Wednesday, November 20, 2013

One in three Houston-area gas pumps is a ripoff

This is what happens after twenty years of Republican rule at the statewide level.

(Houston CBS affiliate KHOU's investigative reporters) analyzed state inspection records and discovered that in the last two years nearly one in three gas station inspections in our region ended in a failing grade.

In all, that represented 1,667 different gas stations ....

State inspectors found problems with (one station's) pumps three different times since the beginning of November, 2011.  According to the Texas Department of Agriculture, in one case a pump charged $1.28 before delivering any gas.

I've blogged about this since 2010, when Hank Gilbert challenged Todd Staples for ag commissioner.  Seven years later, the problem has only gotten worse.  Now Staples wants a promotion to lieutenant governor in 2014.

I'm sure this institutionalized incompetence is only because the agriculture commission is just understaffed due to cutbacks passed in Austin.  After all, since we can't afford any state parks, and the only roads being built are toll roads, everybody's got to tighten their belt.  Right?

If an operator is determined to be intentionally ripping off customers, TDA will turn its findings over the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

How many of these has Greg Abbott's office prosecuted?  Fewer than the number of statistically insignificant voter "fraud" cases, I would guess.  This is the hallmark of Coathanger Ken's legacy: ignore actual fraud, pursue the monster-under-your-bed fears of the right-wing primary voter.

This is the kind of bad government conservatives should be complaining about.  Instead their response is to run ever more conservative candidates against their previous darlings.  That's not going to fix anything.

Instead of waiting for the TXGOP to figure out that they're part of the problem, let's vote for some solutions instead.  And let's encourage those who aren't voting in off-presidential year elections that it is vital that they start doing so.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The week's best toon

And it's only Tuesday.

Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo

Catch a n----r by the toe
If he hollers, make him pay
$50 dollars every day.

Everybody remember that one?  Lorenzo Garcia does.

Garcia is the Young Conservative of Texas who made the Internet blow up yesterday with his latest demonstration of the urgent need for sensitivity training.  'Latest', because he was the proud organizer of the affirmative action bake sale just a couple of months ago.

Here's a picture of Garcia with his mentor.


Neither of those guys need to crouch down for a picture. They're both already as low as a snake's ass in a wagon rut.

But Abbott, not to be outdone by a mere college undergraduate, thought of something nasty to say about "liberals" in his disavowal of Garcia's immigrant hunt.

“Conservatives should not stoop to the level of liberals, whose shenanigans at the Texas Capitol this summer, including chants of ‘hail Satan’ during Senator Davis’ filibuster to allow abortions after five months, did nothing but sidetrack the Texas Legislature.”

Well you did stoop, General.  You threw yourself out of your wheelchair and crawled on the ground, like some creature out of Leviticus, right under the limbo bar.

This is another "oops" for the Abbott campaign, no matter how much they wail and gnash their teeth.  And it's going to cost him a few extra million dollars in Spanish language media just to try to get the stain out.

I said not so long ago that Wendy Davis would need a boatload of cash, a little good luck, and some unforced errors from Greg Abbott to pull out a win next year. The Attorney General is certainly holding up his end so far.

Update
: YCT cancels the event. Everybody is in full retreat.

Update II: As a final self-inflicted coup de grâce, Lorenzo Garcia attributed a quotation from Emiliano Zapata to some unidentified Founding Father.

The irony is so sinfully rich.

Monday, November 18, 2013

The Weekly Wrangle

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with the people of the Phillippines as we bring you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff looks at the numbers in the Astrodome referendum in Harris County to see what went wrong.

Horwitz at Texpatriate discusses and compares the (all Republican) candidates for Texas' two high courts.

Eye On Williamson is still blogging at our temporary home. There's much that is being lost in the hyperventilating over the mistake-riddled rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ACA. Part of which is EMTALA and our cruel health care system in Texas.

The Keystone XL pipeline is dead, writes PDiddie at Brains and Eggs. Oh, it probably needs a stake through its heart to stay dead, but it isn't going to be a big deal for a very long time... and maybe forever.

Everyone is focused on the odious Ted Cruz while CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that John Cornyn is every bit as despicable. Cornyn is using the disgraced James O'Keefe to take away people's access to ACA help.

=====================

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

Grits for Breakfast informs us that "One out of Five Known Exonerations is for a Crime that Never Happened".

Texas Vox highlights construction problems with the Keystone XL southern segment.

The Makeshift Academic tracks Medicaid enrollment resulting from the Affordable Care Act.

The TSTA Blog wants to know why Greg Abbott is not making education a priority in his campaign.

Juanita Jean passes along the rumor that Tom DeLay wants to run for Congress again.

And finally, if you don't know who Justin Lookadoo is or why a bunch of Richardson High School students started calling him #Lookadouche on Twitter, then TFN Insider, Hair Balls, Forrest Wilder, TM Daily Post, Word of a Woman, BOR, and Nonsequiteuse explain what you missed.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Socialist elected to Seattle's city council

Bravo, I say.  Bravo.

Seattle City Council candidate Kshama Sawant, a “Socialist Alternative” insurgent, has unseated four-term incumbent Richard Conlin, with the latest batch of mail-in ballots nearly tripling Sawant’s lead to 1,148 votes.

A year ago, Sawant was running against the Legislature’s most powerful Democrat, House Speaker Frank Chopp, charging that the “Democratic Party-majority government” had slashed billions from education programs while bestowing tax exemptions on “rich corporations.”

Hm. Sounds familiar.

While the Occupy Seattle organizer is about to occupy an office in the council chambers, ballots are still being counted in several close races.  One big ballot measure is still hanging, while other contests appear narrowly decided.

The $15-an-hour minimum wage proposal in SeaTac, already under legal challenge, leads by exactly 53 votes.  The margin was cushioned by 12 votes in Thursday’s count.

The proposal for taxpayer-financed elections in Seattle, Proposition 1, has climbed in the late vote count.  Unlike Sawant — who overcame a 6,193-vote election night deficit — Prop. 1 hasn’t quite climbed enough.  The “No” side still has a lead of 2,656 votes.

"Taxpayer-financed elections" is code for getting the money out of politics.  Repealing Citizens United and Moving to Amend as a city ordinance.  But pause for a moment and let that sink in: taxpayer-financed elections aren't quite as popular in Seattle as the Socialist about to be sworn in.

You may recall that Houston had both a Socialist and a Green running for mayor earlier this month, but they didn't fare quite so well as Council Member-elect Sawant (about 1% apiece).  My feeling -- well, my hope anyway -- is that continuing to offer alternatives to left-leaning Houstonians, Texans, and Americans is, at best and as this is written today, a tool to pull the Democratic Party back to the port side of the political equation, and if Democrats keep doing things like this then the trend will be inexorable.  You won't hear about it in the mainstream media, though.

Well, you'll hear some about it.



What a breath of fresh, pine-scented air.

This qualifies as bonafide progress. Honestly I thought cities like Berkeley and Portland would have been at the lead, but some will say that the Left Coast is all the same anyway.   Republicans in California, Oregon, and Washington must feel even more hopeless than Texas Democrats did in 2002.

My opinion is that this is the most effective answer to both the Tea Party and the creeping conservatism among establishment Dems; an actual progressive movement outside the center-left that threatens it just enough to make them see the error of their corporate ways... and change them.   It could be so much more with a groundswell of actual populism, here in Texas and across the country, but there are just barely audible rumblings about that.  I thought that was much closer to a real thing in 2006, but the election results that year proved me wrong.  And that was three years -- a political eon -- before the Tea Party birthed itself out of the raging spittle against "RINO" John McCain ... and the nation's first black president, Barack Obama.  (It continues today, of course, in the unrelenting assault on public health insurance known as the ACA.)

Read a little of this...

According a recent Gallup poll, Democrats and Republicans have reached an all-time low in public opinion--only 26 percent of Americans believe the two mainstream parties do "an adequate job of representing the American people." Some 60 percent said there was a need for a third major party.

In Seattle, where the Democrats predominate, this discontent translated into heavy press interest in Sawant. She won an endorsement from The Stranger before her strong showing in the August primary election--the alt-weekly wrote in an article headlined 'The Case for Kshama Sawant': "Sawant offers voters a detailed policy agenda, backed up by a coherent economic critique and a sound strategy for moving the political debate in a leftward direction."

After coming in a close second in August, Sawant continued to pick up broad support, including a small group of 'Democrats for Sawant' -- -a stark symbol of the bitterness with the incumbent Conlin, who has a long record of pandering to business interests....

As a socialist challenger in a liberal city against a Democratic opponent, Sawant was able to avoid one of the key difficulties that third party candidates typically face: the so-called spoiler effect. Without a Republican in the election, the Democrat Conlin wasn't able to browbeat his party's much more liberal base into supporting him as a 'lesser evil'.

More Greens and more Socialists on the ballot, please, in 2014.  Voters want -- and democracy needs -- more than two corporate-controlled options.

Update: Kshama Sawant talks to Salon.

President Obama told the Business Roundtable – speaking of “the capitalist class” – in his first term that he’s an “ardent believer in the free market,” and that he sees three roles for government: to create rules for a level playing field; to provide things that individuals can’t do for themselves; and to provide a social safety net. What do you make of that kind of politics?

First of all, I think Obama is being quite honest … he believes in capitalism. And so for people to have the faith that he is going to really fight against those ideas … there is no basis in reality for that …

I would say that the “free market” is basically free for the super-wealthy, and extremely un-free for the rest of us. Because they dictate the terms. And so this idea that the free market can generate conditions where social programs can thrive and a level playing field can be created — it is an oxymoron. Because what the capitalist market does – and that’s what they call the “free market” – is that if you are a big player, like one of the oil companies, then you are in the best position to consolidate your wealth even further … One of the systematic, statistical realities under capitalism is intergenerational transmission of wealth and intergenerational transmissions of poverty …

I often ask my students, “What do you think is the best way of making money under capitalism?” They often give me interesting answers, like maybe [creating] an app for an iPhone … I tell them, “Look, the best way of making money under capitalism is to have money in the first place” …

You also hear people saying, well, it’s “crony capitalism” or it’s “disaster capitalism” or some other capitalism. Well, the fact is, you know, they’re all dancing around [that] this is capitalism …

It’s not built into the system that the goal is to ensure that socially responsible life is possible. The goal is to maximize profits for those who already have wealth …

The reality is that capitalism rewards the biggest corporations and it tends toward monopoly. That is what capitalism is.

Every time you hear some pathetic conservative say "BrockObamaizaSoshulist", remember that -- as of this post -- the stock market has reached several consecutive days of record highs, and gasoline is $2.79 a gallon in Houston. So Obama is obviously a very crappy socialist.