Monday, March 31, 2014

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is glad that so many people will be getting health insurance -- even if that number should have been much higher  -- as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff pushes back on some happy talk about the voter ID law.

Dos Centavos reviews the biopic of Cesar Chavez and emphasizes that the radical fringe in Texas would like to keep his name and others like his out of our kids' classrooms.

Horwitz at Texpatriate made the case for anyone but Jim Hogan, including Kinky Friedman, in the Democratic primary for Agriculture Commissioner.

Thanks to James Moore at Texas to the World, Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos learned Ted Cruz is a cheapskate who spends more time in Iowa than in the Rio Grande Valley. Libby also discovered Ted Cruz lied about The Biggest Lie in all Politics.

The Texas Central Railway, the latest effort to launch high speed rail from Houston to Dallas, made their initial plans public this week and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had the advance (before) and the post-press conference report (after).

Texas has a woefully inadequate and unfair tax system, and that puts us in a bind when we need stuff. Because as WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us that stuff costs money.

Texas Leftist is glad Democrats have finally stumbled upon a winning strategy for 2014. The questions now... Can we keep the fire burning through November, and will Greg Abbott and the rest of the GOP weasel out of having general election debates?

Reading a book about the settlement routes of black people in the United States, Neil at All People Have Value wrote about ideas of movement beyond physical migration. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Join Egberto of EgbertoWillies.com on his new radio show Politics Done Right on KPFT 90.1 FM, Monday at 8:00 PM to discuss Obamacare and the 2014 election.

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

The Great God Pan Is Dead wants to know what Rice University has against art.

Cody Pogue asks and answers the question "What is Texas?"

Mark Bennett defines the ethics of decolletage.

Offcite photographs the Alps of Pasadena. No really, it makes sense once you read it.

Nonsequiteuse has a suggestion for those who think the equal pay issue is no big thing.

The Texas Living Waters Project implores you to give your feedback on our state’s water future.

Jen Sorenson, a freelance artist now living in Texas, illustrates her experience with Obamacare.

Texas Vox asks "How many oil spills will it take?" as it marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

And finally, in much happier anniversary news, Amy Valentine celebrates her fifth anniversary of being cancer-free.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Friday Lone Star roundup

-- Greg Abbott once again has a corporation's back, this time against the people who were seriously injured, and occasionally killed -- probably intentionally -- by a neurosurgeon.

This is a pattern.  Abbott doesn't care about you unless you're a company.  Or maybe a fetus.

-- Glenn Hegar, the Republican running for state comptroller (a word he cannot articulate) has proposed replacing state property taxes with a sales tax.  It would need to be a sales tax of about 20-25%, in order to be revenue neutral.  Once he was saying "just do it", but now that the math has been presented to him, he thinks maybe we should go a little slower.

If you can't correctly pronounce the office you seek, and math comes slow for you, then perhaps you don't deserve to be elected the state's accountant.  That's all we're saying.

But the damage was done. Politically, you can’t easily replace the more than $40 billion a year that local property taxes yield by tinkering with state and local sales taxes, which currently produce about $28 billion.
If Hegar wants to be the chief tax collector and revenue estimator, he should know that.

EOW and BOR with more.

-- Leticia Van de Putte kicks off her spring Texas tour.

Van de Putte’s campaign made the announcement in an email to supporters Tuesday that provides a rough framework for the bus tour, which will kick off Sunday in San Antonio and is set to wrap up April 7 in Austin. ...

After San Antonio, the campaign bus tour will dip into the heart of South Texas, making stops in Pharr and Laredo before shifting west and trekking to El Paso. From there, the bus tour heads for events in Midland, Lubbock and Wichita Falls. ...

Van de Putte’s bus tour is also scheduled to make stops in Fort Worth, Dallas, Tyler, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Houston and Corpus Christi before concluding in Austin.

LVDP was extensively profiled in the San Antonio Current recently.  She rolls into H-Town on April 5, when she will meet privately with us bloggers ahead of the rally.  We're getting to be kind of a big deal, in case you hadn't noticed.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Fifth Circuit upholds Texas abortion restrictions

Just as expected.

A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld Texas' tough new abortion restrictions that shuttered many of the abortions clinics in the state.

A panel of judges at the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court judge who said the rules violate the U.S. Constitution and served no medical purpose. In its opinion, the appeals court said the law "on its face does not impose an undue burden on the life and health of a woman."

Texas lawmakers last year passed some of the toughest restrictions in the U.S. on when, where and how women may obtain an abortion. The Republican-controlled Legislature required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital and placed strict limits on doctors prescribing abortion-inducing pills.

Most Republican leaders in Texas oppose abortion, except in cases where the life of the mother is at risk. In passing the new rules, they argued they were protecting the health of the woman.

Greg Abbott Tweeted his delight at the news.  Burnt Orange has a map of the areas in the state where the restrictions are already making it difficult to impossible for women to get an abortion.  While the Fifth Circuit deliberated, women's clinics were closing all around the state.

On to the SCOTUS, and probably to be ultimately settled in a year and a half or so (in other words, just in time for it to become a 2016 presidential election year issue).