The Civil Rights Game

As an Astros hater, I sure picked a good night to go to the ballpark.

“I haven’t heard this place this loud in a long time,” said Robbie Grossman, who had the game-tying hit in the seventh inning, right before Jonathan Villar’s go-ahead double bounced into the home bullpen at Minute Maid Park.

The Astros haven’t had a win streak this long since July 27-Aug. 3, 2010, which shouldn’t come as a shock. Since May 11, they’re tied for the second-most wins across the majors, and their 15 wins this month are their most in May since tallying 17 in 2008.

The Astros didn’t even have a hit off Orioles starter and losing pitcher Miguel Gonzalez until the sixth inning, and nonetheless pulled it out.

And that was just the baseball.

l to r: George Foreman, Berry Gordy, James Brown.

Missing from this year's Beacon honorees was Dr. Maya Angelou, who passed just Wednesday.  She did record a video, shown on the stadium's big board, thanking Major League Baseball for the honor.  Her words ring so clearly in a week when Houston approved a non-discrimination ordinance, and in the 50th anniversary year of the 1964 Civl Rights Act, and the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision desegregating public schools, Brown v. Board of Education.

“There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are people who go through life burdened by ignorance because they refuse to see. When they do not recognize the truth that they belong to their community and their community belongs to them, it is because they refuse to see. When they do not accept their oneness with their fellow man and fellow woman, it is because they refuse to see. When they choose to live sheltered in their own personal universes, oblivious to the plights that face our brothers and sisters and their brothers and sisters, it is because they refuse to see to see what is in front of them.

“We have been through trying times. We have borne witness to many who felt that the establishment of superiority outweighed the need for human compassion, and yet somehow we have persevered. We have stood firm in the face of outrage. We have held tight to our dignity against a sea of strife. We have adhered to our convictions and our beliefs and the equality of all people. And all the truths we hold to be self evident have persevered. And it is to our great joy that we can say we have persevered.

“Our world today is in many ways better than it was 50 years ago and perhaps not as good as it will be 50 years from now. I pray that we will grow. But we must never lose sight of what is truly important. We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. In fact, it might be necessary to encounter the defeats so we can know just who we are."

Truly, to live one's life by those words is the real honor.

There was an awards luncheon, there was a roundtable discussion, there was baseball where the players wore throwback unis from the Negro Leagues.  Hell, even the local TV blackout was lifted (so I hope you watched it if you weren't there, because you know they'll be looking at the ratings).  The only damper on the evening was the rain, which canceled the postgame fireworks show.

If I never go to another game, I can be happy.

Price to change Greg Abbott's mind: $350K

And Republicans say he's a Christian.  A moral man.

In a surprise legal about-face, Attorney General Greg Abbott on Thursday ruled that state prison officials no longer have to tell the public where they obtain drugs used to execute condemned criminals.

Abbott's decision falls in line with other states that have sought to keep secret the source of their lethal drugs, to keep death-penalty opponents from pressuring suppliers to quit selling to execution chambers. His decision reversed three rulings since 2010 that had mandated the information about the suppliers be made public.

Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor in the state that operates the nation's busiest death chamber, said in his five-page decision that he was swayed to allow secrecy by a "threat assessment" from Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, that disclosure of details could endanger suppliers.

In arguing for the secrecy, officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which conducts the executions, insisted pharmacies supplying the drug pentobarbital used in executions could be subject to death threats if their identity was known -- an assertion an Associated Press investigation could not validate as true.

How's that old joke go?  "We already know what you are, now we're negotiating the selling price."  So I wonder if $350,000 is the MSRP, or if there's a little wiggle room.

Campaign contributions totaling $350,000 to Attorney General Greg Abbott from the owner of a Conroe compounding pharmacy drew criticism from a government-watchdog group on Friday, at a time when Abbott is involved in two issues with the lightly regulated pharmacies nationally: Tainted drugs and executions.

In a new report, Texans for Public Justice questioned the contributions by J. Richard "Richie" Ray, who heads Richie's Specialty Pharmacy. According to the report, Ray is Abbott's sixth largest campaign donor between January 2013 and January 2014 in his campaign to become Texas' next governor.

"The $350,000 that Ray gave Abbott in the past year catapults him from obscurity into the ranks of this year's Governor's Cup," the report states.

Let's review.

"For 350 large, I'll change my mind.  We ain't gonna tell no more about how we're killin' these killers, 'cause somebody mighta said they would kill us if we did.  'Cause killin' is wrong, but potential threats against us killers is wronger.  I'm pro-life, and don't you fergit it."

Last word to Mother Jones.

Given the massive conflicts between his current job and one of his biggest campaign contributors, Abbott can only hope that defense lawyers manage to drag out the legal battles over lethal injection long enough for him to get elected in November.

That's the perfect summary of the Abbott campaign's election strategy: stall.  Avoid all uncomfortable questions, duck the media, don't debate your opponent.  Stay hidden and out of sight as much as possible.

That's the only way Greg Abbott can get elected governor.  Because if enough people would ever learn the truth about him, he would have never been elected a single time.

Alameel taking someone's bad advice

David Alameel might be rich but he isn't very intelligent.  He got spanked when he asked for his money back from John Cornyn, and he loses the spin game here again.

A nationally known celebrity lawyer for U.S. Senate hopeful David Alameel is threatening to sue the campaign of Texas Republican John Cornyn, alleging that the U.S. Senate's No. 2 GOP lawmaker defamed the Democratic nominee by repeating "specious allegations" made in a decade-old sexual harassment case.

An attorney for Cornyn fired back in a letter this week, accusing Alameel of trying to "intimidate Texans from discussing his fitness for public office."

You're just playing into their hands here, Dr. Alameel.

In a letter demanding a retraction, Los Angeles attorney Martin Singer accused Cornyn's campaign of making "outrageous, false and defamatory" statements about the case, which was brought by four women who said they lost their jobs after complaining about sexual harassment by a supervisor in Alameel's dental clinics.

In a sign that Alameel can mount a well-funded challenge to the heavily favored Republican, the wealthy Dallas dental mogul has employed the high-profile lawyer that the New York Times once called a "guard dog to the stars" -- a reference to clients such as Charlie Sheen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Quentin Tarantino, Sylvester Stallone, as well as Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

I could excerpt more from the other side of the paywall, but it's going to be a long, hot summer and I sadly feel certain that Alameel is going to make even bigger mistakes than this, so I'll hold my fire for now.  Don't want to be an outcast at the TDP convention in a month.  Nobody's going to be inviting Dan McClung to any parties in Dallas, that's for sure.

Given the sensitivities involved, some analysts question why Alameel has chosen to breathe new life into the story by threatening a libel suit, particularly given the high legal threshold public figures must meet to prove slander.

"I can make no sense whatsoever of Alameel's attempt at smearing his opponent for using (court) filed sexual harassment-related information -- whatever their outcome," said veteran Texas Democratic strategist Daniel McClung. "There is not a chance in hell that subject would not be revisited in a U.S. Senate campaign, and using one's own resources to assure it remains in the public eye is not what I would consider a wise political tactic."

The re-airing of the women's 2003 lawsuit also comes at a delicate time for the Texas Democratic Party, which has staked its comeback hopes on mobilizing women and minorities. Alameel will be on the same Democratic ticket in November as gubernatorial hopeful Wendy Davis, who endorsed him in the primary against Rogers.

Still waiting for a Lone Star Project/Matt Angle e-mail explaining this to me.

Texas Democrats really struck out on their US Senate choices this year.  But don't blame me; I voted for Maxey Scherr.

Some more thoughts on political courage

After my short rant added to the bottom of last evening's post about who has stones on Houston's city council and who doesn't (not surprisingly, the ones that don't are mostly men and mostly white, but the one thing they all have in common is 'conservative'), I thought it valuable to connect that observation with the state of play in Texas five months away from our statewide elections.

Doing the right thing is, as bluntly as it needs to be said, what conservative Republicans just don't understand about governing.  There is no 'my way or the highway' attitude that produces good governance.  From Ted Cruz to Dan Patrick and at every bus stop on their route, Texas stands again at a precipice.   We're conducting the nation's most dangerous political experiment, and it's about to blow up the laboratory.

The real problem, as we know, is that the 95% of Texans who couldn't be bothered to participate in selecting the state's leaders in 2014 are going to suffer the worst effects of the explosion and meltdown.  They don't seem to care though, so why should we?

Because it is critical that someone care, that's why.  If all around you there are men making comfortable livings from carbon extraction who deny the effects of their work on the planet's climate, it takes courage to stand up and say, "we need to stop doing that".  And work toward alternatives.

This is why there remains significant activist opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, even though tar sands oil is already being refined now in Houston and Port Arthur (because the oil was shipped by rail from Alberta to Cushing, and is now flowing through the southern leg of the pipeline to the refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast).  Even though transporting tar sands oil by pipeline is probably safer than shipping it by rail.  The part that the majority of the polled public doesn't understand is that no matter how many jobs KXL creates, it's not worth it.  There are no jobs on a dead planet.

You cannot whine about the federal debt's deleterious effects on the lives of your children and grandchildren and simultaneously deny global warming.  That is moronic.

If the Earth's 'Goldilocks zone' only has a few hundred years left, if we have passed the tipping point for halting the collapse of the Arctic ice shelf and the corresponding rise in sea levels and monster hurricanes and tornados and drought, then the easiest out would be to say, 'it's gonna happen anyway, I'll just pray for God's help and make as much money as I can as we go down the tubes".  There is nothing strong, or bold, or courageous about that option.

It takes actual courage to for someone to sign a petition banning fracking in their community when their neighbors are all cashing out (and moving out).  It takes political fortitude to vote your conscience over your political longevity, and most certainly over your bank account.

As we continue to learn, however, conservatives have mostly squashed their consciences.  "We oppose Medicaid expansion on principle even though millions of people will die because of it."  "Round 'em all up and send 'em back because they're moochers and freeloaders".   (Notice I left out the racist parts.)

This is the opposite of courage, as nearly everybody understands.  In fact it's just garden variety fear and xenophobia, stimulated by ignorance, amplified by its own arrogance.  And as we already know, fear is one of the primary voters of human behavior.

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, as some wise whatever-he-was once said.  That's where Texas is, and where it digs itself deeper.  Unless some relatively small number of Texans who care enough can find the will and the courage to change it.

The Thomas Piketty affair

If you haven't been following the action -- Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has roiled the country and even the world with its conclusions about wealth and inequality as well as its suggested remedies, the Financial Times has responded calling bullshit, their claims of manipulated economic data have been mostly dismissed -- then Matt Bai's five-minute primer is a great place to catch up.

The Economist also has a decent four-paragraph summary of the book and the responses to it.

Krugman if you want to go longer and deeper.

If I wanted to hold Hillary Clinton to account in 2016 for anything at all, it would be "raise taxes in the first two years of your first term, when you have a Democratic majority".  That assumes we all survive the revolution that breaks out when the Republicans begin impeaching Obama in 2015 after they retake the Senate.

Houston's ERO approved by city council on 11-6 vote

ThinkProgress was first, Tweeting out their story moments after the vote was final.

After many hours of testimony from over 200 speakers, the Houston City Council voted 11-6 to approve the Equal Rights Ordinance, which creates nondiscrimination protections for many classes, including sexual orientation and gender identity. Houston was one of the only large cities in the country that had no municipal nondiscrimination policy.

It was not without exchanged threats of electoral retaliation, ridiculous statements by those in opposition, and many other dramatic and absurd moments.

During the debate, supporters of the bill spoke to alliances across groups, noting how the ordinance would protect following identity classifications: sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, and pregnancy. Opponents argued that the protections would impose on religious beliefs, forcing individuals to violate their own religious beliefs by serving, as an example, a marrying same-sex couple. They also asked that the ordinance be put to a city-wide vote instead of being approved by the Council.

CM Michael Kubosh -- whom I recently praised as a reasonable man -- reverted to social conservative form.  He backtracked on his statement that God had placed him on council to vote against the ordinance, he declared his ignorance on the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity, and generally disgraced himself.  He was one of the six 'no' votes.  The remaining five dissenters were Brenda Stardig, Dave Martin, Oliver Pennington, Jack Christie, and in the day's most shameful profile in cowardice, Dwight Boykins.

I'll add some other reactions in later updates.

Update:  Boykins, the lone Democrat among the noes, used the two-week hiatus to let the African American pastors and their shared constituents scare him away from voting for equality.  By contrast, council members Jerry Davis and Larry Green were steadfast in turning back the forces of hate.  Both men said their re-election bids would be heartily challenged if they voted in favor of the ordinance; Davis quoted Malcolm X, while Green noted there are some things "bigger than myself".

"I will support something bigger than myself. I will support equality"- CM Green #HERO #HOUequality
— MHutch (@KiaHutch) May 29, 2014

CM Bradford says voting to protect civil & human rights, to support #HERO #HOUequality, is not a tough decision.
— Andrea Greer (@nonsequiteuse) May 29, 2014

CM Richard Nguyen says his 6-yr-old's advice to be brave is what swayed him. He will vote to serve & lead - and support #HERO #HOUequality
— Andrea Greer (@nonsequiteuse) May 29, 2014

These men get it.  You're elected to public office to serve all of the people, and not just the will of the majority of those who voted for you.  If doing the right thing means you lose the next election, that's how politics works sometimes.

What courage is required to vote 'no' on another person's civil rights?  To vote against a city ordinance that says we won't treat some people as less human than we do others?  When the only semi-rational justification boils down to "I'm afraid I might burn in hell"?

Yesterday at City Hall was nut-cutting time for a few people, and they didn't pass the test.

Update: Hair Balls recorded some of the reactions outside council chambers, which were about as Fellini-esque as it gets.  Not just in Houston, but anywhere in the world.

Democrats gird for November

Texas has seen some pretty big waves in midterm election years, and the results from last night portend a continuation of the historical trend.  But Texas Democrats, no strangers to wilderness wandering over the past twenty years, may yet find a pony at the bottom of the pile.  At least if you can buy in to Ken Herman.

In a surprise, the Democrats did well in Tuesday’s Texas GOP runoffs. And, perhaps even more surprising, the Dems also managed not to screw up their own runoffs.

None of this, of course, means Democrats have much chance of winning much in November, but the runoffs showed that Republicans, swerving even further right (next up: fetal voting rights?) may give Dems a fighting chance in future years.

The Dems scored Repub runoff wins when GOP voters picked a lite guv candidate who some Republicans think may be mentally unstable and an attorney general candidate who recently confessed to breaking the law. And the Dems won their own U.S. Senate runoff by not nominating Kesha Rogers, a LaRouchie (look it up) who wants President Barack Obama impeached. Rogers lost to David Alameel, who’ll face GOP Sen. John Cornyn.

The Dems also did themselves a favor by nominating Jim Hogan, an unknown, for agriculture commissioner over Kinky Friedman, a known who, in a new twist on his tired political act, ran on a legalize-pot platform, perhaps not an issue Dems want lit up this year.

The only real surprise to me was Kinky falling down.  I can't stand the guy myself, but I thought I was in the minority on that.  Turns out I'm not.

There is this urban legend that swirls around Friedman like a cloud of stale cigar smoke: that he expands the electorate, brings conservative voters over with him to vote for other Democrats, and so on and so forth.  In the aftermath of Kinky's loss, John Coby was more than his usual cynical about the entertainer's participation, but when Friedman made a late campaign appearance at a Harris County Dems assembly a couple of weeks ago, he had them eating corn from his hand.  This account from a month ago in the Houston Press explains what he was working -- yes, legitimately campaigning -- to overcome.

(Kinky's campaign manager Cleve) Hattersley ascribes Friedman's poor showing in Harris County in March to a negative phone bank program guided by Democratic Lieutenant Governor candidate Leticia Van De Putte (which we noted in our previous reports).

"We know most of the negative votes in Houston were inspired by the anti-Kinky phone calls," says Hattersley. "So we expect a pretty big turnaround next time simply based on this."

Sorry, no cigar.  Might this be a tipoff to the strength of LVdP's grassroots organizing?  Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The Dems’ big win Tuesday was Houston state Sen. Dan Patrick’s defeat of three-term GOP Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Patrick is perfect for Dems who want to portray Republicans as way right of where many Texans live. He now faces Sen. Leticia Van De Putte, D-San Antonio... Dems were helped by GOP efforts to tarnish Patrick, including Dewhurst TV ads. Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a loser in the March GOP lite guv primary, pitched in by releasing 1980s medical records detailing Patrick’s mental health issues back then.

So either Van de Putte has the best shot at winning in November, or else it's Heartbreak Hotel again.  (It could be both, of course.)  We get to endure a little more bragging and lot more cockiness from the GOTP for another week, maybe two.

The next good show comes next week when the Texas GOP — fresh from putting the “fun” in “dysfunctional” — makes believe it’s one big, happy family at its state convention. That effort could be challenged by a potentially contentious presidential straw poll pitting Gov. Rick Perry vs. Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as Texas-raised Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Texas-born Jeb Bush. (You never can have too many Texans running for president.)

But before Dems get too good a laugh out of Tuesday’s outcomes, let’s remember this: the screaming Senate gallery mob that shouted down the GOP-controlled Senate’s first attempt to pass an abortion restriction bill in June 2013 helped boost Patrick, who used that night as an example of Dewhurst’s poor leadership.

Now the mobsters must deal with a reality they helped create: They’re going to get a lieutenant governor (Van de Putte) they’ll like a lot more or one (Patrick) they’ll like a lot less.

This is a pretty good view into the backstretch of the statewide political horse race.  Patrick versus Van de Putte is going to start sucking oxygen away from the rest of the field, most notably Davis versus Abbott.  For her part, the senator from Fort Worth has already thrown down the gauntlet in front of her Republican opposition (who will have to ask someone else to pick it up for him).

Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis’ camp wasted no time in trying to turn the nomination of Sen. Dan Patrick for lieutenant governor to her advantage.

Her campaign asked how soon Patrick will campaign with Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, her opponent for governor.

Patrick has often had incendiary rhetoric on immigration, seen as a drawback to  his party’s efforts to attract the growing Hispanic population – particularly since he faces a Latina nominated by the Democrats for lieutenant governor, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte.

Abbott has talked about wanting to reach out to Hispanics and to compete in areas including the Rio Grande Valley.

“When will Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick appear on stage together to highlight their shared values opposing equal pay for women when they do the same work as men, referring to our immigrant communities as the ‘third world’ and defending deep cuts to public schools that led to teacher layoffs and overcrowded classrooms?” Wendy Davis communications director Zac Petkanas asked Tuesday.

There are going to be some interesting storylines going forward even without Kinky and Kesha to kick around any more.  One will be Van de Putte's appeals to the moderates within the TXGOP.

“I know that David Dewhurst has had a tough campaign, but I never doubted his love of this state and his willingness to work across the aisle to put Texas first,” she said. “Dan Patrick, that’s another story. He’s a great entertainer, a great radio personality, but I never know if it’s the ‘theater Dan’ or the ‘real Dan’.”

Van de Putte made the comments at a San Antonio media availability after the Republican runoff was called for Patrick.

“With David Dewhurst and most of our leaders and most of the people who work in the Legislature, they don’t have hidden agendas. They care more about the report cards of our kids, instead of Dan Patrick, who cares more about the report cards that fringe groups give him. Where’s the real Dan? I don’t know. I don’t know who’s going to show up, but I’m going to be ready,” she said.

Beyond praising the now-defeated Dewhurst, Van de Putte’s remarks were tailored, it seemed, to try to appeal to Republicans disaffected by Patrick’s win in other ways, including explicit appeals to the business community, which has long been a bedrock for the GOP.

“Business leaders have told me time and time again that Dan Patrick infects us with a Washington-style politics of ‘my way or the highway,’ and that’s not what Senate does, that’s not what Texas government does, that’s not what our communities do,” she said, later adding: “It’s all about pragmatic governance and problem solving, not Washington-style bickering. You prioritize good public policy over politics.”

See recent statements by Bill Hammond and other pro-business, pro-growth Republicans -- here's one -- for more on this angle.  He is quite obviously no fan of Dan.

In a DKos thread yesterday previewing the Texas primary runoff races, I found several Kossacks proudly declaring their long voting history in the GOP primary.  The best example of battered spouse syndrome among Texas Democrats came from these two comments there.

I voted for Dewhurst. A Larouchie on the general election ballot would suck, but not nearly as much as having Dan Patrick holding the most powerful position in state government. That snake will make Rick Perry seem like a rational statesman.

I will not be be voting for the Dew in November however.

No you sure won't, buddy.  Neither will anybody else, of course.  And everybody in Texas knew that well in advance except for you.

I voted in the R primary too. Because, well, Democrats can't win in Texas. Everything is Gerrymandered to hell and back.

Yes.  Especially in statewide races. *facepalm*

It gets worse: one of the last comments there was someone asking which of Pete Gallego's opponents they should vote for.  With Democrats like these, no one should ever have to wonder again what is wrong with Texas.

Republicans -- like those two I quoted above -- outnumbered Dems 4-1 in voting in the runoff elections across the state.  Battleground Texas' job seemingly got a lot tougher.  Democrats need to find lots of fresh, hopefully enthusiastic voters in order to turn back the coming red tide, but they also need some of their so-called supporters to wise up and stop shooting each other in their respective feet.

I don't even know where to begin to address that problem.