The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is waiting for Rick Perry to call the special election in SD-6 as it brings you this week's roundup.

Even though the economy in Texas has improved, the next legislative session will be very similar to the last. WCNews at Eye on Williamson has this take: Thoughts on the upcoming session.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger knows Texas is still among the United States of America ... until further notice. The DOHA COP-18 Conference established a legally-binding plan for combating global warming. The big players, the US (including Texas), the EU and China accepted the agreement with varying degrees of reservation. They have stopped short of accepting responsibility for damage caused by climate change: Reluctance and Reality at DOHA Climate Change Conference.

 Off the Kuff notes the next step of the redistricting lawsuit has begun.

The legacy of Jack Brooks, who served southeast Texas in Congress for 42 years, is remembered by PDiddie at Brains and Eggs.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that the oligarchs have brought their propaganda outfit 'Fix the Debt' to Texas.

Neil at Texas Liberal noted that Houston mayor Annise Parker is forwarding possible incidents of misconduct by Houston police officers to the federal government for review. This oversight is welcome, as there have been a number of recent cases of Houston police either shooting or using significant levels of force on unarmed persons.

Sunday Funnies

"A lot of dissension among conservatives. One of the leaders of the Tea Party has resigned after a major split in the movement. The Tea Party is now divided between angry whites and even angrier whites."

-- Conan O'Brien

Chris Cilizza on NBC News: "To vote for anything that is even perceived to be granting the U.N. power [like this United Nations Disabilities Treaty] is a dangerous game for a Republican senator, because the U.N. is so unpopular among the Republican base."

Jon Stewart: "It's official: Republicans hate the United Nations more than they like helping people in wheelchairs."

-- The Daily Show

"You've been warned, Harry Reid! Take away Mitch McConnell's filibuster and he will strike back by obstructing everything you do! Or let him keep the filibuster so he can obstruct everything you do!" 

 -- Stephen Colbert

The fiscal slope and you

First of all, it ain't no cliff.

But it might feel like a brick wall, especially for the working poor. This story by Tom Abrahams at ABC-13 does a good job of explaining things in layman's terms.

It means some Texans could pay as much as 44 percent of their income in taxes, and it could come from the four elements of the fiscal cliff:

• The Medicare tax, which affects mostly wealthier taxpayers
• The payroll tax, which affects everyone
• The AMT, which impacts most taxpayers
• The Bush cuts, which are set to expire

[...]

The Tax Policy Center says the increase ranges from a few hundred dollars for the working poor to thousands for the so-called middle class. The White House estimates here in Texas, 8.7 million middle-income earners will see an average increase of about $2,200.

"It could be your Catholic school tuition's payment for your child, so it's not a small amount of money," said Joe Birkhofer, a partner at Legacy Asset Management.

Birkhofer says the part of the cliff that impacts everyone is the expiring Bush tax cuts. "People in the lowest tax bracket, 10 percent, will go to 15 percent. And people in the highest tax bracket will go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent," Birkhofer said. At just 3 percent a year, that's the equivalent of no less than a tank of gas every two weeks.

"I don't think that's fair to pay 3 percent more. We all can't afford three percent more," Houston taxpayer Judy Madison said.

Then everyone can tack on another 2 percent -- the amount of the payroll tax holiday which, ends this year. It's money that goes to Social Security and Medicare.

"The problem is the money needs to go back into Social Security and Medicare, and there's not a lot of support on either side of Congress to make that tax holiday stay," Birkhofer said. Add that 2 percent to the pile, and you've lost money for your electricity bill every month.

 "And I don't have a lot of confidence that both sides are really eager to fix the problem," Houston taxpayer David Gaw said.

Then there's the alternative minimum tax, or the AMT, which needs adjusting every year or it costs millions of taxpayers millions of dollars. "It strips away deductions so that your tax rate is higher," Birkhofer said. Throw those away, and there go your groceries every week.

"I'm worried not about 3 to 5 percent but more about 10 to 15 percent," Houston taxpayer Christopher Barron said. 

Obama and the Democrats seem content to let the Republicans push the country off the cliff down the hill, as polling indicates the GOP gets most of the blame. Boehner is under pressure again from his right to stand his ground.

Informal polling suggests many Americans still aren't paying much attention, despite Abrahams' man-on-the-street interviews above. That is likely to change suddenly, when the first payday after the New Year takes the hit. People who aren't getting paychecks, of course -- that would be the very rich and the very poor -- won't notice much.

For vastly different reasons.

Washington legalizes weed and gay marriage

Scenes from a revolution.

At around 1:30am, Larry Duncan, 56, left, and Randy Shepherd, 48, from North Bend, Wash. got their marriage license. The two plan to wed on December 9th, the first day it is possible for them to wed in a church in Washington State. They have been together for 11 years. Originally from Dallas, Texas, they moved here 7 years ago because it's more gay friendly. Randy is a computer programer and Larry is a retired psychology nurse.

How long do you think it will be before Texas catches up?

Update: Charles thinks it will be a long time for one of the two.

Update II: Man- and woman-on-the-street interviews reveal some Texans' responses. One sample...

A lot of people’s lives in that state just got a whole lot better. Makes me sick.

-- Gillian Manifold, systems analyst

Jack Brooks 1922 - 2012

Jack Brooks, an irascible, cigar-chomping former Texas congressman who over 42 years defied fellow Southerners to support civil rights, investigated abuses by Presidents Nixon and Reagan and repeatedly attacked government waste, down to the cost of wrenches, died on Tuesday night in Beaumont, Texas. He was 89.

This was my congressman, for as long as I can remember, growing up. In actuality he wasn't; we lived in the district next door, and my brother served as a page in DC for our actual representative, John Dowdy, in the late '60's. But even Charlie Wilson -- who succeeded Dowdy, and certainly in Wilson's early political career -- paled in comparison to Brooks. When I was in college in the late '70's, my fraternity hosted him as guest speaker. Long before I was a Democratic activist, I was a huge fan of Jack Brooks.

Brooks ascended to the legislative pantheon under the tutelage of two legendary Texas Democrats, House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Lyndon B. Johnson, both as a senator and as president, and became a swashbuckling Texas character in his own right. His politics were pro-labor, pro-gun, fiercely partisan and boldly unapologetic, particularly when it came to funneling federal funds to his East Texas district.

He played a supporting role in one of the most famous news photographs of the 20th century, that of President Johnson being sworn in as president on Air Force One in Dallas after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Brooks, who had been in the presidential motorcade, stands behind Jacqueline Kennedy.

He had run Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in his district, where Kennedy won by 40,000 votes. In October 1963, he was the only one of nine Southerners on the judiciary committee to vote for the Kennedy administration’s civil rights bill. When President Johnson took up the bill after Kennedy’s murder, Mr. Brooks was one of 11 out of 92 Southerners to vote for it on the House floor in 1964. 

Brooks was ousted from Congress in 1994, by Steve Stockman, among other reasons because he voted in favor of a crime bill that restricted sales of assault rifles. That's a story all its own; go back to the NYT link to read it.

This video of Lamar University history professor Robert Robertson compresses into a couple of minutes the legacy of Jack Brooks and his witness to the history of the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement.

If there were still any fighting Democrats around like Jack Brooks, I might not be a Green today.

Update: The Bayou...

This was back in…September.  I’m pretty sure.  September of 1992.  It was hotter than Hell that day.

Bill Clinton was running for president and he sent Senator Al Gore, his running mate, down here to Beaumont for a rally at Lamar University.

Both of the candidates were good-looking and Southern.

Young.

The youngest men I would remember in the White House after all of the “old men” who followed Nixon.  Something about all of them seemed so stiff and artificial.  Especially Reagan with his hair dye and Hollywood glitz.

Poor Senator Gore was sweating like a pig.  He kept wiping at his brow with a handkerchief and he finally had to take his jacket off.

Gore was introduced by the giants of Southeast Texas politics.  Carl Parker, Charlie Wilson and Jack Brooks.  He didn’t hold a candle to them.  The ‘wonkishness’ that became more exaggerated as he moved up in politics and got older was evident.  He was boring.  But who wouldn’t be after such a grand display local of wit and charm.