Houston mayoral fora next week

The weather is turning suitable to outside the home activities for the local citizen political activists.

With three mayoral forums scheduled for next week, the policy debate in the race to become Houston's next mayor is about to begin in earnest.

The events, which will focus on arts and culture, economic development, and labor and community concerns, kick off a months-long cycle in which the candidates will appear before various interest groups, speaking to their specific concerns.

Teddy Schleifer's departure from the Houston Chronicle resulted in the expected void of coverage of the scrum to be the city's next chief executive.  Hopefully that's improving with Rebecca Elliott on the beat, the Texas Lege wrapping up (without a special session), and that the only flooding to be concerned with is the runoff from North Texas (Brazos, San Jacinto, Trinity).

Wednesday's arts forum at the Asia Society comes two days after the conclusion of this year's legislative session in Austin and is expected to be the first time the candidates appear together since former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia entered the race.

The forum hosted by Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Museum District, Theater District Houston and Miller Outdoor Theatre begins at 6:30 p.m. and will be moderated by KTRK reporter Miya Shay. Each of the seven attending candidates -- Garcia, Rep. Sylvester Turner, former Rep. Chris Bell, City Council member Stephen Costello, former mayor of Kemah Bill King, 2013 mayoral runner-up Ben Hall and businessman Marty McVey -- will have a minute to introduce himself before being asked a series of four arts and culture-related questions, for which he will have two minutes to respond. Time allowing, the candidates also will take questions from the audience before offering closing statements.

Thursday's forum hosted by SPARC Growth Houston, a coalition of economic development groups, will focus on the city budget and economic development. It begins at 6 p.m. at the University of Houston and is structured similarly, with Rice University sociology Professor Stephen Klineberg discussing the results of his Houston Area Survey before representatives of area chambers of commerce ask the seven candidates five questions, to which they each will have 90 seconds to respond.

Then, on Saturday, the candidates are set to appear before area labor and community organizations for a 9 a.m. forum at Talento Bilingue. Each will have a minute to introduce himself and a minute to answer the 10 questions posed by panelists from the Texas Organizing Project, Harris County AFL-CIO, Fe y Justicia Workers Center, Mi Familia Vota and Houston Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council. Six of the candidates, Costello not included, have confirmed their attendance, according to event organizer Linda Morales.

Charles has some good questions.  And two weeks from tomorrow, the Meyerland Dems host mayoral, council at-large, and controller candidates at their regularly scheduled meeting.  Hopefully many blog posts to come on the issues presented by Houston's next leaders to start the summer.

Sunday Funnies

It's floodin' down in Texas, Lucky Charms gets a new flavor, and I never really liked soccer anyway.

The good and the not-so-much about Martin O'Malley

Think Progress with these five things.

• Ended the death penalty in Maryland
• Raised the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour
• Legalized gay marriage
• Implemented stricter gun control laws
• Gave in-state tuition to the children of immigrants

Five Thirty Eight with at least these four things.  Maybe one more (click over).

1. Hillary Clinton.
2. O’Malley has essentially zero support from Democratic office-holders.
3. He’s garnering just 2 percent support in Iowa, New Hampshire and national primary polls — far worse than Barack Obama at this point eight years ago.
4. O’Malley made some noise about running to Clinton’s left, but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is already occupying that ideological space. Meanwhile, O’Malley has been attacked from the left for his policing strategy during his time as Baltimore mayor.

O'Malley came to Houston and spoke at the Johnson-Rayburn-Richards dinner to Harris Democrats in 2013.   Even Matt Drudge likes him (that's a false flag).  The former governor of the Terrapin State does cut an impressive jib: tall, fit, handsome fellow.  And he's correct on many of the issues Democrats might be looking for in a presidential candidate in any other year but 2016.  But it's going to take lot more than good looks and good policy positions to gain some traction in the D primary at this point.

Update: The Onion with the candidate's profile. 

Armed protestors outside AZ mosque for Mohammed cartoon contest

More than 200 protesters, some armed, berated Islam and its prophet Mohammed outside an Arizona mosque on Friday in a provocative protest that was denounced by counterprotesters shouting "Go home, Nazis," weeks after an anti-Muslim event in Texas came under attack by two gunmen.

The anti-Muslim event outside the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix was organized by an Iraq war veteran who posted photos of himself online wearing a T-shirt with a crude slogan denigrating Islam and waving the U.S. flag.

The protest organizer won't be there, apparently; he claims he's been forced to lam it due to threats against him and his family.  Whether you prefer irony or poetic justice to describe it, it's no surprise.  The social media debate is happening at the hashtag #NotMyAmerica, if you want to check in on that.

Most of this reporting and pictures is from yesterday early evening; no reports of continuing strife during the night or this morning from what I can learn.  So let's hope the testosterone-poisoned rednecks got it all out of their system without bloodshed.

Update: More from the Daily Mail.

Hillary Clinton in Houston next week to accept award

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee comes to Texas Southern University next Thursday, June 4, at mid-afternoon to receive the Barbara Jordan Gold Medallion from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.  This adds to the former Secretary of State's Lone Star itinerary of fundraisers in Austin and Dallas.

Attendance is free but seating is "very limited", so RSVP quickly.  We'll keep a lookout for media availability but based on her recent history, I'm doubting it.

The image below isn't transferring very well from the hosting source so go here for more details (if it hurts your eyes as much as it does mine.  No, I don't mean it that way).

Update: There's a big-dollar fundraiser now scheduled for Thursday evening.

The two-hour reception costs $2,700 to attend, $27,000 to co-host and $50,000 to host, according to the invitation from Houston-based lawyer Arthur Schechter, who was appointed ambassador to the Bahamas by President Bill Clinton.

Duggar, Santorum, and ten years after, Hastert *update*

Probably enough has been said elsewhere about those first two.  But if not, then clearly 'Duggary' is the new 'Santorum'.

 And there might be a fresh dictionary definition available for getting 'Hasterted' now.

J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.”

Hastert, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement from Congress, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various ac­counts in violation of federal banking laws that require the disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.

It's Capone-style Chicago politics, as Republicans like to say.  Another shopworn cliche' is that it's not the crime so much as the coverup ("illegal cash structuring"", which means Hastert tried to avoid federal disclosure of amounts just under ten thousand dollars).   Turns out the former speaker lied to the FBI about hush money paid to someone he had sex with.  And the rumors are a decade old.  I am just surprised that Hastert didn't get outed in the Mark Foley matter in 2006.

So to be clear, the latest GOP sex scandal this month has nothing to do -- as far as we know -- with a sex crime involving a minor.  The 'crime' is that it was gay sex.  But that's not what drew the federal indictments, of course.

Just imagine a what a wonderful world it would be if people could be with the person they love without fear of reprisal... biblical, financial, social, or otherwise.

Update (Saturday, May 30): We know more, sadly.

Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was paying a former student from Yorkville, Ill., to conceal his alleged sexual abuse of the young man while Hastert was a teacher at a high school there, federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

A top official, who would not be identified speaking about the federal charges in Chicago, said investigators also spoke with a second person who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the student said.

The second person was not being paid by Hastert, the official said.

It would be valuable to note at this point that child sexual abuse -- which Hastert has not been charged with -- isn't about "being gay" as much as it about power and control.  In the same vein that rape isn't a sexual act so much as dominant behavior.  Hastert, again, is charged with the crimes associated with the coverup, and is even claiming that he's also been a victim.

The FBI began investigating the cash withdrawals in 2013. According to the indictment, agents were interested in whether Hastert was using the cash "for a criminal purpose" but were also investigating the possibility that Hastert "was the victim of a criminal extortion related to, among other matters, his prior positions in government."

I think I'll wait a bit for more details to emerge before I post further about this sordid business.

Update:  Just because I'm witholding judgement doesn't mean I'm not laughing out loud at those who are not.  Some of the best is in the comments, by the way.

Scattershooting some soft targets

Hypocritical Republicans, clay pigeons, false flags... you know, the usual stuff.

-- GOP tries new/old way to suppress the vote.

The number of ways that Republicans invent to reduce the voting power of the Democratic Party is truly impressive. Here's the latest:

The court has never resolved whether voting districts should have the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places with large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally, including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic.

A ruling that districts must be based on equal numbers of voters would move political power away from cities, with their many immigrants and children, and toward older and more homogeneous rural areas.

....The Supreme Court over the past nearly 25 years has turned away at least three similar challenges, and many election law experts expressed surprise that the justices agreed to hear this one. But since Chief Justice John G. Roberts has led the court, it has been active in other voting cases.

Over the past few decades we've seen pack-n-crack, photo ID laws, old fashioned gerrymandering, mid-decade gerrymandering, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, reductions in early voting, the crippling of campaign finance law, illegal purges of voter rolls, and now this: a change in the way people are counted that would favor Republican-leaning districts.

From a purely academic view, you really have to be impressed by the GOP's relentless creativity in finding ever more ways to trim the votes of groups who lean Democratic. They've done a great job. Sure, it's been a violent and cynical assault on our country's notions of fairness in the voting booth, but that's for eggheads to worry about. After all, it worked. Right? Maybe its made a difference of only a point or two in presidential elections and fewer than a dozen districts in congressional elections, but in a closely balanced electorate that counts for a lot.

Harold Cook had the earliest and best take on this; he's been working with Texas Democratic state legislators for years on it.  If the SCOTUS decides it's time to return to valuations of brown people as 3/5s of a person, then you know they've finally succeeded in taking "their" country back.  All the way to the 1700s.

-- Over one million Texans, out of about 7.5 million low-and moderate-income Americans, stand to lose their healthcare insurance coverage if the SCOTUS rules against Obamacare subsidies next month.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in a major new lawsuit against Obamacare this June, and the health coverage for millions hangs in the balance.

This challenge to the Affordable Care Act, called King v. Burwell, came from longtime Obamacare opponents who claim that, because of a key phrase in the law, the federal government may provide tax credit subsidies only in states that operate their own health insurance exchanges. Thirty-four states declined to establish these marketplaces, and instead left that responsibility in the hands of the federal government.

If the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in this case, it would eliminate health insurance subsidies for 7.5 million low- and moderate-income people in those states, causing most of them to become uninsured when their premiums become unaffordable without financial assistance.

Here's how the numbers break down in each state with a federally operated health insurance exchange.

It's hard for those average Americans -- hell, it's hard for me -- to understand how this can even be possible.  But it's part of the reason why I got off the Obama bandwagon nearly four years ago once he took a public option off the table.  Insurance companies and their profits take precedence over people and their health in this country.  That's why America is so exceptional.

-- Ross Ramsey explains the arcane way the Texas Lege operates, through odd rules and fits of pique, especially in the last few days before Sine Die.  It's just what you need if you're only a casual observer of the sausage-making process in Austin.

Update:

A small group of Texas House Republicans on Wednesday morning hijacked the often rote Local and Consent Calendar because they wanted to exact vengeance on some of their adversaries they blame for the deaths of their bills. That is the way it played out on the floor, at least.

After killing several Democratic bills, Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, expressed disbelief that his motives were being questioned.

“People think that we're up here, that this whole thing today has been some kind of show!” he said. “That it's political retribution.” It’s not, Stickland assured listeners, just before essentially filibustering a measure aimed at reducing pet euthanasia in San Antonio.

-- Marriage equality in Texas is as unwelcome in the Loon Star State as Obama, Ill Eagles, federal disaster relief for the recent floods, and Operation Jade Helm 15 military exercises.  So we get the state Senate declaring once more its opposition to same-sex marriage -- despite several failed legislative attempts, a ten-year-old state constitutional amendment already forbidding it, the increasing tolerance of teh gayz, and a pending decision striking down all of this obnoxious bigotry from that same US Supreme Court previously mentioned -- in an utterly meaningless demonstration of bravado and machismo for the exclusive purpose of preening to the virulently heterosexual Texas Tea Party.

(Nice run-on sentence, yes?)

"We affirm the preservation of the present definition of marriage as being a legal union of one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and pledge to uphold and defend this principle that is so dearly held by Texans far and wide," the resolution read.

State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said he wanted to make sure that while some might read the resolution as a unanimous measure, there was staunch opposition to it passing the Senate.

"So is this a response to some legislation that hasn't been successful, or is more out of concern for what the U.S. Supreme Court might rule this summer?" Whitmire asked the resolution's sponsor, state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills.

Oh yeah, fuck Sen. Eddie Lucio.  Preferably employing a man with an exceptionally large penis.