tie with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, with other potential candidates in a hypothetical 2012 Senate match-up trailing far behind.

Paul, whose son Rand was elected to the Senate from Kentucky last year, received the backing of 21 percent of Republican voters. Twenty-three percent named Dewhurst, whose personal wealth and name recognition make him a top-tier hopeful, is currently the top pick of 23 percent of GOP voters.

Nobody has mentioned Paul as a contender before today but that will change quickly with this news.

Among other candidates who were tested, Attorney General Greg Abbott polled third at 14 percent, followed by Joe Barton, R-Ennis, 7 percent, Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, 6 percent, Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, 3 percent, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, 3 percent, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, 3 percent, and former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, 1 percent.

I have to say that I still don't think Paul -- or Barton, for that matter --  will make a run, as it means they'd have to give up their seat in the House. But Paul definitely has something to chew on.

Vince shows that Democratic contenders also get swamped in hypothetical matchups, which I would expect to see at this early stage. The numbers barely change among D's and R's. I take this poll as simply a popularity contest of the respective brands.

Dewhurst, for his part, screwed the pooch in his inaugural address yesterday. Paul Burka's comments are nothing short of devastating:

I thought Governor Dewhurst’s speech was all wrong. It was too long, too partisan, too campaign oriented. He had one foot off the platform on the way to Washington.

Sometimes the things he said made no sense at all. Speaking of the early settlers, he said, “Those men and women who made their way to Texas, who settled these unforgiving plains, who sought neither a handout nor a stimulus check — they simply sought freedom.”

Oh, please. Was Stephen F. Austin oppressed in Missouri? Was Davy Crockett in debtors’ prison in Tennessee? Did Jim Bowie face constant harassment in Arkansas? Nobody came to Texas for freedom. They came for cheap land and the chance to make a better life for themselves. Texas is not about noble ideals. It’s about making money.

[...]

Dewhurst is following the Perry model: If you rail enough about Washington, you can make people forget about what is — and what is not — happening here. Which is: a humongous shortfall and a leadership that is willing, even eager, to wrap Texas in a fiscal straightjacket and throw it under the bus to benefit their own political ambitions.

His priorities, Dewhurst said, include securing our borders, encouraging more job creation, passing Voter ID, improve our public schools because a quality education gives every child a chance to realize their dreams, continue building a world class transportation system, make healthcare more accessable and more affordable with better medical outcomes at a lower cost by passing reforms that will lead the nation…

Does he think we’re all stupid? Does he think that anti-Washington rhetoric will make us forget that he is going to whack $25 billion out of the budget? There won’t be enough money left to build a farm-to-market road, much less a world-class transportation system. Quality education with 30 kids in an elementary classroom? A more affordable health care system? More affordable for the state, maybe, after Medicaid has been cut to the bone, but not for you and me.

My reading of Dewhurst through the years hasn’t really changed very much. It comes down to this: He wants to do the right thing, but he can never bring himself to do it. He perpetually runs scared, scared of the tea party, scared of Dan Patrick, scared of Rick Perry, scared of the Republican senators, scared of his own better instincts. And so we get speeches like this one, which doesn’t ring true.

No incumbent in Texas has served longer and is more of a blank slate than Dewhurst. The state's most powerful elected official is an empty suit, and that's why he won't make it to the Senate.

And today was supposed to be a day about Michael Williams, but news about his impending resignation and announcement for the Senate has been invisible.  Who knows whether he ceded the cycle to Cruz and Paul, but it seems ignominious that the leaks about him breaking news today turned out to be false.

Tune in tomorrow -- hopefully -- for the Bowtie's response to these developments.

Update: Surprisingly muted ...

Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams says he has sent Gov. Rick Perry a letter telling him he will be leaving the commission on April 2 to concentrate on a race for the U.S. Senate. ...

... (B)y giving Perry such advance notice, it will allow the governor to consider whether to replace him on the commission. There is discussion in the Legislature with taking the three-member panel down to one commissioner or possibly combining it with other agencies.

Perry could appoint someone to replace Williams on the commission. That appointee would have to stand for election in 2012 to fill the term through 2014.

Williams said he is not overly worried about the possibility of millionaire Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst entering the race.

"One of the lessons of 2010 is that message and the right messenger can trump money," Williams said.

Williams missed an good opportunity to capture some attention with this tepid announcement. Not a good way to start.