Election Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance says "on to the runoffs!" as it brings you this holiday week and election day roundup.

Off the Kuff looked at the latest strange poll results from UT and the Texas Trib.

This week WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the continuing right-wing assault on public education in Texas.

The endorsement of the three previous Democrats who lost to John Culberson is hardly a worthy vote of confidence, but that didn't deter one candidate in CD-07, who went on to suggest that he would win the November contest by 51.3%. That spin, however, was topped by his estimate of 73% of fewer than one hundred people in a straw poll at a barbecue suggesting "overwhelming" support. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reminds you that if a Congressional candidate exaggerates this wildly in May, he just doesn't deserve to be on the ballot in November.

Lightseeker explores what the triumph of Republican fear mongering and pandering means to our poitical futures here in Texas and throughout the nation. Check out Sobering Thoughts on Our Political Future over at TexasKaos.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme applauds the efforts of AACT Now in getting out the vote. Please continue through November.

Ten things you should know about the demographics of Texas

Via Vanessa Cardenas and Angela Maria Kelley at the Center for American Progress (and provided to me via Facebook by Mini Timmaraju, who will be speaking at the TDP's state convention in Houston in a couple of weeks). Republished here in whole.

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1. Communities of color are driving population growth in Texas. Texas is one of five states in the country where people of color make up the majority of the population. Between 2000 and 2009 Hispanic population growth accounted for 63.1 percent of all growth in the state. Texas’s black and Asian populations — 2.8 million people and 850,000 people, respectively — were the third largest in the country in 2010.

2. The majority of children in Texas are children of color. For children under age 5 in the state, children of color outnumbered non-Hispanic white children 2.2-to-1 in 2011. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2009, 64 percent of the state’s children were of color.

3. Houston is the most racially and ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the country. According to a report from Rice University, the percentage of Latinos in the region increased dramatically from 20.8 percent in 1990 to more than one-third at 35.5 percent in 2010. This thriving racial and ethnic diversity places Houston at the head of the state’s rapid demographic changes.

4. Nearly a third of immigrants in Texas are naturalized — meaning they are eligible to vote. In 2010 immigrants comprised 16.4 percent of the state’s total population. That year there were 1.3 million naturalized U.S. citizens in Texas, approximately 32 percent of immigrants in the state.

5. Voters of color make up a growing portion of the Texas electorate. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos accounted for 20.1 percent of Texas voters in the 2008 elections. African Americans and Asians comprised 14.2 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, of the state’s voters that same year.

6. Even more Latinos are eligible to vote but are currently unregistered. According to the political opinion research group Latino Decisions, there are 2.1 million unregistered Latino voters in Texas in 2012. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there are an additional 880,000 legal permanent residents (green card holders) in Texas who are eligible to naturalize and vote for the first time. Put together, this means Texas has close to an extra 3 million potential voters this fall.

7. The Department of Justice blocked a Texas voter ID law that threatened to disenfranchise Hispanics. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, far fewer non-Hispanic voters — 4.3 percent, compared with 6.3 percent of Latino voters — lack a proper photo ID, which voters would have been required to show under the law. Texas’s own state data listed 174,866 registered Latino voters without an ID.

8. Communities of color add billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Texas’s economy through entrepreneurship and spending. The purchasing power of Latinos in Texas increased more than 400 percent from 1990 to 2010, reaching a total of $176.3 billion. Asian buying power increased by more than 650 percent in the same period to a total of $34.4 billion. And in 2007 Texas’s nearly 450,000 Latino-owned businesses had close to 400,000 employees, and sales and receipts of $61.9 billion.

9. Immigrants are essential to the economy as workers. In 2010 immigrants comprised 20.9 percent of Texas’s workforce. As of 2007, 21 percent of Houston’s total economic output and 16 percent of Dallas’s economic output was derived from immigrants.

10. Immigrants contribute to the state economy through state and local taxes. In 2010, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants in Texas paid $1.6 billion in state and local taxes.

Ripoffs at Texas gas pumps

And we're not talking about the price per gallon.

State inspectors have found hundreds of gas stations in the greater Houston area -- 350 or more -- that likely stiffed motorists because of poorly performing pumps.

Data from the Texas Department of Agriculture shows about one in five inspected stores or stations had least one pump, sometimes more, that failed to meet standards, according to analysis by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. In the greater San Antonio area, 99 of 509 inspected stores were operating at least one malfunctioning pump.

The cost to consumers may be nominal, as little as 3 cents, or as much as $3 per fill-up -- depending on the problems.

Yes, we have had long discussions here about this topic previously. In 2010, Democratic ag commish candidate Hank Gilbert found gas pump stickers in Tyler with Rick Perry's name on them, which meant they hadn't been inspected since 1997.

But to refresh: the regulatory body responsible for gas pumps in Texas is Weights and Measures, overseen by the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Todd Staples. Before him, that title was held by Susan Combs, another powerfully unqualified statewide office-holder. And before her... Rick Perry.

Weak regulations, shoddy compliance, lax oversight... all weighted in favor of Big Business. Where have we heard that before?

Oh, but the responsibility for enforcement of the law lies with some other incompetent Republican. Can you guess who?

The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has responsibility for suing gas station owners who intentionally defraud motorists. Over the past five years, the Attorney General's Office has filed one such lawsuit. That case followed inspections of Sunmart gas stations in July 2008. The investigation revealed that 58 percent of the company's Texas gas pumps were shortchanging customers. The Attorney General's Office sued Sunmart's owner, Petroleum Wholesale LP, and a Harris County jury ordered the company to pay $30 million in restitution to customers, penalties and fees to the state. The verdict was later thrown out on a procedural issue. Court records indicate the case is on appeal.

At least 900 Houston-area customers complained to the state during the one-year period. Stuart, the man who stopped at the Shell station near Washington and Studemont, was one of them, prompted by his surprise the day his Jeep Grand Cherokee took nearly 20 gallons of gas.

Let's be fair; AG Abbott has been pretty busy with a few other things. But not anything that might happen in 2014. No sirree.

For every conservative who has complained about weak regulations, shoddy compliance, and lax enforcement with respect to Ill Eagles: where's your outrage now? You're getting ripped off nearly every time you fill up your tank, and all you're doing is bitching about Obama.

How much more evidence do you need that Republicans just don't know how to govern? There hasn't been a Democrat elected to statewide office for 18 years in Texas, and yet conservatives still want to blame them for everything that's wrong with this state.

Hell, Republicans march in lockstep to the polls to give the most incompetent among themselves a PROMOTION.

Who is the bigger bunch of stooges -- Republican elected officials or the people who keep on voting for them?