Happy Fourth, Houston Democrats

Jared Woodfill, Dr. Steve Hotze, Dave Wilson, et.al. just gave you a gift.

Opponents of Houston's new non-discrimination ordinance Thursday turned in well more than the minimum number of signatures needed to trigger a November vote on whether to repeal the measure.

Staff in the City Secretary's office will have 30 days to verify that the names - 50,000 of them, opponents said - cross the minimum threshold of 17,269 signatures from registered Houston voters that foes needed to gather in the month following the measure's passage in an 11-6 vote of the City Council.

Texas Leftist leads the local response, with Kuff and Lone Star Q close behind.

The referendum is going to be hard work, but it could actually end up being very good, not only for Houston Progressives, but for Progressive causes across Texas. Here are the reasons why...

Go read them.  Wayne joins me and Charles in that assessment.  They both seem a little more cautious about engaging the enemy than me, but that's okay.  Soon enough everybody within the city limits of the nation's fourth largest city -- the only one without a non-discrimination ordinance prior to Council's action in May -- will understand the electoral ramifications of what this development represents.

Make no mistake: this is a golden opportunity to pummel the very worst of the conservative opposition a second time, and lift the fortunes of every Democrat on the ballot simultaneously.  To fully capitalize requires an extensive GOTV effort... which BGTX and the HGLBT Caucus should be primed and ready to make.  It feels to me as if it's another favorable break in a gathering confluence of serendipitous events over the past few weeks -- Greg Abbott's ongoing series of mistakes, an accumulating pile of serious problems for he and others among the GOP here and elsewhere, the positive momentum generated by the filibuster anniversary and the party's state convention last weekend, the reactions to SCROTUS and Hobby Lobby, and now this -- that make me feel suddenly optimistic about the blue team's chances in 120 days.

Oh, and then there's that humanitarian crisis happening now at the southern border, which Republicans are responding to with their usual dignity and compassion.  I always appreciate their reminding us precisely what fine Christians they are come election time.

Nobody who cares about any one of these things should be sitting on the sidelines, like they did in the primary and runoff, like they usually do in off-term election years.

What Woodfill and Hotze are banking on is the tried-and-true loser's coalition of African American social conservatives joining them in their lily-white Pride of Hate Parade.  We've seen it lose with Gene Locke in 2011 and we've seen it lose worse with Ben Hall in 2013.  The one thing that causes me the most cognitive dissonance is the image of a black pastor raging against civil rights for a discriminated minority group on the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.  But I have greater faith that the majority of their congregations will be able to see through that hypocrisy.

The corporate media will parrot the truthiness that 'nobody pays attention to elections until after Labor Day', but you can dispense with that.  One of the tasks before the leaders in turning back the Hate Parade is holding the local press accountable for their failure in exposing the lies of the right adequately covering the topic when it came before Council two months ago.

Ground zero for both Republicans and Democrats in statewide elections remains Harris County, somewhere between a fifth and a fourth of their respective statewide vote totals.  The HERO ordinance referendum will only be on the ballot for Houston residents, however; excluding the red-ass suburban voters in Kingwood, Sugar Land, the Woodlands, Clear Lake, Katy, etc.  That's why you can safely predict that it is doomed to lose.

Still, even prohibitive favorites can fail to execute; just ask Eric Cantor.  Which is why -- with three and one-half months to the start of early voting, and around 90 days before voter registration concludes (make sure your ID is proper) -- this should be a very fun political season.  Hard work, yes, but with plenty of extra motivation to close the deal.

It is ON.

Update: A little more snark from Susan Du at the Houston Press.

Facebook's psychological experiments and influencing elections

Perhaps you heard?  About that Facebook mind control thingie?  If it was clever satire, it would be a great Hollywood script.  Except it's not.

Facebook’s disclosure last week that it had tinkered with about 700,000 users’ news feeds as part of a psychology experiment conducted in 2012 inadvertently laid bare what too few tech firms acknowledge: that they possess vast powers to closely monitor, test and even shape our behavior, often while we’re in the dark about their capabilities.

The publication of the study, which found that showing people slightly happier messages in their feeds caused them to post happier updates, and sadder messages prompted sadder updates, ignited a torrent of outrage from people who found it creepy that Facebook would play with unsuspecting users’ emotions. Because the study was conducted in partnership with academic researchers, it also appeared to violate long-held rules protecting people from becoming test subjects without providing informed consent. Several European privacy agencies have begun examining whether the study violated local privacy laws.

It's cool, though.  The NYT tech blogger says there's nothing to worry about and that we should welcome our new overlords.  Except for this part.

In another experiment, Facebook randomly divided 61 million American users into three camps on Election Day in 2010, and showed each group a different, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote message (or no message). The results showed that certain messages significantly increased the tendency of people to vote — not just of people who used Facebook, but even their friends who didn’t.

Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, points out that many of these studies serve to highlight Facebook’s awesome power over our lives.

“I read that and I said, ‘Wait, Facebook controls elections,’ ” she said. “If they can nudge all of us to vote, they could nudge some of us individually, and we know they can model whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat — and elections are decided by a couple of hundred thousand voters in a handful of states. So the kind of nudging power they have is real power.”

Okay then.  I feel calmer already.

How much do you think Facebook might charge... say, a well-heeled politico like Greg Abbott to "promote posts" that could swing an election his way?  A few million bucks?  More than that?

Would it be money better spent than advertising on Fox News?  I would have to think so, since that's a captive (and already well-manipulated) audience.  Not much fresh ore to be mined there.

Sort of gives pause to the traditional 'grassroots organizing' effort, doesn't it?

Oh well, I'll think about that after I level up in Candy Crush.  After all, my desire to be well-informed is currently being overwhelmed by my desire to remain sane.

Fifty years and one day ago

I am about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I want to take this occasion to talk to you about what that law means to every American.


One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor not only to found a nation, but to forge an ideal of freedom - not only for political independence, but for personal liberty - not only to eliminate foreign rule, but to establish the rule of justice in the affairs of men.

That struggle was a turning point in our history. Today in far corners of distant continents, the ideals of those American patriots still shape the struggles of men who hunger for freedom.


This is a proud triumph. Yet those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning. From the minutemen at Concord to the soldiers in Vietnam, each generation has been equal to that trust.


Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders.


We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment.


We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.


We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings - not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin.


The reasons are deeply embedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand - without rancor or hatred - how this all happened.


But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.

-- President Lyndon Baines Johnson (7.2.1964).  And how we have progressed in the decades since.

Every time the federal government tried to solve the problem of minority voter disenfranchisement, Southern jurisdictions found new ways to resist. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 attempted to put some new protections in place, but these too were ineffective. The following year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed, which included Section 5. It was widely regarded as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever.

It made jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against minority voters demonstrate to the federal government that they weren’t undermining the voting rights of blacks with any new voting changes — anything from changing polling locations, to the ways jurisdictions were drawn, changing election dates, etc. However, in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5, and some of the jurisdictions previously under Section 5 (such as Texas) immediately announced that they intended to implement voting restrictions (like voter ID laws) that had been blocked up until that point.

-- Nicholas Espiritu, staff attorney, National Immigration Law Center

Much more here.