Wednesday, January 09, 2013

An H-Town Roundup

-- The Chron put their endorsement in the SD-6 special election behind their new paywall. (Psst: it's "pick one of Garcia or Alvarado".) No, I am not willing to pay to read that.

-- Get your flu shot.

This influenza season is shaping up to be one of the earliest and worst in years, with the flu-sick and those with respiratory illnesses that masquerade as influenza clogging Houston-area clinics, emergency rooms and doctor's offices.

According to local health officials, most of those who have become ill did not get the flu vaccine.

Get your flu shot. Don't be all Alex Jones about it, either.

-- Gasoline prices will be back up to four bucks a gallon sooner than you think.

The fuel price forecasting website says Houston area gas should crest between $3.85 and $4.15 a gallon sometime this spring. Patrick DeHaan is a senior petroleum analyst with Gas Buddy.

“Prices generally will start a bit sluggish this year, prices moving up in January and February just slightly, and then the accelerator gets hit in March, and that lasts for about a month or so.”

DeHaan says the wild card will be refinery performance.

“In the past year, a major refinery in Houston, the Motiva refinery, opened a 300,000 barrel a day expansion. That expansion had to be closed down again, and that certainly resulted in some upward pressure at the pump.”

The Motiva refinery — located 90 miles east of Houston in Port Arthur — was forced to shut down in June due to severe chemical corrosion, just weeks after the completion of a five year expansion project.

I have a second cousin working at that refinery as a contractor, and they have had him onsite seven days a week for twelve hours a day for the past few months. Motiva -- a joint venture with Shell and Saudi Aramco -- has been furiously trying to get online for six months now. Just this past weekend they tried and failed once more. This refinery -- along with at least two others in Port Arthur -- is scheduled to receive and process some of what gets delivered via Keystone XL.

Since the tars sands oil's refined petroleum products will mostly be sold on the global market, it's no wonder we won't see any gas price relief locally. But we will get to breathe all of that pollution.

What a bargain!

-- Here's your guide to the Houston Marathon this weekend. The sponsors are Chevron and Aramco. Don't breathe too deeply, runners. Update: it is possible that the weather might cancel the event for the first time in its history.

Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Today's opening of the legislative session in Austin

That's three posts in a row on SD-6, so let's talk about something else.

Before today's inaugural session, there was good news...

... State Comptroller Susan Combs (told) lawmakers they've got billions of additional dollars at their disposal.

"Robust revenue collections driven forward by a recovering Texas economy led by sales taxes will result in a budget surplus," Combs said, projecting new revenue of $96.2 billion.

And not-so-good news...

But after paying leftover bills from the current biennium and stuffing $3.6 billion in the "Rainy Day" fund, the balance left for distribution is likely to leave many disappointed, especially advocates for Texas public schools.

"We are not going to see the restoration of the $4 billion to $5 billion cut during the 2011 session," Rice University Political Science chair Mark Jones said.

Indeed, Charles made this salient point this morning about the Comptroller of Public Accounts' underestimate.

This is all well and good, but the bottom line of Combs’ misfire is that the Lege cut billions of dollars from the budget that ultimately didn’t need to be cut. We may be able to do something good with this extra money now, but we can’t go back two years and un-fire all those people who lost their jobs as a result of the Republicans’ budgetary chainsaw massacre. We can’t go back and un-shortchange all the school districts and students that took those cuts right where it hurts. It’s all so much bloodstained water beneath the bridge.

And sure enough, the governor followed through on a tax cut mantra in his welcome to newly-sworn-in legislators later in the day.

Rick Perry was defiant as ever this afternoon at the Capitol. The governor sketched out his priorities for the legislative session in a brief speech to the Texas Senate on the Legislature’s opening day and made clear his approach this session will look very familiar. If you were hoping that the state’s improved budget outlook might lead to a slight increase in spending on items like schools and health care, Perry intimated this afternoon that those items aren’t high on his priority list.

After welcoming special guest Rick Santorum—who was sitting among the senators’ family and friends in the back of the chamber—Perry said the state’s budget surplus, announced yesterday by Comptroller Susan Combs, is proof that “we put Texas on the right path.” And lawmakers need to resist the urge to spend. “There are interest groups in the state who view Monday’s revenue estimate as ringing the dinner bell.”

At that, a young woman lost consciousness, as Dave Mann at the Texas Observer observed.

Moments before Perry said those words, a young Senate staffer standing in the back of the chamber—standing right behind me, actually—fainted. She collapsed on to me and Reuters correspondent Corrie MacLaggan. The young woman’s head hit the floor hard, and she lay motionless for what seemed an eternity, though it was probably only 15-20 seconds. It was a scary moment.

The commotion stopped Perry’s speech, and Sens. Bob Deuell and Donna Campbell, both of whom are doctors, rushed to the woman’s aid. She soon regained consciousness and was helped into a side room. She appeared OK. I hope she is OK. Perry, after seeing the woman helped shakily off the floor, quipped, “I haven’t had that effect on someone in a long time.” Then he added that talk of higher taxes can literally cause “people to swoon.”

Ha. Ha. Ha. What a douchebag we have as governor.

We can console ourselves with the hope that since the calendar reads January of 2013, he's not -- at this time -- capable of being as large a douchebag as the Attorney General of Texas (or whoever writes his legal briefs). Or even, for that matter, as masterful at douchebaggery as the new US Senator from Texas.

Update: Utter dumbass, though? Hell to the yes.

"I will suggest to you that you can ride into infamy with the decisions that you will make." -- Gov. Rick Perry, comparing lawmakers of the 83rd Legislature to the doomed defenders of the Alamo at a speech (Tuesday morning) to the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Webster's defines infamy as "an extreme and publicly known criminal or evil act." The word is best connected with FDR's description of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And now it's a good summing up of what at least a few Texans might expect from their elected representatives over the next few months.

But dumbass over douchebag is small consolation. Tiny, actually. Miniscule, in fact.

At least we can hope that the Lege isn't capable of as much damage as two years ago. After reading this about the Republicans, though, I have to be skeptical. Thank goodness for Wendy Davis and Abel Herrero and Gene Wu and Harold Dutton and Senfronia Thompson and most of the other Dems. They'll make the next five months tolerable.

Hopefully.

Update: Eye on Williamson has the short and sweet summary. 

Sylvia Garcia punching down

Sylvia Garcia recently sent out this mail piece to SD-6 residents and voters, and earlier today Houston city councilman James Rodriguez -- a supporter of Carol Alvarado's campaign -- responded to it.

I am disappointed that Sylvia Garcia has decided to take her campaign in a negative direction by questioning Carol Alvarado’s support for an underpass at Harrisburg Boulevard...

At last night’s Senate District 6 Candidates Forum, Ms. Garcia went on to say that “some of the local representatives did not have the guts to stand” with the community in supporting an underpass.

Let me set the record straight.  In a letter dated July 30, 2008 to then-Metro CEO Frank Wilson, Ms. Garcia said “I support the concept of a bridge or underpass at the Union Pacific grade crossing,” on Harrisburg Boulevard. 

Let me further set the record straight.  Several elected officials including myself, Mayor Annise Parker, and Council Members Melissa Noriega and Ed Gonzalez worked with the community to find  the funding to pay for the underpass.  Ms. Garcia never attended any of the meetings on seeking a solution.  In fact, at a community forum in February of 2009, Ms. Garcia was asked if she would contribute to the funding of the underpass from her Precinct 2 Commissioner’s Road and Bridge Fund.  She declined.

Thanks to the Mayor’s leadership and the leadership of my colleagues, we were able to secure funding for the underpass including $10 million in Capital Improvement Plan dollars from District I.

Carol Alvarado worked with the community and made sure Metro heard their concerns.  Ms. Garcia supported the concept of a bridge, was a no-show during this entire process and for her to make this a campaign issue is a disservice to the voters of Senate District 6.

Most of my blogging compadres are trying to avoid even looking at this sort of thing, much less write about it, and truthfully I don't blame them for taking that course.

I don't know why Garcia -- with a million bucks to spend and hundreds of volunteers who have already canvassed the senate district's neighborhoods several times -- feels the need to punch below her weight class like this. It's the second time she has done so (that I am aware of) and both times the Alvarado campaign punched her back, hard.

If Garcia ultimately wins the seat, Alvarado is going to be both her constituent and colleague in the Texas House. They'll have to work together on a variety of issues for the district. Ad hominem attacks between two Democrats in a special election like this are unseemly and unnecessary... unless there's something personal between the two women that hasn't been aired publicly. And frankly, I don't think anybody wants to hear them air their grievances.

I think this is one instance where attacks ads aren't going to help the attacker. I'd like to believe that, anyway. I'd also like to see a cleaner race from here on. There are plenty of issues that need attacking, so I hope the two front-runners for SD-6 focus on those, and not some petty personal dispute.

Update: Stace Medellin, better-connected than me, expands and clarifies.

SD-6 developments (that mention Keystone XL)

The Chron catches up with the SD-6 special, just in time for early voting (beginning tomorrow).

With eight candidates in the race in an overwhelmingly Democratic district that includes Houston's East End, the race is likely to come down to a battle between two prominent Democrats, state Rep. Carol Alvarado, whose House district overlaps much of the Senate district, and former Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia.

Also running are R.W. Bray, the Republican candidate who lost to Gallegos last fall; Democrats Susan Delgado, Joaquin Martinez and Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes; Republican Dorothy Olmos; and Green Party candidate Maria Selva.

If a runoff is needed - and with so many candidates, one is likely - it will be held between Feb. 23 and March 9, with Gov. Rick Perry scheduling the exact date. 

Apparently Reyes is a Democrat after all, despite keeping that a secret on both his filing application and his website. The Chron's teaser headline on their home page prominently notes Delgado's former occupation. That really is cheesy of the newspaper of record. And judging by the posts from the Khronically Konservative Komment brigade, they took the bait the Chronic was chumming.

Mark Jones at Rice weighed in with his usual nothing.

The race features "a modest activist-versus-establishment dynamic, with activists leaning toward Garcia and the establishment toward Alvarado," said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. "The pattern is not, however, clear-cut, with many establishment Democrats supporting Garcia and many activists backing Alvarado." 

Thanks for clearing that up. The only real news in this entire article is this:

Among the state's 31 senate districts, this predominantly Hispanic district ranks last in the number of registered voters (284,000) and in 2012 voter turnout (138,000). Jones estimates that fewer than 1 in 10 registered voters and 1 in 25 district residents will cast a ballot.

So if Jones is correct, 28,400 +/- votes in total will decide the primary. Garcia, the presumptive front-runner, declared early on her intention to avoid a runoff; she said as much at the bloggers' luncheon she hosted a few weeks ago. So, by extrapolating... she needs 14,201 votes to accomplish that. (See, I can do math.)

She has certainly put a lot of feet in the street since this all started in early December, so that could happen. I just don't think it will. The other four Dems, the Green, and the two Republicans -- one of which got 29% two months ago against Gallegos -- only need to get the same 50% +1 to deny Garcia the outright victory. Twenty-nine percent has been the conservative base vote in the district for the past two cycles in which Gallegos stood for re-election. 2008 and 2012 were both high Democratic turnout years. Again, using Jones' projection... that works out to 8,236 Republican votes.

These SWAGs mean that Garcia needs to earn 14,201 of the remaining 20,164 (28,400 - 8,236) or 70.42%. In competition with five other Democrats/liberals/progressives.

I'm still betting the runoff is going to be between Garcia and Bray.

Selva, for her part, will make Keystone XL a campaign issue. From yesterday's press release...

The Keystone XL Pipeline public-relations campaign is sheer misinformation. Keystone XL proponents claim it will lower gasoline prices. In fact, its economic model will hike Canadian oil prices at the expense of American gasoline consumers. Anthony Swift, author of the Natural Resources Defense Council report (http://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/kxlsecurity.pdf), states that when TransCanada proposed the Keystone pipeline, they set it up to increase oil prices in the United States, thereby increasing profit for Canadian producers when they send their product to the USA. The pipeline would take Canadian oil normally destined for Midwest refineries—which produce gasoline for US use—and instead send it to Gulf Coast refineries for eventual export since it yields more profits abroad.

 I support energy independence for the USA. We will not achieve it by building pipelines that offer us nothing but risk while we route North American oil to overseas markets. There is no employment benefit for Houston in the Keystone pipeline. Supporters refer the the pipeline as a potential ‘job creator.’ The glowing job projections for the pipeline are overblown. The Cornell University Global Labor Institute studied the issue, and they concluded, “…the job estimates put forward by TransCanada are unsubstantiated and the project will not only create fewer jobs than industry states, but that the project could actually kill more jobs than it creates.” 

About the same time that was hitting inboxes, the Tar Sands Blockade protest at the Houston offices of TransCanada was under way.


Here's the live blogging from yesterday, including video and pictures from other direct actions around the country.

You probably won't see much corporate media coverage of the protests against KXL. The HouChron can barely be bothered to cover the special election, so don't expect their corporate overlords to do much more than this. This report from the NYT was the welcome and notable exception.

The development of Alberta’s oil sands has increased levels of cancer-causing compounds in surrounding lakes well beyond natural levels, Canadian researchers reported in a study released on Monday. And they said the contamination covered a wider area than had previously been believed.

For the study, financed by the Canadian government, the researchers set out to develop a historical record of the contamination, analyzing sediment dating back about 50 years from six small and shallow lakes north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, the center of the oil sands industry. Layers of the sediment were tested for deposits of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, groups of chemicals associated with oil that in many cases have been found to cause cancer in humans after long-term exposure.

We will just have to wait and see if the issue resonates with the voters in SD-6.

Previous posts on the special election:

Alvarado declares for SD-6

Sylvia Garcia jumps in 

No Noriega(s) for SD-6 *with updates

Governor finally calls SD-6 special election 

Eight for SD-6 

Update: Kuffner adds some depth.

Update (1/13): "While solidarity actions were happening at the offices of TransCanada and its investors and contractors around the country, over a hundred blockaders took over the lobbies of two different TransCanada offices in Houston."

Monday, January 07, 2013

SD-6 candidate forum tonight

Via Sylvia Garcia, the first debate among SD-6 primary candidates is being held tonight, at the Ripley House on Navigation Boulevard.


As I blog this, the candidates are appearing in a similar lunchtime forum hosted by the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

The tribulations of David Dewhurst

He's as wounded as a wildebeest with a crocodile on his back.

For Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a criminal investigation into how $1.3 million went missing from his campaign accounts, undetected over five years, perhaps couldn’t have come at a worse time.

As the presiding officer of the Texas Senate, which convenes Tuesday, Dewhurst faces a challenge to his decade-long leadership from ultraconservative Republicans, a split that also figured in his surprise defeat last summer in an expensive U.S. Senate primary race.

And thanks to the missing funds, the Houston multimillionaire has just over $7,200 left in his campaign account, which officeholders use during legislative sessions to supplement staff salaries and pay other bills. By law, he cannot raise any additional money until the session is over.

Fresh off his thrashing at the hands of Tea Party extremist Ted Cruz, and recently pushing all in on a 2014 re-election bid in which he essentially declared that nobody was going to get to his right, The Dew is as mad as he is capable of getting. But getting re-elected is probably the least of his short-term worries.

In the clubby 31-member Senate, how more than $1.3 million went missing from the campaign fund of an astute businessman known for his meticulous attention to detail, without anyone knowing, is the subject of an ongoing, quiet debate.

“This should be embarrassing for him,” said Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, an ethics watchdog group. “He is responsible for overseeing how public money is spent, yet he can’t even keep track of campaign money.”

The power play is set to open the 83rd session Tuesday (or shortly thereafter).

In the Senate, the session’s opening days will carry special intrigue: whether conservative Republicans will carry out a quietly talked-about bid to overhaul rules to give themselves more power. Many longtime senators are betting not.

At issue is whether there are enough votes to restrict the power of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate but is not considered to be conservative enough by some on the right, or to change a controversial rule that requires the consent of two-thirds of the members before a bill can be considered by the full Senate. Amending or dropping the two-thirds rule would give Republicans more power over legislation by limiting Democrats’ ability to block bills.

Recall that Democrats are one seat shy of the one-third minority to block, due to the passing of Mario Gallegos. No, they are not. As Charles points out in the comments, eleven is enough to block a 2/3rds majority. Now if you will excuse me, I'll wipe the egg off my face.

The reinforcement won't arrive for perhaps two more months (depending on when the governor schedules the run-off election for SD-6). So this early test of Dewhurst's power will simply reflect whether he can hold his caucus together or not. If a Republican or two defects to join the Dems in hewing to tradition, then Dewhurst's credibility is badly damaged. Not applicable, in light of above.

To me this makes for the most interesting development to open the session, since the Speaker tussle is without much drama. Dewhurst losing on the blocker bill* has a higher degree of probability then David Simpson getting elected Speaker of the House. *But not nearly as high as I thought.

Keep in mind that much of the time, the wildebeest gets away. But that's usually only because some smaller, weaker one becomes lunch.

2013's first Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance welcomes the opening of the Texas Legislature's 83rd session and hopes that it actually tries to make the Lone Star State a better place as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff discusses what some new state legislators are saying about education and the questions they should be asking but aren't.

The GOP is for more of the same -- demonizing the poor and less fortunate -- while the Democrats are for finding reality-based solutions that help everyone get ahead. WCNews at Eye on Williamson points this out: Fairness and equality (are) missing from Texas economy.

There were a few under-reported environmental developments in Texas last week, so PDiddie at Brains and Eggs reported on them.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger had to laugh at the low-brow War on Kwanzaa, then got riled at the Sunday Morning talk shows: Drop the script written by bitter old men!

Over at Texas Kaos, Libby Shaw explains how John Cornyn threatens to wreck our government. Check it out.

Neil at Texas Liberal posted that he left the woods for the safety of the city.

Thursday, January 03, 2013

Under-reported Texas environmental developments

-- Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons was fined some pocket change (to him) for making illegal campaign contributions to Texas legislators on behalf of his nuclear waste management PAC.

The committee — WCS-Texas Solutions PAC – made $64,500 in unauthorized political donations to Texas lawmakers in late 2011. The problem was that the PAC didn’t qualify as a legal PAC. The law requires that PACs have at least 10 contributors. The WCS PAC had only one — Simmons, who deposited $100,000 and then dispensed money to favored political candidates. Waste Control Specialists operates a nuclear-waste dump in West Texas. Had Simmons, who heads the company, made the donations directly in his own name, it would have been okay. But the 10-contributor law is aimed at making sure big donors don’t try to disguise their giving by doing so through a political committee.

For someone who gives as much money as Simmons does -- at $16.5 million, he was the third-largest contributor to the Mitt Romney campaign, behind Sheldon Adelson and Bob Perry -- this is positively ignorant. As Craig McDonald, the director of Texans for Public Justice noted...

“Let’s all pray Simmons takes more care in handling atomic waste than he does in handling his campaign contributions.”

-- The Exxon Mobil employees locally who oversee the pipeline in Montana, the one that leaked oil into the Yellowstone River last summer, apparently fell asleep on the job.

Delays in Exxon Mobil Corp.’s response to a major pipeline break beneath Montana’s Yellowstone River made the spill far worse than it otherwise would have been, federal regulators said.

Department of Transportation investigators examining the spill said pipeline controllers in Houston could have reduced the volume of the 1,500-barrel spill by about two-thirds if they isolated the rupture as soon as problems emerged.

Instead, crude drained from the severed, 12-inch pipeline for another 46 minutes before a remote control valve near the river was finally closed.

The July 1, 2011, spill fouled 70 miles of the riverbank along the scenic Yellowstone.

Does everybody understand now why there is so much opposition to the Keystone XL? I suppose the best response from conservative radicals would have to be: "Pipelines don't kill people".

-- After Shell's Arctic drill ship broke loose from its tugboat and beached itself on an Alaskan coastline, the Internet meme-ists sprung the trap. Again.

A hoax website mounted by environmental activists to highlight the dangers of Arctic drilling and mock Shell’s search for oil in the region is getting fresh attention in the wake of the grounding of one of the oil company’s Kulluk rig near Alaska.

The arcticready.com website — designed to look exactly just like Shell Oil Co.’s real website — is welcoming a surge of traffic as people take to the Internet to search for more information about the Kulluk. Only most of them don’t know it’s a spoof.

Yes, it was so good it fooled other environmental activists...and an NPR affiliate.

For instance, one environmentalist emailed a quote attributed to Shell but pulled from the site to reporters Tuesday night before issuing a mea culpa few minutes later.

On Wednesday morning, a radio host on the NPR station KUOW in Seattle quoted directly from the site and attributed these comments to Shell:

“No oil company has ever operated in an environment as extreme as the Arctic, let alone with heritage equipment—yet that’s exactly the sort of challenge that makes the Arctic so appealing to many of us at Shell. On the slight chance that something does go wrong, Shell’s spill cleanup plan is second to none. No one has yet fully determined how to clean up an oil spill in pack ice or broken ice—but that too is exactly the sort of challenge we love.”

Classic. Here's a picture, courtesy EcoWatch, of the Greenpeace billboards connected to the effort opposing Arctic drilling that appeared in Houston last summer.


Flickr has a few more.

Update: It turns out that Shell was trying to move the drilling rig before the end of the year -- in the dead of the Alaskan winter -- in order to avoid paying Alaskan taxes on it. They remain liable for the taxes (because it grounded on New Year's Eve), and now also for a multi-million dollar rescue operation. And if it starts leaking oil...

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Let's meet back here in a couple of months and do it all over again.

Fiscal roller coaster survived! Now let's run over to Debt Ceiling Mountain and ride that one!

Setting a looming deadline to avert self-created calamity has become a frequent device for the U.S. Congress to get things done in recent years. When all else fails, as it often does, it's supposed to frighten members into action.

That was the idea when Congress created the "fiscal cliff" in August, 2011 to resolve a partisan struggle, also with a deadline and also self-created, over raising the federal debt ceiling.

Catastrophic budget cuts, timed to coincide with the threat of hefty income tax increases, would finally produce big cuts in the soaring federal budget by December 31, 2012, or else.

It didn't work. 

I'm not much into the 'soaring federal budget deficit' part, as you might guess. End the wars, raise all the taxes on the wealthy, institute a federal jobs program similar to the New Deal, and we'd be running surpluses just as we did in the Clinton years by the end of 2016.

But a few on my side of the aisle still want to grumble.

So, we have a modest deal in place to avert the contrived crisis known as the fiscal cliff. Washington is celebrating the fact that Congress averted the disaster that it created out of thin air last year.

Some say that it's not a bad deal on its merits, but we'll have to await final judgment until we see what happens with the debt ceiling, which has to be raised in the next two months. If the White House stands firm on its refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling again, and doesn't give any more concessions, then we can look back at this deal as a pretty good one, on balance. 

I suspect this will become the center-left conventional wisdom, and only dirty hippies will be bitching. So pass the patchouli, because I hate this deal. 

Though often regarded as a DFH despite my Neiman Marcus ties, I don't hate this deal. Yes, because the Social Security payroll tax goes up, the middle class gets to pay a bit more. But the benefit of that is that it resolves some of the "cut entitlements/we're going broke" bullshit coming out of the mouths of douchebags like Lindsey Graham.

Still, even Paul Krugman bitched about the deal.

So why the bad taste in progressives’ mouths? It has less to do with where Obama ended up than with how he got there. He kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him.

While I would not hesitate, normally, to give the president a kick in the shins over his negotiating acumen, even I find PK's criticism a little harsh. John Aravosis mocked Krugman over his recalcitrance.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make much sense.  We got what you wanted, but you still feel we lost because you don’t like the way the President got what we wanted.  What was wrong with the President’s approach, I ask?  He caved on his promises, you say.  But if the President caved on his promises, then how did we end up with what you wanted?

I’m the first to criticize the President for his “cave first, negotiate later” negotiating style – and we criticized him heavily during his first term on this very point.  But I think it’s significantly harder to argue that “he caved” if you also claim that he got what you wanted.

And while I am no defender of Obama's in this regard, the truth is what it has always been for him: his competitors imploded in wave after wave of infighting and vitriol among themselves.

Just check in on any conservative website. Big Jolly is so mad he's calling for a primary challenge to John Cornyn for voting 'yes' on the bill.

Fact: I would quit blogging about politics and never look back if the Republicans weren't such a hilarious clusterfuck. They are truly funnier than the simian habitat at the zoo during mating season.

Oh, the Texas Republicans still get my goat with their wanton and intolerable cruelty. But their "success" also has to do with the quality of their competition. The only response to the question of how Democrats keep losing to them is that Texas -- outside the big cities--  is full of gun-and Bible-clinging, Walmart-shopping, oilfield trash and drugstore cowboys.

(But that's a digression, probably worthy of getting me disinvited to ride on someone's bus for next week's opening session of the Texas Legislature. Meh. I'll catch a ride later on Lobby Day with some progressive organizations.)

Meanwhile, let's pop some corn, watch the TeaBaggers in Austin pick a fight next week with Joe Straus and lose, and ride the Debt Ceiling Tilt-a-Whirl in a couple of months.

Update: Why Everyone Hates the Fiscal Cliff Deal

Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Merry 2013

TPA's Texans of the Year are the Tar Sands Blockaders

The Texas Progressive Alliance, a consortium of Lone Star-based liberal weblogs, has selected the protesters of the Tar Sands Blockade as Texans of the Year for 2012.

The award has been given annually to the person, or persons or organization, who had the most significance influence -- for good or ill -- on the advancement of progressive interests and causes over the past twelve months.

"As with previous winners (like Fort Worth city council member Joel Burns in 2010, the Harris County Democratic Party's coordinated campaign in 2008, and Carolyn Boyle of Texas Parent PAC in 2006), the Tar Sands Blockaders represent what progressive Texans strive for: correcting injustices through direct action. Sometimes that takes place at the ballot box, sometimes in the courtroom, and once in a while it happens in the streets. In 2012, it happened in a handful of pine trees in East Texas," said Vince Leibowitz, president of the TPA.

The Tar Sands Blockade began when TransCanada, the company constructing the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, began seizing property from East Texans via eminent domain to connect the pipeline, which will transport tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur. Despite the fact that the pipeline hasn't yet been approved by the US Department of State,TransCanada and other operators have been busily cutting down swaths of forest, appropriating the land along the route as necessary, and when challenged by the small group of people protesting, responded with threatening measures and occasionally brute force.

When petitioning, lobbying, and public hearings failed to slow the construction of the pipeline, concerned citizens took to non-violent protests, risking arrest in order to demonstrate the will and demands of Texans concerned about the environment, about the nation's continuing dependence on dirty fuels, and the collaboration of government officials with the corporate interests. A group of protestors climbed into a stand constructed in a grove of pine trees and halted construction for weeks.

The movement began in June of 2012 with the formation of the Tar Sands Blockade, and the first lawsuit was filed in July.

As construction began in August, protestors began putting themselves on the line. Seven protestors were arrested in Livingston, Texas just before the Labor Day holiday. Even as a judge allowed TransCanada to seize a swath of farmland in Paris, Texas, more protestors chained themselves to construction equipment in rural Hopkins County.

The New York Times and the Washington Post picked up the story in October.

Along with the property owner, actress and activist Daryl Hannah was arrested as the two women physically blocked a piece of heavy equipment and its operator from clearing land for the pipeline. Even as the number of arrests climbed past thirty, the protests grew. A few days before the November election, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was arrested at the construction site in Winnsboro. In Cherokee County, sheriff's deputies pepper-sprayed protesters. All of this occurred while the legal battle went back and forth -- in December, a judge granted, then vacated, his temporary restraining order on pipeline construction.

And the efforts to stop the pipeline continue today, even as its construction proceeds apace. On November 29, Bob Lindsey and prominent environmental activist Diane Wilson were arrested by Harris County sheriff's deputies outside Valero's refinery in the Manchester neighborhood of Houston, where the pipeline will terminate. They chained themselves to tanker trucks outside the gates, were promptly taken into custody, and continue a hunger strike to this day that adds the humiliating and disgusting conditions of Harris County's jail to the list of outrages.

With training and mobilization of additional protests and protestors scheduled for early January, 2013, there will be more to report on this action.

The Texas Progressive Alliance salutes those who have sacrificed so much of themselves to underscore the seriousness of America's fossil fuel addiction, and how the system of corporate and political corruption has come to manifest itself in the controversy surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline.

Runners-up for this year's Texan of the Year included the following...

-- The emerging scandal of the Texas cancer research organization, CPRIT;

-- The spectacular failure of Governor Rick Perry's presidential campaign;

-- Attorney General Greg Abbott's woeful losing record in court in his many lawsuits related to the federal government, including redistricting, voter ID, Obamacare, etc.;

-- Senator Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, who defied conventional wisdom and was re-elected to the Texas Senate despite the best efforts of Republicans to deny her;

-- The expansion of the Texas Congressional delegation to 36 as a result of the 2010 census and apportionment of extra seats based on population growth in the Lone Star State. New Texans in Washington DC include former Democratic state representatives Pete Gallego and Marc Veazey, but also -- and unfortunately -- ultraconservatives Randy Weber and Steve Stockman.