Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Helena Brown only violates city law this week

Terrance McCoy at the Houston Press -- who had the lengthy expose' last week -- remains hot on the trail of Council Member Helena Brown's troubles adhering to the law. It might not be as bad as violating federal laws regarding the altering of employee timecards, but fundraising during the blackout period is still a legal no-no.

In an attempted violation of city law, and in yet another puzzling move by embattled City Council member Helena Brown, the District A representative solicited money from local Korean businessmen late last month for a trip she took this week to Seoul -- though she had already paid for it with public money.

According to chapter 18 of the City Charter, Brown cannot receive direct contributions unless it's during city-sanctioned campaigning months -- February before an election until March afterward. During "blackout" periods, if a candidate or council member gets direct money, said City Press Secretary Jessica Michan, it's a violation of city law. Whether Brown actually got money is unclear -- but she sure did ask for it.

In a recent e-mail, which the Houston Press obtained, Brown said: "The trip to Korea is a costly trip. ... Please make checks out to Helena Brown who will personally be offsetting the costs."
But that wasn't true. Brown paid for airline tickets to South Korea with public money -- $11,000 -- according to her expense report. Enrique Reyes, her director of communication, said last week hotel costs hadn't been charged yet, but declined all questions. Brown's office said the council member returned to Houston (yesterday).

Asking for direct contributions under such circumstances appears to break both city law and Harris county policy. Brown not only solicited money during a period when it wasn't allowed, but in her e-mail she also asked all contributors to pay her at a June 28 gathering held at a Harris County building in Spring Branch, a violation of County policy. Meeting organizers are informed before forums that fundraising isn't allowed. "If solicitation for money was happening, that's not right," said Ricardo Guinea, director of the Sosa Community Center, which housed the gathering.

Hard to tell where the stupidity ends and the corruption begins with this woman. The Chron reports that "misstatement" is the order of the day.

A statement released by Brown's office Tuesday states that her adviser William Park - who is not a paid member of her staff - sent an email to Korean community leaders saying that if they wanted to sponsor a businessman on the trip they could do so via Brown's office.

"That statement was sent in error. While CM (council member) Brown could be the vehicle by which private financial assistance of non-city employees could be handled, CM Brown understood full well that this type of situation might be misconstrued as a campaign contribution during the "black-out" period and therefore instructed all potential contributors who communicated to her to deal privately with potential delegation participants instead," the statement reads.

Helena Brown is simply a poor representative for her district, to say nothing of overseas with Asian officials.

As Charles notes, there has to be a lot of cringing going on among the District A lords and ladies who got behind Brown's campaign to unseat incumbent Brenda "I've been in every bar everywhere I need to be" Stardig last year. There are likely handfuls of differing factions of conservatives holding competing meetings already, discussing 2013 campaigns for the Oak Forest/Spring Branch seat on council.

But another year and a half of Helena Brown is 18 months too much. She should resign now and negotiate a plea for the crimes she has (allegedly) committed and save herself and the city further embarrassment.

Update (7/14): Brown's Asian vacation has gone national.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Holder: Texas photo ID requirements are "poll taxes"


"After close review, the department found that this law would be harmful to minority voters, and we rejected its implementation," (US Attorney General Eric Holder) told a wildly supportive crowd of hundreds gathered at the George R. Brown Convention Center. "Under the proposed law, concealed handgun licenses would be acceptable forms of photo ID, but student IDs would not. Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them, and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes."

Go here for the video. Meanwhile, back at the capital...

As the trial got under way in a packed courtroom, DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall went even further, arguing that the federal government will show racial motivation in Texas’s passage of the (Photo ID) law.

“The facts will convincingly demonstrate the discriminatory purpose and effect of Senate Bill 14,” Westfall told the three-judge panel in her brief opening argument in a trial expected to last through Friday.

[...]

In January, (federal district judge Rosemary) Collyer was one of three judges who sat for two weeks on a similar panel considering Texas’s request for clearance of its redistricting maps. That panel has yet to issue a final ruling.

Monday, July 09, 2012

The Community Democrat for CD-07

And not the Corporate Democrat.


The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks America doesn't look a day over 235 as it brings you this week's blog roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that we are now up to six school finance lawsuits.

 BossKitty at TruthHugger sings back to the choir; you know, that small loud minority willing to sacrifice everybody else to satisfy their selfish rhetoric. Is crazy weather really a liberal conspiracy?

Now that the Affordable Care Act has cleared the Supreme Court hurdle, when will uninsured Texans begin to get health insurance? WCNews at Eye on Williamson says that it's up to the Texas GOP. What health care choices will the Texas GOP make?

The NAACP opened their national convention in Houston this week, and with Joe Biden and Mitt Romney on the speaker's list, it promises to be newsworthy. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs has a media credential and will be filing reports from the scene.

Neil at Texas Liberal blogged about Danny Glover coming to town on behalf of Houston janitors looking for a modest raise.

Holder to speak in Houston today at NAACP *update*

The subject of Texas' Photo ID law will probably come up.

The NAACP vows to register 1 million new voters in time for the November elections to overturn what leaders called an "onslaught of state restrictions on voting."

Alluding to the long struggle of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, Board Chair Roslyn Brock insisted in the opening address of the association's 103rd annual convention on Sunday night that voting rights were again in jeopardy.

"Our right to vote is under attack more than at any other time in history since we passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965," she said. "We overcame then and we shall overcome now -- but only if we are willing to dedicate ourselves to fighting a battle that many of us thought we had won many years ago."

Attorney General Holder, while in Houston to speak to convention attendees today, will likely be paying attention to matters back in Washington.

Texas will launch a challenge to a central piece of civil rights legislation in a Washington court on Monday in a case the Obama administration has characterised as a fight to protect the right to vote.

The five-day hearing will rule on whether the US justice department has the power to block Texas from implementing a state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls – a move critics say will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people, principally Latinos and other minorities.

Yes, now that the RP of Tx has put abolishment of the VRA into its party platform, we know that this is just another ingredient mashed into the stew of Daily/Weekly/Perpetual Outrages O'Day that conservatives have to keep stirring in order to stoke the anger and hatred that, in turn, motivates their base to turn out and vote.

Here's a few relevant excerpts from elsewhere.

Supporters of the (photo ID) laws cite anecdotal cases of fraud as a reason that states need to do more to secure elections, but fraud appears to be rare. As part of its effort to build support for voter ID laws, the Republican National Lawyers Association last year published a report that identified some 400 election fraud prosecutions over a decade across the entire country. That's not even one per state per year. (emphasis is mine)

You can expect some of those "supporters" to be seen outside the GRB "protesting" today.

Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Democratic presidents so it might seem unlikely the court would overturn the Obama administration.

[...] 

The Texas lawsuit for approval of the voter identification law is: State of Texas v. Holder in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, No. 12-cv-128. The judicial panel is composed of Appeals Judge David Tatel, District Judge Robert Wilkins and District Judge Rosemary Collyer.

Mitt Romney is slated to speak on Wednesday morning to the convention; Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled for Thursday. There's probably time reserved for the president if he decides to make an appearance, but at this point that would be a surprise.

More as it develops.

Update: Holder will not speak today because he was delayed at the airport, and has rescheduled for tomorrow, according to this Tweet.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Ernest Borgnine 1917 - 2012

Ernest Borgnine, the larger-than-life actor with the affable gap-toothed grin and known for often villainous roles, has died. He was 95.

He had so many memorable castings, both dramatic and comedic, that it's hard to know where to start. He was Fatso Judson, the sergeant who beat up Frank Sinatra's Maggio in From Here to Eternity. He was Marty the bachelor, still living at home; the role for which he won the Academy.

Borgnine played a 34-year-old butcher who fears he is so unattractive he will never find romance. Then, at a dance, he meets a girl with the same fear.

"Sooner or later, there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts," Marty movingly tells his mother at one point in the film. "And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my life. I-I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don't wanna get hurt no more."

It doesn't get much more self-effacing than that.

There was The Dirty Dozen, Mister Roberts, Bad Day at Black Rock, Willard, Ice Station Zebra, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Wild Bunch. There was also McHale's Navy, and -- later -- Spongebob Squarepants and The Single Guy. There were dozens of cameos in television shows over the decades, from The Love Boat to Walker,Texas Ranger to Touched by an Angel.

For me his most memorable role was that of the sadistic Depression-era freight train conductor in Emperor of the North.



At the time I saw it -- 1973 -- I was 14 years old and had no concept that a person could be so cruel. My mom took pains to explain that train conductors did not act like that then; that they in fact were kind toward the disadvantaged.

Borgnine, to my own delight, identified the film as one of his favorites in this tribute.



Borgnine's biggest kick, however, was going out and meeting people - even making a documentary about himself driving around the country in a big bus: "See, this is what it's all about - living!"

Ernest Borgnine knew what it was all about.

Indeed.

Sunday Funnies

The past ten days have been a target-rich environment for the cartoonists. And the comedians...



"In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled President Obama's healthcare mandate is constitutional. This is a major victory for President Obama, who spent three years promoting it, and a major setback for Mitt Romney, who spent three years creating it."

-- Jay Leno


"For several minutes after the ruling, CNN was mistakenly reporting that the Supreme Court struck down President Obama’s healthcare law. In response CNN was like, 'Thank God no one watches us.'"

-- Jimmy Fallon


"This activist ruling opens the floodgates, folks! If Obama can force you to get health insurance just by calling it a tax, then there is nothing to stop him from making you gay marry an illegal immigrant wearing a condom in a hydroponic pot farm powered by solar energy! And you know his buddy Roberts will make it all good by calling it a 'homomexual marijuana love-glove sun tax!'"

-- Stephen Colbert


"In Louisiana, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal said he's just gonna refuse to implement Obamacare. So if you need an operation in Louisiana you'll have to pay for it the old-fashioned way: stand on a balcony, flash your tits and hope someone throws you money."

-- Bill Maher
Keep in mind that you will have at least two other choices on your November ballot.

Friday, July 06, 2012

NAACP national convention in Houston this weekend

Vice President Joe Biden and Mitt Romney are both scheduled to speak.

As more than 8,000 members of the nation's most venerable civil rights organization gather in Houston this weekend for a convention featuring appearances by Vice President Joe Biden and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the unofficial topic outside the hall may be whether time has passed the NAACP by.

During the long years when black children were forced to attend separate, vastly inferior schools and Southern states were relying on poll taxes, voters' tests and raw intimidation to keep black citizens from the ballot box, the focus for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was both urgent and crystal clear. The association was at the forefront in the arduous battle to end racial segregation in schools and other public places as well as secure the right to vote for black Americans.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were the tangible results of a monumental decades-long struggle.

Today, 103 years after the association's founding, the issues are more nuanced, even though racial inequity and its consequences remain a stubborn fact of American life.

All you have to do is read the comments at that story to understand what the NAACP still has to combat. The biggest internal struggle is the Obama administration's declaration of support for gay marriage, and the corresponding endorsement by the NAACP of gay rights as as civil rights under the 14th Amendment. NPR has the best reporting of that.

The biggest external issue uniting the delegates is the renewed fight for voting rights.

"In the past legislative session, more states have passed more laws pushing more voters out of the ballot box than in any legislative session since the rise of Jim Crow," (NAACP president Ben Jealous) said. "A wave like that is intentional. It's created by hundreds of state legislators across the country acting in unison to suppress the vote."

Yeah, there's that, and then there's the Texas Republican party platform.

The NAACP national convention follows by less than a month the Texas Democratic Party's state convention here in H-Town. If I was a Republican I might think it was a grand conspiracy to motivate Harris County Democrats to turn out the vote in November.

You have to wonder if these quivering, scared conservatives around town have stocked up on ammunition and will be sitting in their barricaded homes clinging to their guns and Bibles.

Meh. They'll all be as mad as a wet hen for the next three months -- and the four years after that -- no matter what.

Thursday, July 05, 2012

Helena Wheels Brown

She might prefer "Heavena", but it's Hell for certain.

Houston City Councilwoman Helena Brown subtracted hours from employees' timecards in apparent violation of federal law, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

The first-term councilwoman shorted an employee by more than three hours in a day in several cases. At least six times, Brown deleted enough hours from employees' reported workweeks that it cost them overtime by bringing their weekly total under 40 hours.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act requires overtime pay and accurate record keeping. City policy prohibits supervisors from changing employees' timecards except to correct errors. A spokeswoman for the Harris County district attorney said the office does not confirm the existence of investigations but said the Public Integrity Unit would handle a complaint if one were filed. Charges that could result from the circumstances described by the Chronicle could include tampering with a government document, a felony, she said.

Brown's staff at one time included five 39-hour-per-week employees classified as part-timers. Many of Brown's changes to the times reported by her employees appear to shorten or lengthen their workweeks to exactly 39 hours.

Hell for her, and hell for the rest of us.

...Brown has commingled maxims found in the Tea Party, the libertarian movement and Catholic zealotry and introduced them to Houston City Council, preaching parsimony and the elimination of almost all taxation. Brown's iconoclasm has galvanized the rest of the council against her and made even its most conservative participants seem moderate by comparison.

Oh, and starring William Park as Dale Gribble -- thanks for that, Stace -- in the supporting role of Satan's angel Hell's unpaid counsel.

Following a month-long investigation into Helena Brown involving dozens of interviews and a review of public records and Brown's e-mails, it's become apparent that the councilwoman isn't quite the harmless radical she at first appears to be. She isn't acting alone.

Rather, an outside volunteer "senior adviser" named William Park — a man who popped into her life a few years back — appears to dictate her office, and some say her life. Brown's speeches, laced with demagoguery, aren't extemporaneous. By nearly all accounts, Park plans, if not writes, them.

Former and current staffers say Park has planted a friend on staff to spy on other staffers, sometimes floats racially charged ideas and — most distressing — directs a significant percentage of Brown's votes on City Council, according to interviews with numerous sources familiar with the situation.

What's more, Park has a past. Once the CEO of a local brokerage firm called United Equity Securities, which had offices all over the country, Park was banned from the investments industry on April 25, 2011, by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority which said he failed to comply with the arbitration award — namely that he didn't pay a woman who successfully sued him.

[...]

In an e-mail to the Houston Press, Park denied any financial malfeasance: "United Equity Securities never bilked any investors, never had any fines, nor owes anyone any money. I was not banned from the securities industry, much less for any fraudulent activity as there NEVER was any fraudulent activity." He then wrote: "You might want to consider giving your life to Jesus Christ as life is short and find the peace and forgiveness that only He can give you."

That last part is important. It provides a clue as to how Park could become such a dominant force in Brown's life and politics. Helena Brown, 34, was home-schooled and inculcated with Roman Catholic dogmas, which play an omnipresent role in her life, according to several interviews. Her social positions derive from strict, literal interpretations of the Bible, said Bernadette McLeroy, who's known Brown for more than a decade and looks on her like a daughter.

But even McLeroy had never seen Park before Brown got into office.

There's a good hour's worth of reading there if you follow all the links, and it's both wildly entertaining and frightening as all hell. John Birch's acolytes have nothing on these people.

See what happens when you don't vote, people?

Charles and John have more.

Monday, July 02, 2012

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance -- those of us along the Gulf Coast, anyway -- are not praying for rain as we bring you this week's round-up of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff disputed the notion that Rick Perry would be doing better than Mitt Romney if he were the GOP Presidential nominee.

BossKitty at TruthHugger wonders where all the constitutional scholars are, and why they are so silent, in Preamble to the US Constitution Violated.

While the Supreme Court delivered landmark case decisions earlier and later in the week, the two Texas Democrats battling for the nomination to the US Senate held a debate. They were overshadowed, as it turned out, for good reason. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs paid attention but really wishes he hadn't.

The Democrats have to, in the minds of voters, turn themselves back into the party of the people and the GOP back into the party of the rich and powerful. The winning won't start again until that's done, and that new governing coalition is built in Texas. WCNews at Eye on Williamson says that "Beer and Democracy" is as good a place to start.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme isn't surprised that the republican Supreme Court wants American Hispanics to carry citizenship papers. Yeah. Right.

At TexasKaos, lightseeker shines a light on the continuing assault of public education in Texas. Coupled with the nationwide exposure of the anti-criticial thinking plank in the state Republican platform, it's scary stuff indeed. Take a look: Killing Public Education in Texas with STARR.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted a list of Fourth of July events in Houston, Galveston, Fort Bend County and College Station. This list of information comes with a nifty Fourth of July reading list included for no extra charge.

Justin at Asian American Action Fund Blog cheers the incredible rise of Asian Americans in the Texas Democratic Party while lamenting the failures of the Texas Democratic Party Convention's Nominations Committee.