EV totals: First impressions

After a delay of nearly one hour past poll closing, the Harris County Clerk managed to post some of the early-vote (EV) tallies from the Texas primary held today, and here's some first impressions of the races I have previously focused on.

-- Paul Sadler appears to be headed to a runoff with one of the two African American candidates in the race for Democratic nominee to the US Senate. Sean Hubbard is trailing in 4th statewide, and fairly badly. On the Repub side, David Dewhurst will be in a runoff with Ted Cruz. There will be blood.

-- In CD-07, Lissa Squiers has a small lead over James Cargas. Phillip Andrews is well back in third. This race will go to a July runoff.

-- In the contest for 215th District Court, Judge Steven Kirkland is losing by a 2-1 margin to the libelous Elaine Palmer.

-- The voters of Harris County weren't fooled by Keryl Douglas, however; she is losing to Lane Lewis for Democratic Party County Chair by a margin of about 55-45.

In other races of note...

-- In the GOP race for Harris Co. District Attorney, Judge Mike Anderson is trouncing incumbent Pat Lykos. And on the Democratic side, buffoon Lloyd Oliver leads Zach Fertitta.

-- Harris County tax assessor/collector TeaBaggin' Don Sumners is getting turned out by the Republicans in his race against Mike Sullivan, also by a 2-1 margin.

-- Supreme Court Justice David Medina is leading in his 3-way primary battle, but with just 39%.

-- Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, Beto O'Rourke leads incumbent Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Dem primary. A true upset in the making.

-- At the HouChron's live-blog, the odious Texas Sparkle reports that several Republican Texas House committee chairs are losing their races: Tuffy Hamilton, Vickie Truitt, Sid Miller, Chuck Hopson, and Rob Eissler. 

-- All three state referenda on the Democratic ballot are passing handily; casino gambling by the smallest margin at 73%.

-- Romney has clinched, Obama appears to be avoiding a primary embarrassment.

Again, these are mostly EV totals only; as of 9 p.m. the Harris County Clerk's office has barely counted any votes cast today. Having worked this beat previously, I can say this has all the earmarks of a major malfunction.

We'll find if I am right or wrong about that in a few days. You can go follow the results on into the night elsewhere; I have a big day tomorrow and won't be back here until early in the morning.

Update: I should have guessed. Clerk Stanart blames the Democrats for the "technical difficulties".

What a POS.

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?

Monday Funnies (a shout-out to Keryl Douglas and Elaine Palmer)

And especially those who would fall for their BS.

We honor all of the brave men and women this Memorial Day who gave their lives for our freedom... to eat everything in sight.

Sherwin Williams for President.

Wage theft in the city of millionaires

Stace has blogged extensively about this previously; here's The Nation picking it up now.

For two years running Houston has added more millionaires to its population than any other city in the United States. Near-millionaires are enjoying some nice upward mobility, especially those involved in the oil and gas industry.

Low-wage workers, on the other hand, aren’t faring too well in the city. In fact, a recent report from Houston Interfaith Worker Justice (HIWJ) estimates that low-wage workers lose $753.2 million annually due to wage theft. Wage theft can occur in many ways, including: workers being denied the minimum wage or overtime pay; stolen tips; illegal deductions from paychecks; people being forced to work off the clock; or workers getting misclassified as independent contractors so they aren’t entitled to overtime or benefits.

“We’re not talking about a worker here or a worker there, it’s something that has a lot of ripple effects,” says José Eduardo Sanchez, campaign organizer with HIWJ. “It impacts families, communities and local economies.”

Although there are laws on the books against wage theft, there are problems with understaffing, enforcement, and jurisdiction disputes in institutions like the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the Texas Workforce Commission, and the courts.

When companies don't pay their workers, that's stealing. Unless the companies are going out of business, it's criminal and should be prosecuted.

Mayor Annise Parker has expressed some empathy for the plight of the victims even as she has clarified that it is the state of Texas which has jurisdiction to address the issue.

The city’s Legal Department initially analyzed the proposal and said that wage theft is addressed by state statute. But Mayor Annise Parker’s office contacted HIWJ to express her interest. HIWJ is now working with her administration on policy proposals that would create a process for a fair hearing and link wage theft violations to the suspension and revocation of city licenses, permits and contracts. Other options to collect additional damages from employers are being explored as well.

Sanchez says the mayor’s action was “surprising” given the initial response from the city.

“But now it’s a matter of holding the politicians accountable and really pushing for enforceable aspects of this legislation,” says Sanchez. “Because there’s an easy way for this to become one of those good policies on paper—nice sentiment, nice words—but not enforceable.”

A little late for some of you, but something to consider if you're casting your ballot on Tuesday.

-- Who cares more about the companies and their owners and managers who steal from their employees than they do about the victims of wage theft?

-- Who cares about the real victims of wage theft: the families? The single parent households and the children who go to bed hungry every night? That conservative crap about "they shouldn't have had children if they couldn't afford them" no longer washes because the Republicans in Austin, as we know, are now cutting off funding for birth control, along with women's wellness exams and cancer screenings.

There's some statistics at the Nation link at the top for the United States if you scroll down a ways. Here's a few.

US poverty (less than $22,314 for a family of four): 46 million people, 15.1 percent of population.

Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 22 percent of all children, including 40 percent of African-American children and 37 percent of Latino children.

Number of poor children receiving cash aid: one in five.

Poverty rate for people in female-headed families: 42 percent.

Poverty rate for children under age 5 in female-headed families: 59 percent.

Single mothers with incomes under $25,000: 50 percent.

Single mothers working: 67 percent.

 But here's the one that really jumped out at me:

Americans with no income other than food stamps: 6 million, 2 percent of population.

You know for certain which side the Republicans are on, and it won't ever be the working poor. But what about the Democrats? Some of them are for "free markets, entrepreneurship, and liberalized trade", which should be an easy enough dog whistle to decipher. Or just look at their record, as contrasted with their challenger's.

This isn't brain surgery, folks. You can vote for a 100% plutocracy party, or one that's roughly 50%. (You can also vote for neither one.) As always -- and as my friend Neil likes to say frequently -- it's up to you.