Parker backs off her ordinance outlawing sharing

Mayor Annise Parker on Tuesday canceled a scheduled vote to regulate the feeding of homeless people in Houston following an outcry from people and groups that the proposed rules would criminalize simple acts of charity.

The rules had caused a fury from the moment they were introduced early this month. On Tuesday, the backlash continued as dozens of speakers criticized the regulations at City Council's public session. A coalition that included clergy, a tea party activist, a longtime property rights advocate, an immigrants rights leader and volunteers who feed the homeless held a news conference behind City Hall to criticize what they said were the rules' infringement on religious and personal liberties.

"To be told when and where and what time we can feed people goes directly against our creator. When the spirit moves us to go ahead and feed people, to check with the city first before we can go ahead and do that (is unacceptable). We're really opposed to this ordinance," said Manuel Sanchez, outreach director at Ecclesia Church in Montrose.

So there's a few Bible verses that address this: "I was hungry and you fed me", etc. I don't want to go all Godly about it though. I just want to note something that I have been considering for awhile about what motivates our mayor to take up all these conservative causes.

From my observation it appears Mayor Parker is imbued with that good old "pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps" mentality. I perceive that she is one of those people who feels as if the fruits of her success are the direct result of her having worked hard for them (no luck, favoritism, or charity was ever involved) and correspondingly those whom she perceives as not working very hard, or hard enough, draw no sympathy from her.

This would explain why she 'nudged' those lazy, filthy Occupants out of Tranquility Park; it's why she would choose to aggressively over-regulate feeding homeless people much like Republicans have passed laws restricting voting because they think there's voting fraud.

In her public attempts to sell the changes to city ordinance, Parker had spoken of the need to protect the homeless against food-borne illness, but had no data to indicate it was a persistent problem. She emphasized that it would promote coordination of charities so that several groups would not converge at a park by chance and have to throw out food for lack of takers.

Just as Republicans would take the route of hyper-regulating women's reproductive choice out of legal existence, so Mayor Parker believes that if you make things harder to get, the people who need them will move along and look elsewhere for them.

It helps us understand why she would rather terminate the employment of park workers and garbage collectors -- and essentially refuse to fund the pensions of firemen -- than raise taxes to address the city's budget deficit.

It reminds me of the time in college when I first heard this band play this song.

Hard times in the land of plenty;
Some got it all and the rest
ain't got any.



The difference these days, of course, is that the "some" don't want "the rest" to have any. And they want to make certain they don't get any.

Really and truly, I am of the mind that Annise Parker is one of the best, most moderate Republican mayors this city could ever hope for.

Yeah, both sides do it

I'm looking forward to whatever false equivalency conservatives can manufacture after yesterday.

At least two fire bombs were thrown at the Fort Worth office of state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) on Tuesday night, according to the Star Telegram. [...]

“It’s unfortunate when things like this happen in the public arena,” she said. “It reminds us of how important it is for us to remain very civil in our discourse and to work not to foment this kind of anger in our community as we discuss things that are challenges that we all face and care about.”

Senator Davis, still on the rise as one of the most powerful progressive women in Texas -- and thus of greatest danger to Texas Republicans -- honorably takes the high ground here. But we all know there aren't any Republican offices getting fire-bombed, or Republican Congresswomen shot in the head at townhalls outside of supermarkets.

Even Republican women refuse to understand the War on Women has become an actual shooting and bombing war.

We're way, waaay past the point of being able to expect a reasonable outcome just by telling people to tone down their rhetoric.

Texas Liberal and TruthHugger each have a similar take from a different POV, but as Off the Kuff noted a couple of weeks ago, it's time to go on offense. These are our wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers under bombardment, and those of us who care about them have to stand up and fight for them.

Update: Whoops, missed. I neglected to anticipate that the most extreme of Republicans, aka HouChron commenters, would rush to construct a frame -- as they did with the assassin Jared Loughner -- that the arsonist was a crazy liberal. I'll try not to make that mistake again. 

'Conservatives preach personal responsibility but never actually take any'.  Check.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has a spring in its step as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff wrote about the forthcoming end of the Women's Health Program in Texas.

John Coby ay Bay Area Houston finds a press release from Austin: "Texas Governor Rick Perry calls for reforms to men's prostate exams".

The US Department of Justice refused preclearance on the Texas GOP's Voter ID law this week. WCNews at Eye On Williamson calls it a victory for voting rights in Texas.

BossKitty at TruthHugger is Guilty of being a Woman in Republican Theocracy.

The Green Party of Texas fielded 56 candidates for federal, state, and local offices, and because the Texas Democratic Party did not in two statewide races, the Greens are virtually assured of ballot access in 2014. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has the news.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know -- amid all the talk of the Republicans' war against women -- why a judge let a man convicted of sexually assaulting a relative for years got probation?

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw explains why Rick Perry is No Mighty Mouse . It seems Texas' contribution to the War on Women does not include Governor Oops playing the hero. Check it out.

The more BlueBloggin listens to Rick Santorum and Grover Norquist, the more they believe that America is at risk of losing its elder generation: Republican Formula, America's Elderly Reap The Whirlwind.

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote about a number of posts this week about how the Texas forced sonogram law is state-mandated rape. In one of these posts Neil discussed the three Texas state Senate Democrats who voted for this law, and about just why this law is state-mandated rape. It is up to each of us to work hard to oppose and repeal this cruel law.

Slightly Funnier Sunday Funnies

(You really should click on this one to read it all.)

Still feeling a little cranky

For a variety of reasons.

-- Texas school districts cut 25,000 jobs after budget cuts:

"I'm hoping the Legislature will see there's hard data showing that, yes, districts are making some good decisions in terms of efficiencies," said Bob Sanborn, president of Children at Risk, a Houston-based nonprofit that analyzed the state figures. "But the Legislature should be very worried that in the haste to be more efficient we are cutting our future out from under us."

In the greater Houston area, districts reduced their workforce by 5 percent - with 7,655 fewer employees overall, including nearly 3,300 fewer teachers.

Democrats' silver lining: There at least won't be a super-majority of Republicans in the Lege come next session. Republicans' silver lining:

"The cuts weren't as bad as they could have been," said Rep. Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, who chairs the House Education Committee.

-- Obama to celebrate (part of) Keystone pipeline next week:

Under fire for painfully high gas prices, President Barack Obama next week is scheduled to head to Cushing, Oklahoma, to highlight his support for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline -- well, part of it, anyway.

The Obama administration blocked the overall project, which was to carry oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, on environmental grounds. But it also endorsed plans to build the section of the pipeline that is to stretch from Cushing to the Gulf, which analysts say will help ease a bottleneck and get more oil -- and therefore ultimately more gas -- to market.

This plus the rumors of tapping the strategic oil reserves just reinforces the false narrative that tight supply of feedstock is forcing up the price per gallon. It is not; it IS market speculation and the declining number of refineries in the US that are keeping pump prices on the rise. Gasoline consumption in the United States has fallen off a cliff, and not just recently, either. (There is a case to be made for both austerity and lower economic activity -- also known as 'recession' -- as the causes of the decline in demand, and this author makes it.)

But hey, there's a presidential election coming -- not to mention a war with Iran -- and pandering by Democrats has been in short supply.

All perception and very little reality involved in this equation.

-- But by all means, let's focus on the things that really matter.

A stump speech delivered Friday night by Rick Santorum to a crowd of about 2,000 at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL., was interrupted 15 minutes in by shouts of "Mic check! Mr. Santorum! Mr. Santorum!" ("mic check" is a familiar Occupy Wall Street battle cry) -- followed by the sight of two men kissing passionately in the stands. The crowd responded with loud booing and chants of "USA! USA!" as the kissers, identified by The Palatine Patch as Timothy Tross and Ben Clifford, were ejected from the venue.

Asked by the Patch if the kiss was a "public display of affection or merely a symbolic act," Tross replied, "I don’t think the message should be about what my sexuality is. It’s the message that he’s saying about sexuality that matters.”

The crowd chanted "USA, USA". Here again I am reminded of the words of Sinclair Lewis (who, as has often happened in the retelling of history, never actually uttered or wrote those words).

-- Three conservatives tout credentials in GOP race to succeed Ron Paul. "Three right-wing freaks work to out-batshit crazy each other in race to lose to Nick Lampson in November". There, fixed it for ya.

The amazing thing to me is that article doesn't even mention Steve Stockman. He's obviously too old-school kooky to make the cut.

-- The fat guy that broke the explosive story about the atrocities at Apple's Foxconn factory in China fabricated the worst of it out of whole cloth. So he disserved everyone, but particularly Apple, the legitimate concerns of exploited labor, and even journalism.

-- It's not just Goldman Sachs that is corrupt and evil to the core but also Chase. Like any of this is a surprise at this point.

-- Still feeling chipper after all my Debbie Downer? Let me know how you feel after you read this.

As bacteria evolve to evade antibiotics, common infections could become deadly, according to Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization.

Speaking at a conference in Copenhagen, Chan said antibiotic resistance could bring about "the end of modern medicine as we know it."

"We are losing our first-line antimicrobials," she said Wednesday in her keynote address at the conference on combating antimicrobial resistance. "Replacement treatments are more costly, more toxic, need much longer durations of treatment, and may require treatment in intensive care units."

Chan said hospitals have become "hotbeds for highly-resistant pathogens" like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, "increasing the risk that hospitalization kills instead of cures."

Indeed, diseases that were once curable, such as tuberculosis, are becoming harder and more expensive to treat.

Chan said treatment of  multidrug resistant tuberculosis was "extremely complicated, typically requiring two years of medication with toxic and expensive medicines, some of which are in constant short supply. Even with the best of care, only slightly more than 50 percent of these patients will be cured."

Antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella, E. coli, and gonorrhea have also been discovered.

"Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry," said Chan. "A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill."

I had a great-relative (great-grandmother, great grandaunt, I am uncertain) who died about a hundred years ago because she squeezed a pimple on her face and it became infected. We're headed back to those good old days. And it's not even the Republicans' fault this time.

Hey, I'll post some more Funnies later. That ought to make us feel better.

Sunday Funnies, 'War is Hell' edition