Sunday Funnies (half-cocked edition)

"We weren't sent (to Austin) to govern like California"

The Speaker throws the Teabaggers a bone.

House Speaker Joe Straus suggested in a Thursday interview that a Senate proposal to take $5.7 billion from the rainy day fund for water, transportation and education is too costly and represents an effort to “punt” lawmakers' responsibility by placing the issue on a ballot for voter approval.

“We weren't sent here to govern like California,” said Straus, R-San Antonio.

His comments came days after the House torpedoed an effort to take $2 billion from the rainy day fund for water projects, without resorting to a constitutional amendment.

But that House roadblock didn't make Senate Joint Resolution 1 any more attractive to Straus — although he said he is firmly committed to paying for a water plan, which he said is of prime importance.

“How the members want to fund it is the question. It will be funded,” Straus said. 

When all else fails, play the Cali card. Hey, it's been working great for the governor, right?

This is the same strategy employed by the Speaker with regard to Medicaid expansion and a bushel full of legislation now on the Sine Die countdown: "Something needs to be done, but I haven't a clue what it might be".

This is how you know there will be a special session: when something passes the Senate by unanimous consent but is --apparently -- DOA in the lower chamber.

Senators unanimously backed SJR 1, which would provide $2 billion for water, $2.9 billion for transportation and $800 million for public education.

Dedicating the money through a constitutional amendment would prevent the expenditures from counting against the state spending cap. The cap applies to state tax revenues that aren't constitutionally dedicated to other purposes.

[...]

Straus said, “I would say that SJR 1 is a no-go in the House.”

The Speaker has shown exemplary non-leadership throughout the 83rd Session. The Dems have managed once again, at critical moments, to outmaneuver the majority via parliamentary procedure, and the TP Caucus just says no to everything as usual. Faced with blockage he can't dissolve, Straus has decided to file his nails and coast to the end, content to let his lieutenants do the lifting.

With the Legislature entering its home stretch, key lawmakers are trying to figure out how to direct money from the rainy day fund to help build massive reservoir and pipeline projects.

Among the possibilities: Reviving some version of a bill that was killed Monday with a parliamentary maneuver and bringing it back to the House floor, where a spirited debate is likely to ensue; kicking the issue over to voters, as the Senate has proposed; or trying for a hybrid of rainy day fund and general revenue fund money to seed the revolving water fund.

That last option is the most likely, said state Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, who has played a behind-the-scenes role on water issues.

That Statesman piece also makes clear that legislators don't want to come back for a special.

“We are not going to leave the Capitol till we agree on some funding at the state level to facilitate construction called for in the state water plan,” Larson said.

Backers of the water plan are also making an appeal on drought grounds: Owing to Texas’ ongoing drought, legislators from South Texas, West Texas and Central Texas “will be hard pressed to vote against the plan,” Larson said.

Some members from each party are worried they could face a special session to deal with water, if they cannot pass a bill in the regular session, which ends May 27.

State Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, a member of the speaker’s leadership team, shuddered at the idea of extra days of lawmaking.

“That’s a looming hammer hanging over all of us,” Cook said. “It will create an added incentive to get it done.”

Yeah. We'll see.

Sidestepping the vigorous debate in the House, senators last week unanimously passed a resolution calling for voters to consider a constitutional amendment transferring roughly $6 billion from the rainy day fund for water, roads and public education.

Their leader, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, has at times seemed disengaged on the water issue. On the day the Senate took up the resolution, Dewhurst was in Houston to address a lunch-time gathering of the Pachyderm Club.

Dewhurst is still depressed over losing to Ted Cruz last year.

After the passage of the resolution, Dewhurst’s office issued a press release noting that he started talking to senators about improving the state’s infrastructure last summer. But kicking the decision over to voters, rather than leading senators to make a spending decision that could alienate tea party activists, appeared to be preferable for a man who lost his 2012 U.S. Senate primary to Ted Cruz, a tea party favorite.

The Lege is always full of surprises, especially as the session grinds down and sleep-deprived politicos get testy. But I don't see the Republicans making the hard choices to govern effectively for the state's citizens. Color me skeptimistic, but something -- in the homophobic words they so often use -- is going to have to get shoved down their throats.

Nick Anderson's response to Rick Perry's cartoon pique

WaPo:

Nick Anderson, the Pulitzer-winning political cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle, rendered his commentary Tuesday, in which Texas Gov. Rick Perry is depicted as getting more outraged over a cartoon — by Sacramento Bee cartoonist Jack Ohman — than the actual oversight and regulation issues involving the West, Tex., fertilizer plant that exploded last month, killing at least 15 and injuring scores more.

Asked to share the thinking behind his cartoon, Anderson tells Comic Riffs: "I just have a question: Why do people seem more offended by a cartoon than they are by the lax regulatory climate that likely contributed to or even caused this tragedy?"

Nick Anderson is all over the governor lately. And his question is just common sense for everyone except the top two elected officials in Texas.

But for a state that has sent Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman to Washington... and would like to send Ted Cruz to the White House (ain't hap'nin, but Lord, please let 'em nominate him) , it's just par for the course.

Until Battleground Texas get geared up, this tincture of craven and stupid is all on you, Republicans. And with Greg Abbott waiting in the wings, I doubt you're going to manage to do any better in 2014. In the meantime, we'll watch as Houston hosts the NRA's national convention this weekend, with a parade of Cruz, Ted Nugent (who soiled himself rather than go to Vietnam, and now blames military suicides on Obama), Sarah Palin, and Rick Santorum ahead of the very worst America has to offer.

The nation's premier gun-rights organization, with nearly 5 million members, expects more than 70,000 to attend the convention.

[...]

The NRA caps off Saturday night with a "Stand and Fight" rally featuring conservative commentator Glenn Beck.

Apart from the calls to the ramparts, the convention's heart rests in the 400,000 square feet of exhibit hall space where more than 500 firearms companies, hunting outfitters, gun antique collectors and others will display their wares. In addition, seminars feature topics such as "home defense concepts," "methods of concealed carry," and "advanced sausage processing - BBQ & smoke cooking techniques."

A response? Yes.

Outside the convention center, an array of gun-control advocates is expected to demonstrate opposition to the NRA and its lobbying prowess.

"I don't think it's a losing battle at all," said Heather Ross, an organizer for the "Occupy the NRA" group that plans to lead the reading of names of 4,000 gun-violence victims under a #NoMoreNames banner at Discovery Green, across from the convention center. The list will start with the 26 victims of gunman Adam Lamza at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December.

Texas is not as uniformly pro-gun as most people believe, Ross insisted.

"The concept that we're all a bunch of gun-toting crazies is inaccurate," she said. "That's largely pushed by people elected to office."

The day is coming when this virulent strain of Republican rabies will come under control, but it won't come soon enough.

"This is why I don't think we have a strong president"

Cenk Uygur, “Edge Show” host Mark Thompson, The Nation’s Lee Fang, and comedian Jimmy Dore criticize President Obama’s inability to deliver on his first-term promise to close Guantanamo Bay. During a White House Press conference, Obama renewed his dedication to closing the prison. “I think it’s one of the great failed promises of this presidency,” Thompson says. “This is why I don’t think we have a strong president,” Cenk says. “This is an executive decision. [Obama] shouldn’t have any conversation with Congress about this.”

It is one of the enduring mysteries to me how closing Gitmo can possibly be so difficult or why it is even controversial. Republicans either are too scared to treat the captives legally, or they simply want to kill them all (as if that would solve anything). Obama's capitulation to the pants-crapping cowardice of the GOP is to say, "well OK; since you have screamed so much about it, we'll let you have your way".

Obama reminds me of one of those parents who refuses to discipline their shrieking, wailing child in the restaurant. You know, just let them cry themselves out.

Bullshit. Take that little urchin out to the car and whip his ass until he understands how to behave. Yeah, it's old school but it's how I was raised. And don't tell me about how people call DHS on parents like that, or that children can sue their parents as part of the analogy.

Republicans -- in addition to being cowards -- are bullies. Stand up to them and they will back down. Don't... and they'll keep up their act. Somebody's got to find their spine once in awhile, and we are way overdue for a discovery among the political class.

You have to hope it happens before Ted Cruz gets elected president, anyway.

It's just amazing to me that it takes a man with a broken back to demonstrate the kind of courage needed to slap Republicans across the face with their hypocrisy.

House Dems block water bill in last stand for schools

While rain slicked the streets of Austin, lawmakers heatedly debated legislation that would use $2 billion from the state’s Rainy Day Fund to pay for the state water plan, an increasingly urgent issue for lawmakers. But, after hours of stop-and-go debate, a procedural error derailed the legislation.

The bill’s author, state Rep. Allan Ritter, a Republican from rainy Southeast Texas, said House Bill 11 was “doorknob dead.”

You know, it's too bad that Ritter couldn't use any of the goodwill he had among Democrats -- you know, from all those years he spent being one -- to save his water bill.

House Democrats, who organized a point of order to kill the bill, said they resorted to that parliamentary tactic only because their demands to put more into Texas’ schools, and fully undo the cuts from 2011, were going unheeded. Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) said they’d like to see the House pass a 2-2-2 plan: $2 billion for roads, $2 billion for water and $2 billion more for public schools, all paid out of the Rainy Day Fund.

Texas Monthly‘s Paul Burka described the Democrats’ dilemma:

This is also the last point in the session when the Democrats will have any leverage. The moment the gavel falls to certify the final passage of HB 11, the Democrats will lose whatever power they have.

But with a reputed 80 votes, and needing 100, it's not just the Dems who stand in the way. (The statehouse is split 95 R and 55 D.) The TP doesn't care much for the bill either, but that's because they don't want to spend anything.

House Bill 11 also faced challenges from the House’s tea party faction, which has been itching for a fight all session. To appease the brawlers, the House GOP caucus chair Rep. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) presented what one lawmaker called a “nuclear bomb”: an amendment stipulating that if the bill didn’t get a vote of two-thirds of the House, then it would be funded out of general revenue by imposing a $2 billion across-the-board cut. In other words, Creighton would force lawmakers to choose between water and everything else in the state budget.

The proposal, said Turner, puts “water first and everything else is second. By definition your amendment has picked a winner and everyone else stands to lose.”

Creighton’s rejoinder was that everyone would suffer from not funding the water plan. “Whoever is impacted by small reductions in the budget will benefit for years from this move,” he said.

But before the amendment came to a vote, the point of order killed the bill.

The bill could get passed if the Republicans with half a functioning brain could reach Sly Turner's common ground on funding education and transportation. But Ritter says it's dead, so I guess we should take him at his word.

It’s unclear how the House gets the water plan funded now. Any transfer from the Rainy Day Fund, as is preferred by Gov. Perry and other top Republicans, would require a two-thirds vote. The Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment last week pulling a total of $5.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, including $2 billion for water. However, Ritter said that legislation “has a snowball’s chance” in the House.

Ritter and the Democrats pointed to another bill sitting in committee, House Bill 19, which spreads $3.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund to water and roads.

Without 100 votes, something will have to give to fund the state water plan.

It's called compromise. It's defined as Republicans giving up something -- their apparent desire NOT to fully fund public schools -- in order to get what they want. Which, though difficult for them to manage, beats the kind of intransigence they have demonstrated on other legislative items (such as Medicaid expansion).

Or they could just postpone the scuffle until a special session.

State Rep. Lyle Larson, R-San Antonio, commenting after Turner’s point of order won out, voiced determination to see a water bill through. “If we don’t fix this, I think a lot of people’s political careers will be on the line,” he said.

Since Larson is the guy who advanced term limits legislation over the objections of the governor, hopefully it's Rick Perry's political career he's referring to.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance would have gotten rid of the entire sequester, not just the part that inconvenienced the few, as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff notes that we might actually get a worthwhile payday lending bill passed this session... if the House follows the Senate's lead.  

WCNews at Eye on Williamson highlights one example of how our legislators decide that ideology trumps morality.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that enablers of racism and fear are planning to build more of that d*mn fence!

Greg Abbott is running for governor in 2014, but is Rick Perry? PDiddie at Brains and Eggs turned over the Magic 8 Ball and it said: "Reply Hazy Try Again".

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw nails Perry on his lethal governing philosophy. Check it out: Texas Recipe for Disaster: Small Government, Lax Regulation, Little Oversight.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

I Wish Fifth Ward invites you to reimagine one of Houston's historic neighborhoods.

Texans for Public Justice tracks the 12 Republicans who went from the Legislature to the lobby since last session.

Nonsequiteuse advises you on getting the most from your fundraiser.

Clay Robison eulogizes Demetrio Rodriguez, one of the earliest champions in the decades-long fight for equity in public school funding.

Harold Cook muses on lizards, henhouses, and snakes in the grass.

Texas Clean Air Matters asks if lax regulations or insufficient oversight are more to blame for the explosion in West.

Flavia Isabel reads "Lean In" and draws some lessons from it.

Pedestrian Pete demonstrates bad parking lot and traffic signal design.

Texas Leftist explains why Barbara is his favorite Bush.

Texpatriate discusses the latest legislative assault on voting rights.