The latest SD-6 developments

I updated last Wednesday's post with it, but it needs to lead here; yesterday's email from Sylvia Garcia (well, technically her campaign manager).

Just one week out from the runoff election, Carol Alvarado is caught lying to the voters she is asking to elect her. On multiple mailers and television commercials, Alvarado claims that front runner candidate for Senate District 6, Sylvia Garcia, was connected with deputies being laid off in 2011, the year after Garcia left the Commissioners Court. But contrary to Alvarado’s bogus claim, Sheriff Adrian Garcia is quoted saying, "We have improved operations while saving money, we've passed jail inspections, we haven't laid off any employees and we've reduced in-custody deaths," [Houston Chronicle, February 21, 2013]
 

“While these false attacks are disappointing, it is no surprise based on Carol Alvarado’s failed record and tainted career that has included scandal and embarrassment,” said Terrysa Guerra, Campaign Manager for Sylvia Garcia for Senate. [Houston Chronicle, February 17, 2006] “It is clear Alvarado is so desperate, she will say and do anything to get elected.”

Bold emphasis and links are hers. This broadside becomes more relevant with the disclosure made by political prostitute gun-for-hire Burt Levine on his Facebook page early this morning.

This was an incredibly exciting day and a true Texas Patriotic Privlege to join Republican Senator Larry Taylor and fmr Republican nominee for Rep. Wayne Faircloth in knocking on doors for Carol Alvarado for Texas Senate!

Could someone explain to me why so many Republicans are working so hard to get Carol Alvarado elected? Nemmind; I believe I already know the answer to that. So what conclusions should we draw from this?

-- First of all, Burt Levine is either a moron or just doesn't care what kind of last-minute speculation this 1 a.m. posting will generate. My guess is that it's a double shot of both. Burt never does anything for anybody on either side of the street without getting paid for it. It may just be his early Easter gift if somebody isn't actually writing him a check.

-- Given either scenario -- or both -- I still fail to see the advantage that this news provides Team Alvarado. If the post suddenly disappears at some point today... well, at least that will make sense. (There will still be a screenshot.)

Update, Monday 2/25: After some reflection on the above paragraphs, I decided they make too harsh a judgment on Burt's motivations, who after all is just another soul trying to make a living in this world. So I will retract its meanness without removing its general premise, and restate my conclusion in a more artful way: I still hold doubts as to whether Burt's FB post -- and the very prominent Republican support Alvarado receives overall -- helps her in a 70-plus-percent Democratic district... and 90 percent in this special election. That, however, is a decision SD-6 voters get to make (or have already made).

-- I think I am finally ready for this special election season to be over. Anybody else? And so it soon will be, as early voting ends this Tuesday the 26th, and Election Day a week later on March 2.

Hey! And just in time for the 2013 municipal spring mud-slinging to begin. Have you planted your rotten tomatoes yet?

Update II: Katherine Haenschen at BOR links to this post and provides her own analysis. Essentially she is queasy about it, and for some reason that draws rebuke in the comments from whoever it is among Democrats that approves of Alvarado's overtures to the GOP.

Still don't understand what it is that people mean when they say "both parties are just alike"? This is it.

Weekend Update

-- Send a healing thought to my friend Norma Zenteno and her family, please.

Along with her many musical talents, she has been a committed activist for her sister-in-law's effort to help the lost/abandoned/abused dogs in Houston's East End, an intractable problem that shows no signs of improving despite their (our) best efforts.

Here's a song Norma wrote about it.



Update, 8:45 p.m., Friday February 22: Rest in peace, Norma.

-- “I was very surprised that a senator, who has been in office for over 30 years, would address a grieving mother, who just lost her son exactly seven months prior — yesterday was the 20th, I lost my son on 7-20-2012 — to tell me that I needed ‘some straight talk.’”

-- Obama trades some Benghazi data for a cabinet nominee approval, instead of a few drone memos. emptywheel, in first-person...

The other day, I explained that the Administration would be forced either to cede to Republican demands for Benghazi talking points and other truther demands or release a full accounting why and in which countries it has conducted targeted killing.

It decided to capitulate to the Benghazi truthers rather than tell the Intelligence Committee what kind of targeted killing it has been doing.

[...]

There must be some reason the Administration would rather kowtow to sensationalized requests from Republicans rather than commit to the transparency it’d take to get 2 Democrats and a Republican to vote for Brennan.

But no reason for doing so would be respectable.

I think I prefer the outrage as expressed by Charles Pierce.

Please tell me this is just mischievous disinformation from anonymous Republican congressional elves. Because, if it isn't, as a distillation of the administration's unique brand of neo-liberal suckitude, this one takes home the House Cup. (Sorry, Simpson and Bowles. You have to give it back now.) First, we have the ongoing charade of "transparency" as regards the president's assumed right to kill Americans anywhere in the world including, absent a clear statement from this administration, which has not been forthcoming, within the borders of the United States. Then we have the drone program itself, which is a constitutional abomination no matter how effective you presume it is. Then, we have another attempt to reach a kind of bipartisan consensus with the various vandals and predatory fauna in the other party. And then, last, as part of the attempt at bipartisan consensus, a deal is struck in which the president's hit list is kept in a vault while more fuel is fed into the Benghazi!, BENGHAZI!, BENGHAZI!!!!!!!111!!! infernal machine just as it was so sputtering to a halt that even John McCain was calling a cab to pick him up by the side of the road. I swear, if this deal goes through, Lindsey Graham is going to have a woody you could see from space.

There's a bit more there you should read. Oh hell, here it is.

This is what happens when you elect someone -- anyone -- to the presidency as that office is presently constituted. Of all the various Washington mystery cults, the one at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue is the most impenetrable. This is why the argument many liberals are making -- that the drone program is acceptable both morally and as a matter of practical politics because of the faith you have in the guy who happens to be presiding over it at the moment -- is criminally naive, intellectually empty, and as false as blue money to the future. The powers we have allowed to leach away from their constitutional points of origin into that office have created in the presidency a foul strain of outlawry that (worse) is now seen as the proper order of things. If that is the case, and I believe it is, then the very nature of the presidency of the United States at its core has become the vehicle for permanently unlawful behavior. Every four years, we elect a new criminal because that's become the precise job description.

See? it ain't just me.

-- The same number of people who thought Dick Cheney did a good job as V-P also oppose raising the federal minimum wage. They are very likely exactly the same people, but the polling doesn't tell us that.

-- A rural Mississippi newspaper publisher pushed back against the bigots upset for his running a front-page article on the community's first-ever gay wedding.

"We shouldn't have to defend every decision we make here at the Leader-Call," Jim Cegielski, the paper's owner, wrote in an editorial published on Saturday. "However, the intense reaction to our gay wedding front-page story, which led to a deluge of hate calls, letters, e-mails, Facebook posts, soundoffs and random cross stares thrown in my direction, warrants some sort of response. So here it is."

-- Are junk food manufacturers more evil than even the tobacco industry? That would appear to be 'yes'.

In “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food”, previewed online now and adapted from his forthcoming book “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Michael Moss delves deep into the long history of how snack food and beverage makers scheme with a mix of science, willful ignorance, and masterful marketing to sell mountains of their salty, sugary products.

“What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort—taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles—to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive,” writes Moss, adding that he talked with more than 300 current or former employees of the processed-food industry, “from scientists to marketers to C.E.O.’s.”

Among the high-blood-pressure inducing revelations in Moss’s 14-page online story, presented in a series of case studies...[...]

•Robert I-San Lin, chief scientist for Frito-Lay from 1974 to 1982, told Moss he tried in vain to get the company to make its products healthier during his tenure, and regrets how much time the company has spent trying to sell its snack foods to the public. "In his view," Moss wrote, "three decades had been lost, time that he and a lot of other smart scientists could have spent searching for ways to ease the addiction to salt, sugar and fat." He added, "I couldn’t do much about it. I feel so sorry for the public."

•Coca-Cola, under fire from anti-obesity campaigns and other health initiatives in the late ’90s, began aggressively marketing its sugary drink to poor, vulnerable areas, Moss writes, “like New Orleans — where people were drinking twice as much Coke as the national average — or Rome, Ga., where the per capita intake was nearly three Cokes a day.”

•Coke also targeted Brazil and its ultra-poor favelas, by repackaging the soft drink into smaller, more affordable bottles. On one trip to Brazil, Jeffrey Dunn, then-president and chief operating officer in both North and South America, had a realization, he told Moss. “A voice in my head says, ‘These people need a lot of things, but they don’t need a Coke.’ I almost threw up.” He tried steering the company in a more health-conscious direction, but was fired. In recent years, Dunn’s worked to market carrots as a snack. “I’m paying my karmic debt,” he explained.  

-- Will the border ever be secure enough for immigration hawks? Without moats and boiling oil, that would appear to be 'no'. (That one's for you, Greg.)

-- Finally, kudos to Joe Garagiola, retiring after all these years.

A friend of Yogi Berra since the two grew up in the same St. Louis neighborhood, he said he hadn't called his old pal about his decision.

''Yogi's moved into one of these assisted living and retirement communities,'' Garagiola said. 'I said, 'How's it going?' and he says, 'It's all right, but geez, they've got a lot of old people here.'''

Happy 77th, Barbara Jordan

Listen to this seven minutes of her words at the 1992 DNC, and then think about how much progress you believe we have achieved in the 21 years since she spoke them.



The second half of the excerpt above can be viewed here.

As if I needed reminding

... that the political world continues to pull away to the right, hard and fast, leaving me looking like a radical leftist.


More numbers like the ones cited in Ted Rall's toon above from the Pensito Review. They frame almost precisely the conversations I am having at the moment with blue partisans. They usually begin with a variation of Republican talking points 'justifying' the Iraq invasion in 2004 ("We're at war with terrorism", "Anything that keeps me safe I am OK with", "what would you have us do, wait for the next attack", etc.) and generally end along the lines of "I trust Barack Obama to make the right decisions w/r/t the kill list".

Yes, it is hypocritical, Ms. Ball, to support something -- as in anything -- that Obama is doing which you would oppose if Bush (or any other Republican who comes to White House in the future) were president. That's precisely the definition of hypocrisy.

But the vast majority of people really do not know how to respond with anything but apoplexy every time some actual progressive ideas start to surface, particularly on mainstream outlets. Please go to that link and view some of the video that Noah Rothman of Mediaite has embedded, and share his fear and loathing of *gasp* a midday talk show on MSNBC that has a "seeming desire to become a parody of excessive whining and hand-wringing over society’s perceived ills regularly displayed by only the most competitive of progressives".

...Now has not just abandoned any pretense of objectivity, but has overtly courted partisan controversy, hosting some of the network’s most inflammatory guests and coaxing inflammatory statements out of even the guarded of news makers and opinion leaders. For 2013, Now has become the network’s most controversial program – by far. 

ROFL, and not just at 'inflammatory' used twice in the same sentence. Mr. Rothman, meet Thom Hartmann, a longtime, nationally syndicated actual progressive radio talker -- one which regularly hosts *doublegasp* Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders. One that also has a regular TV gig on RT, Channel 9418 on my Dish Network and also on Direct TV channel 348. (That's one of the low-numbered ones, too, dude.) He also appears on something subversive called "Free Speech TV".

And hey, man: RT was formerly known as "Russia Today". Breathe deeply and slowly into the paper bag...

A couple more things. Alex Wagner isn't a troll; these are. And what she is doing on Now isn't trolling. THIS is trolling. And so is this.

But I hear you can pick up FOX News on your rabbit ears. If that doesn't work then just go to your nearest doctor's office. You can watch TV for free all day there.

As I double back to the point, It would be important to note here that Democrats -- particularly the ones who have abandoned the label "liberal" for "progressive" but think like Krystal Ball -- are not actually progressive. Alas, they are just Democrats.

There is, more and more often lately, a big difference.

Update: As it usually does, The Onion reports on the internal conflict some Americans are experiencing about the issue better than any other news outlet.

Following the release of a secret Department of Justice memo (two weeks ago) that outlines the administration’s legal justification for killing U.S. citizens, a new Pew Research Center poll has revealed that a majority of Americans are torn over whether they support the government’s right to kill them anywhere at any time without due process.

“On the one hand, I get it—it’s important for the government to be able to murder me and any of my friends or family members whenever they please for reputed national security reasons. But on the other hand, it would kind of be nice to stay alive and have, maybe, a trial, actual evidence—stuff like that,” said visibly conflicted 39-year-old Nashua, NH resident Rebecca Sawyer, who, like millions of other Americans, is split over whether secret federal agents should be allowed to target and assassinate her anywhere on U.S. soil.

“I wouldn’t mind if federal officials blew up other citizens and claimed it was in the name of my safety. But it’s just that when it comes to me, I guess I’d rather not be slaughtered by my own elected officials on charges that never have to be validated by any accountable authority. This is tough.”

While most Americans expressed conflicted feelings regarding the memo, the poll also found that 28 percent of citizens were unequivocally in favor of being obliterated at any point, for any reason, in a massive airstrike.

SD-6 final push begins today

Charles and Stace posted their previews yesterday earlier. Neither of them mentioned the e-mail the Garcia campaign sent out last week, though.

While Republican leaders in Austin moved to block the restoration of $5.4 billion in education funding, Carol Alvarado was nowhere to be found at the State Capitol. In fact, she was nowhere near Austin. Carol Alvarado was over 160 miles away in Houston trying to save her failing campaign for the Texas Senate. As a result, Texas school children missed an opportunity to receive the money they rightfully deserve.

There's more and it's just as nasty.

When this arrived in my inbox at lunchtime last Thursday -- on Valentine's Day -- I was shocked. And as cynical as I am, it takes a lot to shock me.  But rather than write about it then, I waited to see if there would be a response to it from other quarters.  Alvarado campaign consultant Marc Campos eventually posted this on Monday morning the 18th. Here's an excerpt (his emphasis in bold serves to set off the remarks that are not his, except at the close).

Someone named politics@houstonpolitics.com sent the campaign the following:

We know Carol can’t run on her record as Lee Brown’s Chief of Staff, or Council Member for District I, or State Rep, but does she really have to attack her opponent and take things into the gutter.

As Lee Brown Chief of Staff, she assisted Brown in raising the city employee benefits to unsustainable levels, which led to major budget problems.

As Council Member for District I she waisted community leaders time and energy by:

Having meetings on Air Quality in the East End after high levels of benzine were measured at the plants, nothing happened;

Had Deed Restriction data base meetings which led to nothing; 

Due to lack of her oversight her Mayor Pro-Tem staff gave themselves illegal bonuses;

And as far as what she has been doing as State Rep, other collecting money from special interest groups, I have no idea.

This week I have received four mail-outs from Carol trashing Garcia. If Carol can’t win on her record, then she needs to drop out!

Let me kind of respond to this.  First, who are you and where do you live?

He or she obviously doesn’t live in the district because anyone named politics that lives in SD6 would know that our opponent sent six mail pieces in Round 1 attacking Carol.  So hitting back shouldn’t come as a surprise.  In Round 1, I would have been impressed if politics would have said:

This week I have received four mail-outs from Sylvia trashing Alvarado. If Sylvia can’t win on her record, then she needs to drop out!

Any one named politics should know that Carol never served as Mayor Brown’s Chief of Staff.

Of course if one isn’t going reveal their real name, well we can only guess about one’s motivations.

Campos is right, and the Alvarado campaign has, publicly at least, hewed to the high road throughout the campaign. (Whatever is going on underneath my radar -- I speak here of salacious third-hand gossip and rumor-mongering -- I can't and won't speak for, or about.)

Update (Saturday, 2/23): Yet more vitriol from the Garcia campaign. It just never ends.

By contrast, it is my opinion that Garcia's mud-slinging has done her no favors in this cycle. She remains, however, the odds-on favorite to be the next senator from the district on the strength of her volunteer effort and fundraising, not to mention her reputation as a "fighting Democrat" -- the type I am typically a solid supporter of. But her means of getting to the seat leaves a lot to be desired. You have to wonder what her relationship with Rep. Alvarado will be if they have to work together on issues of common interest. The level of spite just seems excessive.

The Chron may have picked up on this as well, because the notion of a 'challenging' senator versus an accommodating one appears to be the reasoning behind their endorsement of Carol...

Both are Democrats who vow to strengthen state education spending and expand Medicaid. They differ chiefly in the way in which they'd go about achieving their goals. Garcia vows to go toe-to-toe against Gov. Rick Perry and other Republicans. Alvarado says that she'd continue to do what she's done as a member of the Republican-controlled Texas House: work with members across the aisle to get legislation passed.

We believe that Alvarado's approach will serve her district best. In part, that's pure pragmatism. Given Republicans' utter dominance of our state's government, a Democrat who hopes to accomplish anything at all has to play nicely with the GOP. But it's also the solution to a larger problem. Both Texas and the United States need more politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, who can find middle ground and nudge the body politic forward. Alvarado is that kind of legislator.

There's more there that you should read that points out the differences between the two. Keep in mind that the Chron also endorsed Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz, two pathetic losers whose election outcomes were polar opposites. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what that might mean for Rep. Alvarado's prospects.

I'm not fond of of the fact that Alvarado has taken lots of money from Republicans, especially from Bob Perry and the like. I am not a fan of her political advisor. I am almost never in favor of Democrats who brag about how amenable they are in working with Republicans -- particularly the virulent strain of vicious, ignorant Republicans infesting the Texas Legislature.

But to my view, Carol Alvarado has fought the fights that made the point to Texas Republicans even when there was no way she (and Democrats) were going to win those fights. She sharply rebutted, she did so with class, and she held her head high in defeat.

And she has taken a similar approach in this set-to with Sylvia Garcia.

I sort of feel bad about Garcia and her campaign. I still expect her to prevail in the runoff despite all this -- there's no other appropriate word for it -- brutality, and I have no doubt she will be a strong advocate for the district, and the issues and the cause of Texas Democrats in the state Senate. She probably is, despite the Chron's advice, the best woman for the job.

But the equally brutal truth is that she is, by far, not the best candidate.

I don't live in the district and my preferred choice came in seventh in an eight-contestant general election race, with 73 total votes. So feel free to weight my analysis accordingly. All I know is what I see, hear and read.

Buena fortuna to both women, and let's see the one that prevails get busy accomplishing a lot for SD-6, which needs all the help it can get.

Previously on the topic of the SD-6 special election, in chronological order:

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 

SD-6 developments (that mention Keystone XL) 

Sylvia Garcia punching down

SD-6 candidate boycotts TransCanada-sponsored debate

Local media goes to work reporting on SD-6

Garcia hits Alvarado again and more SD-6

Garcia surrogates push back against Rodriguez, Alvarado

The East End Leaders sign their letter

Viva Houston has the SD-6 candidates on this morning

2.9%

Results for SD-6 *updates*

One takeaway from yesterday

KXL protestors get SLAPPed, plan counterpunch

So God made a factory farmer

And that ultimately begat shameless pandering to 1950s-era heartland values.