The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is enjoying the pre-spring thaw and happy not to be shoveling snow as it brings you this week's roundup of the best of the left of Texas from last week.

Off the Kuff provides his four part Houston mayoral manifesto for the 2015 election.

Letters from Texas turns the blog over to Russ Tidwell for an update on redistricting litigation and the question the judges in San Antonio will be ruling on.

lightseeker at Texas Kaos takes Fox "News" to task for its fear mongering, distortion and misrepresentation in The Fear and Hate Chronicles.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson thinks it's astounding how little Texans care about corporations wasting their money. Privatization corruption is common in Texas.

The games people play with money when they are our elected representatives in Austin gets more disgusting by the legislative session. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs really thinks there's got to be a better way to run state government than with the wheels greased by the lobbyists.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes state Sen. Larry Taylor is so insulated within the Republican bubble he brags about giving the insurance industry perks at the expense of Texans.

Neil at All People Have Value wrote about the rip current warning sign on the beach in Galveston. Sometimes we do have to swim against the tide. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

Dos Centavos underscored the strong support expressed by William McRaven, the new UT chancellor, for the Texas Dream Act.

Egberto Willies posts the demand letter to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas issued by the commoners to the lords.

Bluedaze has the reports that point to fracking wells as the source of North Texas earthquakes.

Texas Vox eulogizes Public Citizen activist Hillary Corgey.

And Texas Leftist had a story about the revival of shotgun houses in Houston.

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

Lone Star Ma puts out a call to action to oppose the so-called Teacher's Protection Act, H.B. 868.

The TSTA Blog calls vouchers "a tuition break at your expense".

Cody Pogue reviews "Building a Better Teacher".

Socratic Gadfly calls out Bernie Sanders for playing the military appropriations game in Vermont.

Cherise Rohr-Allegrini catalogs the latest measles outbreak and proselytizes for vaccinations.

Charlotte Vaughan Coyle stands -- as a Christian, a person of faith, and a pastor -- with her Muslim neighbors and all people who work for justice, peace and reconciliation.

Concerned Citizens reports from the first mayoral debate in San Antonio.

Sole of Houston was on the scene as the United Steelworkers Union strikers picketed Shell's downtown Houston offices.

The Texas Observer listed the winners and losers in the Texas House committee assignments.

Free Press Houston calls Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia an opportunist against the immigrant community.

State Impact Texas wants to know where the water projects are that have requested $5.5 billion in state loans.

And Fascist Dyke Motors commends a brave girl who asked for help.

Sunday Funnies

Jill Stein will run for president again

Best 2016 development of the week, as far as I'm concerned.

Most voters will likely never know her name, let alone cast a vote for her at the ballot box, but that’s not deterring Dr. Jill Stein from running for president in 2016.

Stein was the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2012 and is expected to announce Friday the she’s exploring another White House bid in 2016.

Prior to making the announcement, Stein sat down exclusively with “Power Players” to explain why she’s stepping forward as an alternative to the current field of likely presidential contenders that she characterizes as “corrupt and sold out.”

“There are rules that make it possible for the very rich to buy politicians and that's what's going on,” Stein said. “There's a horse race around grabbing the money right now, and I think it speaks volumes about what a really sorry state our political system has come to.”

So unlike Bernie Sanders, she will run as a spoiler.  Don't worry, though, Hillary fans; I doubt you'll be able to blame another Green wrongly for "siphoning off" votes.

In her 2012 campaign, Stein received fewer than half a million votes across the country – less than 1 percent of the total popular vote – and was even arrested for trying to get into a televised debate from which she was excluded.

Stein recalled the arrest – and subsequent holding – as “the most bizarre experience you can imagine.”

“For trying to get into that debate, I was actually arrested, taken to a dark site where no one knew where I was - the site was secret - and held handcuffed to metal chairs for approximately eight hours,” Stein said. “It speaks volumes about how terrified the political system is that the voices of principled opposition may actually get heard."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your candidate if you suddenly find yourself in October of 2016 whining about not having any good options.  A vote for Stein is much better for people who might cast a ballot for Mickey Mouse or Pat Paulsen or Hypnotoad, or some other protest vote, since they cannot abide the establishment-preferred, consultant-recommended duopoly nominees.  Console yourself, neoliberals;  in the "siphon off" illusion, even the Libertarian (I'm thinking Gary Johnson at this point, just like last time) will get about three times as many votes as Stein.  Just like last time.

Five percent of the national vote would be amazing, three percent would be real progress, but anything better than four years ago will still represent only the smallest, softest voices for changing a system buried under an avalanche of Supreme Court-approved speech money from the Kochs, et.al.   They remain voices that need to be heard, ideas that need to be discussed.  I'll consider it a monumental advance if Stein and Johnson are allowed to participate in the presidential debates.  The primary obstacle to overcome isn't getting the message out; it's changing hearts and minds about "wasting" one's vote and various other truisms, myths, and urban legends in that regard.  Greens are making great headway in Europe; along with associated issues like banning fracking (good news, natural gas exporters!) and GMOs, they're even gaining seats in Parliament, so perhaps there's still hope left for us here in the United States.

We can assert that Texas will be last as always in terms of progress.  That won't stop anybody from making the effort, from fighting the battle that needs to be fought.  Democrats in off-presidential election years -- and Republicans in presidential ones -- ought to be able to relate to that.

Update: Indy Political Report with the press release, and Irregular Times and jobsanger with more.

The week's 2016 developments

-- The Democratic establishment is coalescing rapidly behind Hillary Clinton.  That's not just bad news for Bernie Sanders and (I suppose) Elizabeth Warren, but also Joe Biden.  According to Vox, she's already assembled a "murderer's row" of political consultants, advisers and strategists.  You should already know what I think about news like that.  Matt Bai's problems with the Clinton Death Star are also mine.

Witness the procession of Democratic boomers, liberals as unimpeachable as Howard Dean and Al Franken, who have lined up in recent months to endorse a candidate who isn’t even running yet and hasn’t offered a single reform one could endorse.

I’m not saying it’s all the fault of Clinton or her longtime acolytes that there aren’t other candidates coming forward to challenge her. The party’s ranks of up-and-coming politicians took a real hit during the wave elections of 2010 and 2014, and there just aren’t a ton of strong, natural contenders this time around. It’s not Clinton’s job to invent them.

But there are some potential rivals, including the more than able vice president of the United States and the well-regarded, former two-term governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley. And at some point, if your goal is to rig this thing for Clinton, you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if this is the kind of Democratic politics you really intended to create — the kind where the establishment decides who the nominee will be 18 months before the convention, without a single idea on the table or a single choice yet defined.

You have to ask yourself something else, too: Does trying so blatantly to steamroll the modern nominating process make it more likely that your candidate will avoid a bunch of bruising primary debates, or less so? If you got your start in Democratic politics 40-odd years ago, the answer to that one should be obvious.

-- Rand Paul is having a bad week with both his vaccine shots and with the media, Chris Christie had a lousy week overall, and a bad week got worse for Scott Walker, as his state budget took incoming fire and forced him to retreat.  Mike Huckabee successfully navigated the vaccine minefield, but face-planted into a platter of bacon-wrapped shrimp in a Jewish deli.

Compared to these guys, the reports that Jeb Bush was a hash-smoking bully in high school count as a sunny day for the GOP field.

Update (2/6): Jon Stewart via Egberto has some fun with Hillary and the gaggle of Republicans.

Is Adrian Garcia a flip-flopper or something worse?

Stace at Dos Centavos is, as he usually is, nicer than I am...

The President’s change includes a re-vamped deportation program which supposedly deports the worst of the worse; however, that was the intent as written of the original program. So, it is still a program that will be under the microscope, especially at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, whether Garcia is at the helm or not.

Given that there is still an imminent announcement of a Mayoral candidacy, Garcia resigning and leaving the post to a right-wing Republican who more than likely will not agree with the President’s executive action will surely put Garcia in a position to defend the President’s executive action during the Mayoral campaign. Certainly, it will also frame the position of a possible Republican appointed Sheriff for 2016.

 ...but Rob Block at Free Press Houston is much meaner, calling him an 'opportunist'.  I'm excerpting the backstory he wrote on Garcia and the Secure Communities/287 (g) immigration actions, ground I've covered years ago, just so you don't have to click my links.

Adrian Garcia is the first Democrat elected as Harris County Sheriff in a long time, and he replaced someone who was pretty terrible in terms of protecting the human rights of people who end up in the county jail. Still, one reason that Garcia stands out is as a national champion of the Secure Communities Program, and as one of only two law enforcement agencies in the state of Texas to maintain a 287(g) agreement with the Department of Homeland Security. Both of Secure Communities and 287(g) are designed to identify people who are undocumented that end up in the county jail and deport them.

[...]

These programs were marketed as focusing on and deporting the worst of the worst — gang-bangers and violent criminals. But only 30% of those deported from Houston were convicted of violent crimes, the remainder being convicted of a mix of non-violent crimes, traffic offenses, or the civil (not criminal) offense of being here without papers.

This fall President Obama announced that he was going to take executive action on immigration, which included an end the Secure Communities Program, which would be replaced by a “New Priority Enforcement Program” which works in a similar way, but should only target those convicted of violent and serious crimes. Adrian Garcia appeared on the NPR Radio program Hear and Now a week after President Obama’s announcement and said that this new program means less people will be deported and that that is a good thing.

While it's great that he sees this program as a good thing, it would have been nice for him to be able to notice this earlier and push for the changes publicly while his office was facilitating the deportations of thousands of residents of Harris County for non-violent crimes.  Adrian Garcia was either being dishonest in championing a program that he knew was deporting people who should not be deported, or he is being dishonest now that he is happy this new program should deport less people. Either way, we should be able to hope for more from someone who is proud of his heritage as a child of immigrants, and has political ambitions for higher office.

See, I'm not the only guy who thinks Adrian Garcia is talking out of both sides of his mouth.  Or having trouble deciding whether he's still a Democrat or has devolved into a Republican.  Whichever happens to be the case, he's going to have real problems with Harris County Democrats -- the Latino caucuses of which he must have in his corner for a presumptive mayoral run -- if he quits the SO (handing that job to a Republican), runs for mayor... and then loses.  Essentially his political career will be over.  As a Democrat, anyway.

These mixed messages he's sending would suggest that he's smart enough to understand all this, and that he's in a real quandary about pulling the trigger on a dash for City Hall.

We'll keep waiting while he makes up his mind.

Update: The TexTrib has more on the feds' efforts to recruit Texans -- which include Garcia and HUD Secretary Julian Castro -- to sell Obama's immigration plan.