The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is thankful for many things, this week and every week, as we bring you the blog post roundup of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff calls on Wendy Davis to make an issue out of Rick Perry's refusal to follow the Defense Department's directive on same sex benefits for National Guard members.

Texpatriate has special news this week, as Sophia announced in her Week in Review video that founder and editorial board member Noah M. Horwitz will be moving to Austin this January to continue his collegiate studies at the University of Texas and lead a new and exciting chapter for Texpatriate in the state capital.

Eye On Williamson is still blogging at our temporary home. Here's an update on what's happening with local candidate news, and Democratic efforts in Williamson County.

In her final term as Houston mayor, Annise Parker has begun enacting a progressive agenda, much to the surprised delight of PDiddie at Brains and Eggs. Same-sex spousal benefits for municipal employees, a wage theft ordinance, and legislation reining in payday lenders all came to fruition in the past week, signaling measurable progress for the Bayou City.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants you to know that John Cornyn has a clear record of protecting rapists. Why? He also says stupid stuff about foreign policy.

Looking to move ahead to the rest of life, Neil at All People Have Value made a donation to Wendy Davis for Governor of Texas. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

Concerned Citizens provides copies of all the documents in the lawsuit filed to overturn Texas' ban on same sex marriage.

TFN Insider celebrates a win for science education.

Mark Bennett debunks a claim about sex trafficking in Texas.

John Coby calls out the Young Conservatives of Texas for their racist "catch an illegal immigrant" game.

Better Texas Blog explains a pilot program to do something about student loan default in Texas.

The Texas Green Report brings word of the possible adoption of the International Energy Conservation code.

The Makeshift Academic applauds Houston's wage theft law.

BOR scoffs at Greg Abbott's claim that there were "no problems" with the voter ID law during this past election.

Yes To Texas makes us all feel old.

And finally, the TPA congratulates Juanita Jean on the birth of her first grandchild, and Lone Star Ma on the occasion of her daughter's first time casting a vote.

Steve Stockman's money problem

It's more of a disclosure problem.

Both as a candidate and as a congressman, Rep. Steve Stockman of Clear Lake has failed to make federally required disclosures about business affiliations that stretch from Texas to the British Virgin Islands, and has provided no details about the business he claims as his sole source of income.

Stockman returned to office in 2013 after 16 years away from Congress - crediting a low-budget, come-from-behind campaign to which he claimed to have lent more than $100,000 of his own money.

Stockman failed to file a federal disclosure form during his candidacy in 2012 when he ran for the newly created District 36, which stretches east and north from Southeast Harris County, around Beaumont, and beyond to the Louisiana line.

Every other Texan in Congress, whether incumbent or freshman, filed a report in 2012.

The Chronicle previously revealed Stockman's, ah, interesting local campaign office in a story earlier this month.

The fire marshal and city building officials in Webster have ordered the emergency closure of an unorthodox campaign headquarters for Congressman Steve Stockman, citing multiple safety violations.

The headquarters had been housed since early 2012 in a former motorcycle shop along the Gulf Freeway. Campaign staffers and volunteers had been both working and sleeping there, even though the commercial building was considered unsafe for human habitation, according to Webster city records and an interview with assistant fire marshal Warren Chappell.

Officials found 14 fire code violations and ordered the office closed and its electricity shut off on Nov. 7, fire department records show. No one had obtained the necessary permit for the campaign to legally occupy the pale yellow two-story metal building along a feeder road on the freeway, wedged between a spa dealership and a strip mall, building department records show.

But he does have actual money problems, too.  The Chron had prior articles that detailed Stockman's perpetual campaign finance woes.

Rep. Steve Stockman has fired two congressional staffers after disclosures that both made prohibited contributions to his campaign.

The incident is the latest in a string of controversial episodes that have dogged Stockman's political campaigns over the past two decades.

The Clear Lake Repub­lican's campaign for Congress in Texas' 36th District has been notified of potential problems with its campaign finance filings in 2012 and 2013 approximately a dozen times, including apparently misreported donations, late or missing filings of required reports, and inaccuracies in certain filings.

Both this year and in the 1990s, his campaigns were investigated for issues relating to campaign materials made to look like newspapers. While the earlier complaints resulted in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and a civil penalty, the most recent complaint was dismissed without enforcement action, the FEC announced Friday.

Stockman spokesman Donny Ferguson told the Chronicle Thursday that staffers Jason Posey and Thomas Dodd had been terminated. Posey had worked with Stockman since the mid-1990s, and was his 2013 campaign treasurer.

Stockman has never been anything but a goon and a goofball, and that goes all the way back to when he unseated Jack Brooks in 1994.  But the good folks of East Texas chose to 're-elect' him, as his 2012 campaign signs urged... and who is to argue with the will of the people?  Even if he hadn't ever represented much of the newly-drawn 36th Congressional District -- and even granting that this is, you know, the Appalachia of the Lone Star State -- they knew what they were getting.

Before the "librul media" whining gets too loud, those who vote in the 36th's Republican primary will need to come to some measure of good sense and stop repeating this mistake.  It's not like Stockman is a coke addict or anything -- as I wrote before, there's good dope and there's bad dopes -- but if this buffoon gets re-elected in 2014, then they own him... and every shitty thing that he does and is.

Hard to imagine East Texas lowering its reputation any further, but it is certainly possible.

Update: Gator in The Bayou wishes Stockman a happy birthday.

Sunday Funnies

"If John F. Kennedy were alive today he would be a conservative..." I agree. He'd be a zombie, with most of his brain missing, so yes he WOULD be a conservative.

Mayor Parker advances payday lending ordinance

Tipping my cap; she's off to a great start in pushing a progressive reform agenda in her final term with this.

"I had initially favored a Houston-specific measure, but decided that joining with other Texas cities in a united front on this issue is the best way to send a strong message to the Texas Legislature," said Mayor Parker. "Lenders deserve to make a profit on their investments, but not by charging astronomical interest rates to desperate consumers who have nowhere else to turn for emergency financial assistance. The statewide model I am recommending for approval by Houston City Council achieves this balance."

While making the announcement at Houston city hall on Friday, the mayor was surrounded by a broad coalition of community leaders who say they are concerned that these loans keep the most vulnerable trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Houston City Council will be briefed on the mayor's proposal on Dec. 4. The first opportunity for a vote will be on Dec. 11.

She keeps this up and and she'll go down as the best mayor in this city's long history.  More from Charles, Stace, and Noah.

Update: In case anybody was wondering about my about-face, this is why.

(Parker) brushed aside concerns about inviting a lawsuit, saying the city is sued daily, and did not finesse her message to the industry.

"They have said they will move outside the city limits of Houston, and I say: Don't let the door hit you on the way out," Parker said. "This is not about making a reasonable profit. This is about preying on vulnerable human beings and making an obscene profit."

That's called 'boom' and 'thud'.  Two hits: the mayor hitting the payday lenders, and the payday lenders hitting the ground.

Oswald acted alone

This I believe.

Like many others, I have played amateur detective in this fifty-year national obsession, more than most but much less than others.  And the more I have learned, the less convinced I am that there was an actual conspiracy.  Here's why...

The vast majority -- 98% -- of all of the documents collected by the Warren Commission have been declassified.  This occurred in 1997 and was prompted by questions raised in Oliver Stone's film 'JFK', which many Americans believe is more accurate than it actually is.  Two things stood out to me from this new data...

-- The "magic  bullet" is flattened on the tail and along one side ("compressed laterally" as the Wiki describes; fourth graf up from the bottom), thus not so magic as its reputation has long suggested.  More on the single bullet theory here if you want it.

-- Oswald was scored a 'sharpshooter' while a Marine in 1956, and a 'marksman' in 1959.  Do you know the distance at which a military sniper must qualify for those ratings with shots within the target?

200 yards.

Do you know how far away Kennedy was from the 6th floor of the Texas school book depository?

Between approximately 189 feet, or 63 yards (neck shot) and roughly 80 yards (head shot).

(Lots of people throw cold water on the postulate that Oswald was a crack shot, for whatever that may be worth to you.)

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Oswald undoubtedly had conversations -- deranged rants is probably a better descriptor -- with people about killing Kennedy.  Did he have conversations about killing Kennedy with the Russian government, or the CIA in Mexico City, or people loosely associated with the Cuban government or anti-Castro Cubans in this country, or elements of organized crime?  Perhaps.  Was he a patsy, as he claimed?  I doubt it.  Useful idiot?  This fits better to me.

Sidebar: When I lived in St Pete, Florida in 1992, I researched the Tampa gangster of Cuban descent, Santo Trafficante, who seemed as if he might be the link between the nebulous "parties with motive" most often mentioned... along with the CIA and the military/generals/MIC.  I had a personal connection for this interest: my wife's older brother -- born in Cuba like her, and emigrated to the US in 1961 as a teenager with the rest of her family -- had been shot to death by Tampa police in 1976 while running guns for some disjointed segments of the Mafia (essentially petty hoodlums who knew mobsters) and we were caught up with pursuing clues about that.  Nothing significant came of it.

Despite whatever "encouragement" he might have received, did Oswald act alone when he shot the president?  Almost certainly.  And I would not have said that even five years ago, mostly on the basis of an afternoon-long conversation at a Beaumont crawfish boil with Zack Shelton, the retired FBI agent who runs this website.

There's a lot there, much of it probably new to the average conspiracy theorist, so don't go in without a full glass and maybe something to eat.

The subscription channel Reelz has a series running this month called "JFK: The Smoking Gun" and it's fun, particularly if you like the various medical forensics angles like the dispute over the autopsy photos and Kennedy's missing brain and things like that.

And if you have a spare hour-and-a-half, watch Executive Action, the 1973 flick with Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Geer, and several other character actors you'll recognize.  It follows the line that the CIA did it, and that is the only conspiracy theory that hasn't been properly debunked.



But the Warren Commission's conclusion is based on things that can no longer be reasonably disputed, namely...

-- The shots which killed Kennedy -- and wounded Texas Governor John Connally -- were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building.

-- They were fired from a rifle owned by Lee Harvey Oswald; Oswald worked in the school book depository, and carried with him to work on the day of the assassination a wrapped package he described as "curtain rods".

-- Oswald's fingerprints and palmprints were found on boxes in the location of the shooting (the TXSBD sixth-floor window) and his palmprint was found on the barrel of the rifle.

Conspiracy theorists are good at raising doubts about various portions of the Warren Commission account, but are also fairly poor at suggesting plausible alternatives to it.

I'm of the mind that a bonafide conspiracy exists today only in a few feverish minds (lots of people have reasonable enough doubts, but that just wouldn't be enough to acquit Oswald in a trial -- and away we go with the Ruby conspiracy theory).  And the main reason I can't ride in that car any more is that, if anyone actually had inside, verifiable information that there was a conspiracy of any kind... they would have cashed in by spilling the beans in a million-dollar tell-all book years ago.

People crave conspiracy theories and where one does not exist, one will be fabricated. Just look what happened with CBS and Benghazi.

Update: Socratic Gadfly, from the comments, has the best conspiracy theories.

Senate filibuster nuked

I really didn't think Harry Reid had it in him, but he did.

The Senate approved a historic rules change on Thursday by eliminating the use of the filibuster on all presidential nominees except those to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In doing so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) invoked the long-threatened ‘nuclear option,’ meaning he called for a vote to change the Senate rules by a simple majority vote. It passed, 52 to 48. Three Democrats voted against changing the rules — Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

The unprecedented rules change means that President Barack Obama’s judicial and executive branch nominees no longer need to clear a 60-vote threshold to reach the Senate floor and get an up-or-down vote.

Both parties threatened to change the rules in recent years — but Reid said he felt compelled to finally pull the trigger after what he described as unprecedented use of the filibuster on Obama’s judicial picks, namely three blocked judges to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

One picture says it all.

Let's roll.