HERO haters fumble, lose

Nobody could have predicted this *snicker*.

Opponents of Houston's new non-discrimination ordinance did not get enough valid signatures to force a November repeal referendum, Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman announced Monday.

"With respect to the referendum petition filed to repeal the 'HERO' ordinance, there are simply too many documents with irregularities and problems to overlook," Feldman said. "The petition is simply invalid. There is no other conclusion."

[...]

Less than half of the more than 5,000 pages opponents submitted were valid, Feldman said, leaving the final valid tally at 15,249 signatures.

The 50,000 sigs the haters bragged about turning in fairly quickly became 35,000 upon cursory inspection, and when examined further it seems that many of the people who signed and collected signatures were neither Houston residents nor registered voters. Just over 15,000 made the cut, which was about 2,000 less than they needed.

Now that's just hilarious, I don't care who ya are.

The response from the haters was typical.

Dave Welch of the Houston Area Pastor Council helped lead the repeal petition effort. He pledged to fight the Parker's decision in court.

"We were well aware we were dealing with an administration that's willing to bend the rules," Welch said. "Courts typically uphold the rights of the voters. We feel very confident in how that will go. Frankly, there was no respect for the rights of the voters in this process."

Welll, he's almost correct on that last part.  The petition's opponents completely disrespected the process of validly presenting their opposition, the process of democratically redressing one's grievances, and by extension, all Houstonians who are registered to vote.  Everybody that is legal, in other words.

So it gives me great pleasure to be able to scream in the faces of the illegals: "Get out of my city!"

Special acknowledgements go to Noel Freeman of the HGLBT and Brad Pritchett of Equal Rights Houston -- and several others -- for their efforts in mobilizing and coordinating the signature verification.  This is what political activism looks like, y'all.  And this is what the city's report, complete with images of the various pages of petitions, looks like.  There's legal action to come without a doubt, but nothing that can happen in time for this November.  Kind of a shame really, because I was expecting this vote to motivate liberals and progressives to turn out.

Social media blew up with the news, Wayne ran first, and TFN, Lone Star Q, Culturemap Houston, BOR, and Charles all have something additional on the development.

Back to your regularly scheduled outrages over nothing, conservatives.

Update: A consqueeracy?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance wouldn't mind if Congress stayed in recess all the way to November as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff marveled at the warmed-over banality of Greg Abbott's appellate brief in the same sex marriage lawsuit.

John Coby at Bay Area Houston wonders: "If a tree falls on you, would Gregg Abbott defend the tree?"  If it were incorporated AND made a large contribution to his political campaign, the answer would be easy, as Eye on Williamson expansively points out.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos discloses the cynical and deceptive efforts by Ted Cruz and other radical conservative extremists to sabotage the people’'s business in the U.S. House of Representatives. Only cowards would scapegoat children: Ted Cruz: The Texas Republican Anti-Government Demagogue Strikes Again.

The Democrat on the ballot for Harris County judge abruptly quit the race last week, and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs saw that as a pity for one candidate and his party and an opportunity for another.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme isn't surprised that for-profit, low oversight schools -- aka charter schools -- have severe performance problems.

Neil at NeilAquino.com started a new blog called Blog About Our Failing Money-Owned American Political System. This blog joins All People Have Value as the two blogs on the site. NeilAquino.com has nine pages total and is well worth your time.

Frustrating as it may be to see abject failure from state political leadership to address ongoing border challenges, Texas Leftist Is still heartened and inspired to witness such an extraordinary response from Texas faith communities. I wish someone would remind Austin and Washington that basic humanity should ALWAYS come first.

TexPatriate wants to make sure that every single candidate on the ballot gets an opportunity to answer their questionnaire and get it published on the blog.  So then; candidates, campaigns, consultants, get in touch via e-mail.

McBlogger wishes Wendy Davis well, and Dos Centavos thinks it's time for the talk.

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

Socratic Gadfly notes that Southwest Airlines doesn't seem to get it.

Fascist Dyke Motors says that even if she told you the truth, you wouldn't believe her.

Keep Austin Wonky proposes a better way to spend a billion infrastructure dollars in the capital city.

Better Texas Blog ruefully reports that Texas is a tough place to be a kid or a parent.

Lone Star Q reminds us that it is still perfectly legal in 32 states to fire someone for being gay.

Greg Wythe wonders how Republicans will react to truly free market pricing of new medications.

Concerned Citizens calls for a comprehensive transit solution in San Antonio.

Offcite reports on Plant It Forward, an ambitious vision for urban farming in Houston.

Scott Braddock details Michael Quinn Sullivan's bad week.

BOR has a suggestion for how Stop Patriarchy can do some actual good in Texas.

Grits for Breakfast knows that border surges don't actually work for anyone except for incumbent politicians.

Finally, State Impact Texas observes that the Lone Star State's wind and solar power generation have pulled ahead of hydroelectric, and TexasVox has the news that the sheep are doing their part to help out.

Sunday Funnies

"We tortured some folks"

Or as Glenn Greenwald observed: "Some nice folks tortured some other folks.  But we shouldn't judge them and we definitely shouldn't punish them."

As Booman noted, one of the worst moments of his presidency.

Field Negro pointed out that folks are people, too... unlike Ill Eagles or UACs.

Oh well, said emptywheel, at least John Brennan didn't fuck his biographer.  Speaking of coitus, does anybody else think Brennan has pictures of Obama in flagrante delicto?

Proud to be an American today.

Dem nominee for Harris County judge quits race

First at Texpate, courtesy the Chronic:

Democrat Ahmad Hassan has ended his campaign for Harris County judge, saying incumbent Republican Ed Emmett should be given a great big fat pass another four-year term to finish projects vital to the community.

Just wanted to take his vacation this summer after all, I guess.  "Nobody pays attention until after Labor Day" (sic) anyway, you know.  Quitting can't be considered a big surprise, considering...

Hassan unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee as a Republican in 2006; unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for county judge in 2008 and 2010; and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Precinct 3 county commissioner in 2012.

Hassan is really no more a Democrat than Junior Samples doppelganger and ag commish nominee Jim Hogan, but he was the only guy on the spring Democratic primary ballot.  Noah assigns a little blame for that.

With (his high praise of the incumbent) out of the way, I think Hassan totally made the wrong move in dropping out of the race. And I still hold it against the Democrats that a legitimate candidate did not run against Emmett. I don’t know why someone else didn’t run against him, and I am not being rude; I’m legitimately curious. Did the County Party make a decision not to contest the seat, or did they try and fail to recruit someone? I will freely admit that I do not know.

Those are all fair questions, but at this point in the cycle I would rather look forward than backward.  It will be David Collins, the Green Party nominee, against "Hunker Down" Emmett in the fall.

The county judge has come under withering criticism of late (read the comments) for his solitary opposition to the proposal to renovate the Astrodome into a park, the plan advanced by the Rodeo folks and the NFL's Texans.  But he drew no challenger in his GOP primary, and the Harris County Libertarians appear to have skipped the race, so it's incumbent against underfunded, third party challenger.  Collins did collect more than 67,000 statewide votes in 2012 as the Green candidate to the US Senate, with just over 10,000 of those from Harris County.  (That still shakes out under 1% of the total, state- and countywide.)

Unlike Noah, I won't be voting for Emmett. 

Kenneth Kendrick: the best choice for Texas Agriculture Commissioner

To tell the truth, he's the only rational choice on your ballot in November.

So you might suspect that I am a little biased.  I have been getting to know Kenneth for some time now, and as the Republican and Democratic primaries produced two of the absolute worst candidates for statewide office in recent memory, now is a good time for considerate, thinking Texans to take stock of their options.

Kendrick has undergone some of the usual -- as well as unusual -- circumstances that befall public whistleblowers.  He's the fellow who revealed the salmonella charades going on at Peanut Corporation of America's facilities in Plainview, Texas and Blakely, Georgia.  As that case finally went to trial this week, here's the latest from Lubbock's KAMC (video at link).

The trial is a relief to people like Kenneth Kendrick, who feel wronged by PCA's actions. Kendrick was a former employee turned whistleblower who tried to expose the company in 2006.

"I had worked there as production planner and assistant manager." He said. " I only stayed four months for obvious reasons. Was asked to falsify documents and do things I was not comfortable with and I blocked it."

Kendrick described the horrible conditions of the Plainview plant saying that there were "holes in the wall that let mice in" and "leaky roofs -- (they) don't want to spend the money to fix it -- bird droppings were being washed in.

Kenneth and I spoke recently about his campaign for Commissioner of Texas Agriculture.

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What motivated you to run for this office?

After getting some notoriety as a whistleblower against PCA, I hit the lecture circuit of a sort; speaking to students at universities and conferences about the experience. Nine people died from salmonella poisoning across the country, and 700 were made ill.  The Texas Department of Agriculture, under Commissioner Todd Staples, had certified the Plainview plant for organic processing three separate times even though they were not registered with the Department of State Health Services.  They had no license to operate, yet were certified for safety!

Three years after my reporting it, Texas still had done nothing to investigate my claims of poor health practices by the company.   I made up my mind that no person -- no child, no adult -- should ever have to suffer or die because of corporate ineptitude or greed.

Just yesterday, it was reported that the nationwide cyclospora outbreak includes more than half of the reported cases in Texas!  We still have tremendous food safety problems in Texas and nothing has been done, nor likely will be done if the Republican or Democrat is elected.

What are your top issues and your plans for addressing them?

1) We want food safety and GMO labeling, working in conjunction with the DSHS, to make Texas the safest place in the United States to buy food and food products, increasing our economic viability. There is no harm in consumers having all the information possible when buying food. This will require the Texas Department of Agriculture to be restructured to have more inspectors on the ground, and a direct connection with other agencies as a top priority when safety issues outside the Department are noted.

2) Safe water and more aggressive conservation methods, along with the use of renewable energy.  Fracking is not the answer given our state's water shortages.  Too many rural towns already have warnings that their water does not meet minimum standards to drink.  Wichita Falls is already recycling waste water.  In West Texas there are lots of wind generators already, and room for plenty more.  Texas is becoming a leader in renewable energy, and we must continue to do more.  Less water used for fracking and electricity generation means more water for Texas farms and cities.

3) Holding corporations accountable. As I have said many times, we the people are fined and arrested when we break the law, but corporations are just told to get into compliance, as has been shown with 355 unlicensed facilities that broke the law. Instead of just a compliance warning, these companies should have at least been fined... just like people.

4) There are virtually no fines that have been handed out to pest control companies (and they fall under the Department of Agriculture) that break the law. We have regulations in place, but no enforcement.

5) And legal protection for whistleblowers who report in good faith those who break the law!

What sets you apart from your opponents?

My Democratic opponent Jim Hogan -- well, if anyone knew anything about where he stands I could respond, but I do not see much of anything out there.  I guess taking no position on anything is good enough to get you the Democratic nomination?

No website?  No Facebook page?  He refuses to give interviews for the most part and runs away from Democrats and the Texas Democratic Party like it's the plague.  What sets me apart from a blank slate?  I feel comfortable letting the voters decide that one.

My Republican opponent, Sid Miller, helped cut $64 million from Planned Parenthood and sponsored the sonogram bill.  And the Agriculture Commissioner has what to do with this?  Here's a quote from his website: "An avid rancher and hunter, Sid Miller believes in the Constitutional right to bear arms".  Does the Agriculture Commissioner get a vote on gun legislation?  I don't think so.  Let's stick to the issues relevant to the office!  I am the only candidate in the race for Agriculture Commissioner talking about the issues relevant to agriculture in Texas... that is, if you don't count my Libertarian opponent, Rocky Palmquist, taking over Kinky Friedman's advocacy for marijuana legalization.  But you won't find that on his website, since all it says is 'coming soon'.

In keeping with the tenets of the Green Party, I have taken zero donations from corporations (such as Monsanto).  My campaign is true grassroots, for the people.  I owe no one.

What's the best way for people wanting to help your campaign to get in touch?

I have FB page, web page and a direct #.

https://www.facebook.com/kendrickforAgCommish

www.kendrickfortexas.com 

806-800-1021

Paypal address is kkendrick41 at gmail dot com.  Please mark it as political donation, and leave your name, address, phone, and occupation (this information is needed for the Texas Ethics Commission). They make it difficult for a 3rd party candidate without a full time treasurer to run (go figure, Texas would never do that, right?)

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Make you own choice for Ag Commish, readers.  Trust me, I have.