Thursday, April 24, 2014

And starring Greg Abbott as Cliven Bundy

Never one to skip a Tea Party poutrage -- and not content with only showing off his pathetic understanding of the law -- Greg Abbott has waded into (is that insensitive?) the Nevada-federal-grazing-land controversy by trying to recreate one at the Red River.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), the GOP candidate for governor, released a letter politely notifying the Bureau of Land Management that he is "deeply concerned" about reports that the BLM plans to "swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations."

At issue is some amount of acreage — Abbott says 90,000 acres, BLM says 140 — along the Texas side of the border with Oklahoma, delineated by the Red River. The BLM is currently updating its resource management plan for Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, deciding what will be done with the public lands under its management (it could sell the land, open or close it to public use, or let ranchers graze cattle on it, for example). As part of that process, BLM is looking to clarify who owns certain areas of property along the Red River.

You would think that the Texas-Oklahoma border is pretty well fixed by now, but determining the right line has consumed decades of court battles — all the way to the Supreme Court — and involves concepts like avulsion and accretion (when a river cuts away or adds land as it naturally changes course). Both the BLM and Abbott's office say they have the law and court precedent on their side.

Avulsion and accretion, General Abbott.  As opposed to revulsion and excretion, the typical reaction to your ridiculous pronouncements.

Attorney General Abbott in his letter asked the BLM for clarification of its intentions, asserting that "respect for property rights and the rule of law are fundamental principles in the State of Texas and the United States."
But candidate Abbott took a more populist tack, telling Breitbart Texas that he is "about ready...to go to go to the Red River and raise a 'Come and Take It' flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas."

With Ted Nugent, a herd of rednecks with guns, and a few camera phones provided courtesy of those intrepid journalists at Breitbart Texas, who were still picking up the broken pieces of their medium the last time we checked in.  Oh well, at least there'll be a pickup truck with a winch on the front to pull his wheelchair out of the rojo-colored mud when he sinks into it hoisting that petard.

Finally, after the mockery, the moneyshot.

...(M)ore to the point, to paraphrase Shakespeare, he's protesting way too much, perhaps in a bid to obscure the fact that the state of Texas — while Abbott served as its top lawyer — has its own spotty record with protecting private property rights.

You don't have to look too far back, either. Last Thursday, Texas seized the 1,700-acre Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado from a branch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon offshoot sect. The group's leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving a life sentence for "celestially marrying" two underage women, and Texas troopers helped vacate the remaining members last week.

Former FLDS member Flora Jessop tells Reuters that Texas deserves the land for having the courage to prosecute Yearning for Zion leaders. But the state claimed its right under a Jan. 6 forfeiture judgment from a state court. "Efforts to seize the property," Reuters' Jim Forsyth notes, "were initiated in 2012 by the attorney general's office."

Then there's the issue of private companies — specifically oil pipeline interests, but also power companies and for-profit toll highway operatorsusing eminent domain to seize private property, with the state's blessing. In March, the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal from northeast Texas landowner Julia Trigg Crawford, who refused to sell her land to TransCanada, which used eminent domain to put a leg of the Keystone XL pipeline through her land.

When you've lost both ends of the political spectrum represented by Julia Trigg Crawford and Warren Jeffs... it's entirely possible that you might just lose the governor's race.  That's conditional upon the Texas Teabaggers being able to see the light through Abbott's Shroud of Hypocrisy, which might be a standardized test too far.

McBlogger says it shorter.

Update: Now that the new conservo-hero has shared his thoughts on race relations, his fans seem to be vanishing.

“They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton,” Bundy was quoted as saying to a group of supporters last Saturday. “And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

[...]

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

As my friend Neil likes to say, everything is connected.  That goes double for stupid, mean, racist, and Republicans.

Update II: But Bundy does have a positive opinion of undocumented immigrants.

"Now let me talk about the Spanish people," Bundy said in a new video unearthed by New York magazine, right after he concluded his thoughts on "the Negro."

"I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders," he says. "But they're here and they're people. I worked side-by-side a lot of them. Don't tell me they don't work, and don't tell me they don't pay taxes. And don't tell me they don't have better family structures than most of us white people."

"When you see those Mexican families, they're together. They picnic together. They're spending their time together," he said. "I'll tell you, in my way of thinking, they're awful nice people. We need to have those people join us and be with us."

What a terrible quandary the conservatives are faced with now.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Uber awful

The minute I laid eyes on 'em, I knew they were no good.

At least one ride-sharing company has decided to openly defy city law that bans its unlicensed drivers from charging for rides.

While a few free-ride promotions remain ongoing, Uber spokeswoman Nairi Hourdajian confirmed Tuesday that the service, which connects interested riders with willing drivers via smartphone apps, is indeed charging for rides and will “stand by” any drivers who receive city citations.

Where are all the conservatives crying "illegal"?  We certainly aren't going to find them in a federal courtroom, sitting higher than everybody else.

A federal judge Monday declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by Houston and San Antonio cab companies hoping to block ride-sharing services that permit riders to use smart phone applications to catch rides.

Houston-based U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore set a July 15 date for an injunction hearing, which could result in stopping the smartphone-based companies from operating or give city ordinances as chance to catch up with the technology.

Gilmore said she had some "real concern" about whether the taxi and limousine companies had standing for a temporary restraining order, and added that she was particularly concerned about doing anything that stands in the way of a political process that already is under way.

Isn't that wonderful.  Let's break the law AND have the judge blow it off.

This is the same company that is busily lining up behind Google and Facebook with their own grandiose schemes to take over the world.

Honestly, I think what finished it for me was when I saw one of the local diehard Democratic activists -- he has both pimped Uber relentlessly and also drove the presidential limo when Obama came to town earlier this month -- compliment Robert Miller, Republican fundraiser and Uber lobbyist, on his sartorial splendor at City Hall.  If you needed a better example of class warfare, waged on the poor from the Democrats and the Republicans working in harmony, I do not know where you might find it.  Oh wait.

Oligarchy, it's what's for dinner.  I just don't think trust fund millennials are ever going to get it, even if they read this.

There is nothing progressive about lowering earnings for working-class people, nor is there anything progressive about undercutting labor costs to the point workers are driven into poverty and homelessness. It's a game as old as the laborers in the days of the Bible and as recent as those sweating in the mines of Western and Southern Africa. Play the working class against one another for the benefit of the wealthy who seek to be served no matter the human cost.

Texas Monthly weighed in also with the public policy perspective.

Regulating services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar is important. Companies that profit off of public infrastructure (i.e., roads) need to pay taxes that help maintain that infrastructure, but that's just the beginning of the question. Are the unlicensed, part-time, "your driver is your buddy" chaffeurs of Lyft and Sidecar safe behind the wheel, if there's no regulation? Cities have a legitimate interest in regulating taxi franchises for multiple reasons: safety, tax purposes, and ensuring that there are enough cabs on the road—i.e., that the business model remains profitable enough that people continue becoming cab drivers—to provide travelers with the ability to, say, get to and from the airport in a reasonable manner. 

All the cab companies have ever said is that Uber and the rest of these operations should abide by the same city laws that they have for decades.  Uber cannot seem to do that.

I wouldn't hire this outfit to clean out my garage.  And to be clear, everybody that does hire them is fighting the class war on the side of the wealthiest against everybody else.

Texpate has some additional thoughts on the libertarian lousiness that is Uber, and Kuffner has been all over it (mostly from the opposite perspective).  With the first draft of the ride-sharing ordinance made public, the heated discussions will now begin.  As with Houston's proposed non-discrimination ordinance, it's time to make your city council member hear your voice.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

How Earth Day became a global event

Earth Day began in 1970, when 20 million people across the United States—that's one in ten—rallied for increased protection of the environment.

"It was really an eye-opening experience for me," Gina McCarthy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who was a self-described self-centered teenager during the first Earth Day rallies, told National Geographic. (See pictures: "The First Earth Day—Bell-Bottoms and Gas Masks.")

"Not only were people trying to influence decisions on the Vietnam War," she recalled, "but they were beginning to really focus attention on issues like air pollution, the contamination they were seeing in the land, and the need for federal action."

At the time, she said, the environment was in visible ruins: factories legally spewed black clouds of pollutants into the air and dumped toxic waste into streams.
"I can remember the picture of the Cuyahoga River being on fire," she said, referring to the Ohio waterway choked with debris, oil, sludge, industrial wastes, and sewage that spectacularly erupted in flames on June 22, 1969, and caught the nation's attention.

Although members of the public were increasingly incensed at the lack of legal and regulatory mechanisms to thwart environmental pollution, green issues were absent from the U.S. political agenda.

Not so any longer, naturally. Today's example would be Karl Rove sharing his thoughts on the decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline.  It seems also that the Green Party -- at least in the United States -- missed an opportunity to brand itself as the environmental political movement, and has even allowed the word 'green' to be co-opted by non-political groups like the Sierra Club and others.

In the years since the first Earth Day we've seen a corruption of the terminology by people who have apparently decided that a healthy environment is somehow bad for business.  "Tree-huggers", "whackos", "enviro-Nazis", "dirty effing hippies", etc. all characterize the rhetoric of those who think fracking is safe, that the bees and polar bears aren't in trouble, and that the vanishing glaciers in Glacier National Park is just a phase.


The words of Upton Sinclair have never rung more true (and have never been more applicable than in Texas, where Rick Perry often gets the economic credit for the millions of dinosaurs who died in the Permian Basin hundreds of thousands of years ago)...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

There are no jobs on a dead planet. I wonder if conservatives, when they express concern for their grandchildren's future in the form of debt and deficits, ever consider that.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Houston's NDO has liftoff

It looks like a couple of weeks of pressure has paid off.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker’s office on Monday released the proposed text of a long-awaited Human Rights Ordinance, and it includes a citywide ban on employment discrimination.

Parker previously indicated that an earlier draft of the proposed ordinance didn’t include citywide employment protections, leading to a major push by LGBT advocates to have the provision added.

That pressure was indeed tremendous. The ordinance does draw some lines at enforcement.


Happy Easter!  Churches can continue to discriminate, and so can small businesses.   I would imagine the pastors also laid some damnation on the mayor, and will now focus their efforts on some of the most skittish, God-or-conservatives-fearing CMs.

The vote won't happen until May, so there's still plenty of time for tagging, waffling, and otherwise pussyfooting around equal rights for all Houstonians.  TransGriot, Texas Leftist, and Texpate all seem initially satisfied, so there's that.  I'll be a little more enthusiastic as soon as I see a large majority -- and not a narrow one -- of city council members do the right thing.

Ken Paxton's ethical lapses

At least he got past Easter without being crucified.  It's been a lousy Monday for a holier-than-thou Teabagger in a runoff for Texas attorney general.  Let's leave this one to Big Jolly.

In the race to replace Texas Attorney General and Republican nominee for Governor Greg Abbott, state Sen. Ken Paxton was the frontrunner in the March Republican primary. It was yet another example of Republican primary voters choosing to go with the least qualified person for the job. Paxton is more of a real estate investor than he is an attorney but voters didn’t seem to pay attention, focusing only on his loose affiliation with Sen. Ted Cruz and tea party endorsements. Let’s hope that in the runoff, voters get serious and look at Paxton’s lack of accomplishment during his legislative career and his many problems with financial transparency.

Fortunately, the Texas Tribune’s Jay Root has pieced a few of Paxton’s problems together in a piece titled “Paxton Campaign Reviewing Disclosure Lapses” published this morning. Here are a few snippets...

Yeah, go ahead and read those.  It's bad, and that's just what the Republicans are saying.

In a statement released Monday, Branch called the new revelations “deeply troubling” and said Texans need an attorney general “who will protect them, not prey upon them.” Branch called on Paxton to drop out of the race if he does not answer questions regarding his associations.

“Texas voters must know whether someone seeking to be the state’s chief law enforcement official has violated criminal or civil laws,” Branch said. “If Ken Paxton won’t provide these answers, he should end his campaign for Attorney General.”

Why, that's almost exactly what John Coby said this morning, except he is not a Republican.

Paxton is probably going to follow Greg Abbott's lead; in the face of unrelenting bad news, hide in the basement until it blows over, even if that takes weeks.

I'll bet this fraud is still the Republican nominee for attorney general, and that means by default he has better than even odds to get elected in November.  Because that's just how the TXGOP rolls.

(That's not insensitive to Greg Abbott, is it?)

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance has finally packed away its sweaters as it brings you this week's roundup of the best blog posts from the left of the Lone Star State.

Off the Kuff evaluates the Castro-Patrick debate.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos is horrified by the Texas Republican campaign strategies that vilify women and immigrants, in Boats N' Hoes, Snake Oil Dealers and Diseases from Mexico.

Horwitz at Texpatriate discusses the implication of Uber, the infamous ridesharing app, openly breaking the law in Houston.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us that Democrats in Texas can't keep fighting one election at a time and go home in-between. This week's Poll Was A Bummer, Now Get To Work!

On the horns of a pair of dilemmas -- one being a progressive in Texas, the other associated with the president and the attorney general's playing of the race card -- PDiddie at Brains and Eggs finds himself a little uncomfortable.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wants to know why gun pushers are so pushy. Only the gun manufacturers win. And that's the point: Ted Cruz is pushing the NRA propaganda.

Neil at All People Have Value made some posts from London this past week. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

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

BOR pens an ode, in word and Twitpic, to the massive and successful Wendy Davis/BGTX door-knocking campaign last weekend.

Lone Star Q celebrates the four Texans on the Out Magazine Power 50 list.

The Texas Green Report celebrates the latest win in court by the EPA over industrial polluters and the attorneys general that abet them.

The Texican reminds us that live animals do not make good gifts.

RH Reality Check reports that the state lawsuit against the prohibition of funds for the Women's Health Program going to Planned Parenthood was allowed to proceed by the Third Court of Appeals.

Bob Dunn updates his site's legal disclaimer.