Transitions

-- After ten years at Burnt Orange Report, Karl-Thomas Musselman moves on to whatever's next.  Godspeed to a great blogger and even better progressive.

-- Eye on Williamson has suffered some server issues in recent weeks and has temporarily relocated to here.  Here's their latest, contradicting TIME's recent article: Why Texas doesn't have to be our future.

-- Rest in peace, Bum Phillips.  As some of you know, I grew up in the Golden Triangle, attended Lamar, and my dad worked in the same old Magnolia/Mobil/ExxonMobil refinery in Beaumont that Bum did (so did I, for one summer).  Bum's legacy in the southeastern-most corner of Texas is even bigger there than it is here in Houston.  And it is inextricably linked with the Astrodome's.

Twice Phillips’ Oilers battled the Pittsburgh Steelers for a berth in the Super Bowl, and both times they came up short. After each loss, they were welcomed home by more than 40,000 cheering fans at the Astrodome, inspiring one of the most famous quotations in the history of Texas sports.

“One year ago we knocked on the door. This year we beat on the door,” Phillips said after the 1980 title-game loss. “Next year we’re gonna kick the sumbitch in.”

[...]

Of the first of the two mammoth Dome pep rallies, Phillips said, “Don’t forget all those people standing along the road when we were driving in. There must have been a hundred thousand of them out there. And we’d lost the damned game. I’ll take that memory to my grave.”

Have I mentioned that I am voting to save the Astrodome?

-- Speaking of voting, here's a good site, compliments of ProgressTexas, that will help you make sure you have everything squared away in order to cast your ballot, beginning Monday morning at a location near you.

Sam Houston for Texas Attorney General

Matt Angle telegraphed it last week, and the Texas Democrat who earned the most votes statewide in 2008 confirmed it yesterday.  Careful parsing by the folks at First Reading reveals the distinction in the assertion.

This is very artfully done. When I first read this I assumed it meant that Houston ran ahead of President Obama in Texas. In fact, he did get a slightly higher percentage of the vote - 45.88 percent to 43.68 for Obama. But his vote total - 3,525,141, lagged ever-so-slightly behind Obama's 3,528,633. But Angle's statement is perfectly accurate because Houston did win more votes than any other "Texas Democratic candidate," because neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden is a Texan.

Houston is light years ahead of the three stooges in the GOP primary scrambling to replace Wheelchair Coathanger Ken.  This blog has already pulled the curtain away from Barry Smitherman many times, and yesterday Dan "Curly" Branch stepped up to make his case.

State Rep. Dan Branch announced Thursday his proposal to create a Voter Fraud Task Force if elected as Attorney General.

“I have a clear plan to attack voter fraud in Texas,” Branch, R-Dallas, said in a press release.

Branch said the task force would:

•  ”closely monitor the activities of groups that would seek to subvert ballot integrity

•  appoint a Special Counsel devoted to exposing and prosecuting any instance of voter fraud, and

•  aggressively defend the landmark Texas voter ID law from the Obama Administration’s spurious attempt to invalidate it.”

Well, he has been getting out-kooked, after all.  At least Don Quixote could find a windmill to tilt.

It's now Ken Paxton's turn to do or say something ridiculously ignorant.  We shouldn't have to wait very long.

A pre-EV perspective

-- Charles delivers a good one here. Well worth reading (even with the perpetual underlying premise that more money means 'best chance of getting elected').  Thank goodness he and Texas Leftist and Texpatriate have worked this beat, because I haven't had the heart.  I'll add some predictions, though...

-- Mayor Parker wins without a runoff.  As best as I can tell, Ben Hall has already folded his tent.

-- I'll go out on a limb and say that city controller Ron Green loses a squeaker to the Republican, Bill Frazer.

-- Michael Kubosh and one of either Rogene Calvert or Jenifer Rene Pool in the runoff for AL3.  I can't seem to find many incumbents to vote for in city council races, except for my district representative, Larry Green.  I know I won't be voting for Stephen Costello or C.O. Bradford or Jack Christie.  That much is certain.  Update: Of course I am voting for James Horwitz.

-- I am voting for the Dome.

And I expect it to pass.

This is still the most lackluster election cycle in memory.

The last word on the shutdown

What the shutdown cost:

“The bottom line is the government shutdown has hurt the U.S. economy,” Standard & Poor’s said in a statement. “In September, we expected 3 percent annualized growth in the fourth quarter because we thought politicians would have learned from 2011 and taken steps to avoid things like a government shutdown and the possibility of a sovereign default. Since our forecast didn’t hold, we now have to lower our fourth-quarter growth estimate to closer to 2 percent.”

Moody’s Analytics reported a similar number Wednesday, saying by the end of the day the shutdown will  cause a $23 billion hit to U.S. GDP or $1.4375 billion per day.

-- $3.1 billion in lost government services. Although furloughed workers will get their back pay,  taxpayers won’t see the products.  (Source: I.H.S.)

--  According to the U.S. Travel Association:  There has been $152 million per day in all spending related to travel lost because of the shutdown. As many as 450,000 American workers supported by travel may be affected.

--  According to the National Park Service: They welcome more than 700,000 people per day usually in October and visitors spend an estimated $32 million per day impact in communities near national parks and contribute $76 million each day to the national economy.  Those revenues were lost.

--  According to Destination D.C., the official tourism corporation of D.C.: There is a 9 percent decrease in hotel occupancy from the last week in September before the shutdown to the first week of October during the shutdown. This year, hotel occupancy was down 74.4 percent for the week Sept. 29 to Oct. 5 compared to the 2012 numbers. (Source: Smith Travel Research, Inc.) In 2012, an estimated $6.2 billion of visitor spending supported more than 75,300 jobs.

What the shutdown's lost revenue could have paid for:

• The net cost of to the government from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): $24 billion
• The Department of Agriculture’s proposed budget: $22.6 billion
• NASA’s approved budget: $16.6 billion
• All air transportation programs, including the Federal Aviation Administration, security, research, and other costs: $21.9 billion
• The Child Tax Credit: $22.1 billion
• The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formally known as welfare): $17.7 billion
• The cost of Head Start, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Women Infants and Children (WIC) program combined: $25.2 billion

The topline figure may not take many other costs into account, such as loans that didn’t go out from the Small Business Administration, permits that got held up, and the loss of billions in tax revenue. Plus the government could still get a downgrade on its credit, which could ding business and consumer confidence and bring about more costs.

The shutdown was just the latest budget crisis that has been costly to the economy. A recent report found that the uncertainty created by fights over funding the government and raising the debt ceiling that have cropped up since 2010 has cost the economy nearly a million jobs. 

Ted Cruz:

"It was an incredible victory."