Scattershooting mayoral and controller candidates

I took some days off around the weekend so blogging time is short.  Go read some of these.

-- Via Charles, David Ortez was at the the Houston mayorals' get-together with TOP and SEIU last Saturday and things got lively.  Ben Hall was missing again, for fairly obvious reasons this time, and Chris Bell was not there, so that left Adrian Garcia, Bill King, Marty McVey, and Sylvester Turner.  Demetria Smith, the only woman in the race, was added after some opening outbursts.  Essentially she is not going to let Hall corner the black anti-HERO vote.

Smith took the opportunity to be a demagogue when she claimed that HERO would allow grown men to go into the bathroom behind your little girl. A small minority of the audience cheered for her response. McVey gave the best response when he said, “I am not black, but I will stand for black rights. I am not gay, but I will stand for gay rights. I am not an immigrant, but I will stand for immigrant rights.” The crowd applauded his response. 

Read Smith's FB page, linked at her name above, for complaints about how she has been excluded from some participation.

-- Also via Charles, a controller candidates' finance report summary.  Kuff is sussing out the details, spending a lot of time on this reporting.  I've snarked on him in the past, but this is really the data those few of us who care are interested in.  It just confirms to me that Carroll Robinson is a jerk.

More later.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is girding its loins for the coming culture wars against some very formidable opponents.  You know, the ones who think God is on their side.  Raise your shield; here comes the roundup of blog posts from last week.

Off the Kuff decries the Supreme Court ruling that will force a vote on whether or not to repeal Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance.

Harold Cook explains why the Republicans won't nominate Donald Trump, but won't be able to escape him, either.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos never ceases to be amazed by our former governor's serial hypocrisy. Have you no decency, Rick Perry?

Socratic Gadfly talks about the Dunning-Kruger effect and why many people think their local race relations are much better than national race relations.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that many people in South Texas do not have clean drinking water. This should be a scandal, but, as Donald Trump has amply explained, Texas Latinos are nothing but piñatas to republicans.

nonsequiteuse issues a call to arms for defenders of Planned Parenthood -- and the surreptitious videos they recorded of executives discussing fetal tissue donation -- to appear in Austin this week at a Senate committee hearing, intended to address the issue with yet more reproductive choice restrictions.

Ben Hall and Steven Hotze, Ben Hall and Dave Wilson... a lot of prayers got answered for the Houston bigots and homophobes when the Texas Supreme Court ordered the City of Houston to either repeal its equal rights ordinance or put it on the November ballot. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs knows that we don't need another HERO referendum, but we're going to get one anyway.  And ...

... Texas Leftist led the reporting when the news broke last Friday about the SCOTX decision on Houston's ERO, and John Coby at Bay Area Houston added up the Heroes and Zeroes.

Bluedaze observes the international movement to establish that hydraulic fracturing needs to be held accountable in a court of law for human rights abuses.

With football season fast approaching in Texas, Neil at All People Have Value posted about the NFL's refusal to allow Junior Seau's family to speak at his Hall of Fame induction as Seau's family sues the NFL over his terrible head injuries. Football is unsafe to play at any level. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

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

The Texas Election Law Blog tries to clear up some confusion about resignations and vacancies.

Carol Morgan notes that this is the summer of (Bernie) Sanders.

Ex-pat Texan Elise Hu-Stiles documents what it's like to live and have children in Seoul, South Korea.

The TSTA Blog wishes our state leadership cared as much about schools as teachers, parents, and charities do.

Scott Vogel, editor of Houstonia, has some choice words for a couple of readers who objected to an ad showing a multi-racial family.

Tamara Tabo examines the problems of jail surveillance cameras.

Paradise in Hell knows that Texas is great in spite of Rick Perry, not because of him.

Eric Berger geeks out over the pictures from Pluto.

Grits for Breakfast tries to distill some lessons from the Sandra Bland tragedy.

Lawflog writes about Peacock Baptist Ken Paxton.

Zachery D. Taylor offers the premise that John McCain really isn't a war hero.

And Fascist Dyke Motors is having to deal with those "slippery slope" people.

The NFL, and Roger Goodell, is a bad joke

My brother-from-another-mother Neil has already made mention of it, so these latest embarrassments are only shocking to those not inured to the Sunday afternoon gladiator competition that invigorates so many Americans every fall.

Junior Seau's Hall of Fame enshrinement went from awkward and sad to really messy with the release of a New York Times story on Friday afternoon.

According to the Times, Seau's family will not be allowed to speak at his Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony. Only a video will be played for Seau, who committed suicide in 2012. The Pro Football Hall of Fame told the Times that's the policy for deceased inductees, that there will be no speech for someone on their behalf.

Seau -- pronounced SayOw, ironically enough -- shot himself in the chest and left a note saying he wanted his brain studied for possible signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  The NFL has previously acknowledged that many of the sport's participants over the decades have had their lives ruined by playing it, and agreed to pay a massive sum to the NFLPA (the players' union) in order to make reparations.

But with this blackout of the Seau family's desires to participate in their patriarch's induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the NFL is essentially playing the old "if we don't talk about it, it's not really happening" game.  That's the same one the NRA plays every time there's a mass shooting, and the same one many people play when it comes to the latest about Caitlyn Jenner.

Then there's the league's not-insignificant gambling problem.

This past week, ESPN.com reported that a search of public documents revealed examples of NFL lawyers making the claim in legal proceedings over the past 12 years that gambling on sports is a game of skill, not chance. That sounds like no small thing, a technical difference, but it's also a crucial one.

If sports gambling is legally determined to remain a game of chance, then it will remain illegal. But if it is found to be a game of skill, as NFL lawyers have claimed, then it has a path to being legalized. So why is the NFL, which ostensibly hates gambling and all its sordidness, making this claim?

"The NFL used to argue that gambling would screw up the integrity of the game,'' said Arnie Wexler, a compulsive gambling counselor who is a former compulsive gambler himself. "This whole country is turning into a gambling state and the NFL can just smell the money. It's all about the money.

"They just want a piece of the action. Where's the integrity? The hypocrisy has been going on for years; now they just have the balls to be more upfront about it.''

ShockedIsayshocked.  Meanwhile, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is also choking on Deflate-gate.

One month has passed since Tom Brady's appeal hearing in deflate-gate. One month and Roger Goodell still hasn't announced a decision.

Nothing. No upholding the suspension. No reversing the suspension. No lightening of the suspension. This isn't a Supreme Court case. This isn't complicated. It shouldn't take a month of leaving a player hung out to dry, as the biggest storyline going into the start of training camp remains an overblown, self-inflicted soap opera from last season.

One month and Goodell still can't figure out what to do, which somehow isn't really all that surprising since if he knew what to do in the first place the entire story would have been snuffed out in a day or so – or however long it took the NFL to figure out it has no idea, let alone any actual proof, that the footballs at the AFC title game were even all that deflated.

The Washington Post is reporting some owners are trying to figure out how the NFL commissioner can come out of this appearing "credible and looking like he's dealing from a position of strength." They might try encouraging him to just rule on the evidence rather than go with that pipe dream, but whatever.

Meanwhile, ProFootballTalk reports that a "small group of influential owners" are pushing Goodell to uphold the suspension, so it's nice to see some lobbying of the commissioner by rival teams who didn't participate in the disciplinary process.

It's not a coincidence that Brady and the NFL Players Association are left to do their own saber rattling in the media, claiming they'll sue everyone and everything if the New England Patriots quarterback isn't exonerated.

There are three rings to this circus.

Like so many other American boys and men, I have played football and eagerly watched it played at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels ever since I was knee-high to a high knee.  Loved almost every minute of it.

But that's going to have to stop now.  I cannot continue to enable the bad behavior of the worst socialists in the United States.  You may be thinking, "But Perry! YOU'RE a socialist yourself!  Why wouldn't you support your comrades?"

The answer, obviously, is that it's just the expenses of their publicly financed stadia, and many (not all) of their other costs of doing business, that are socialized.  Their profits are privatized.  Only when they are sued, and the plaintiffs win, do some of their profits get nationalized.

That's not the socialist model I subscribe to.  I may elaborate on my own views about this at a later time, but for now it's important that I wean myself away from these brutal, Hunger Games capitalists -- note that I include the players in this indictment; they have willingly traded their health for gobs of money -- and boycott the sport.

If I don't, then their scrambled brains, mangled legs, feet, arms, and hands are not just on Roger Goodell and the NFL's team owners, but also on me.  And I don't want that.

Sunday Funnies

Thia toon by by Steve Sack of the Minneapolis Star Tribune appeared last Wednesday, the day before the Louisiana theater shooting.

Rick Perry gets halfway to the clear

We just shouldn't be surprised.

One of two felony indictments against former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was tossed out Friday, giving the Republican presidential candidate a potentially huge legal victory in the face of flagging polling numbers for the 2016 race.

The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin sided with Perry's pricy legal team, stating in a 96-page ruling that the charge of coercion of a public servant constituted a violation of the former governor's free speech rights.

Perry, who left office in January, was indicted last August on the coercion charge and a separate charge of abuse of official power, which wasn't affected by the ruling.

For now, he'll still have to face the abuse of power charge — which could tie him up in court and eat into valuable on-the-ground campaigning time in the midst of his White House run. But Perry's lead attorney, Tony Buzbee, downplayed the future significance of the case, just as his client has for months, saying it will have "no impact whatsoever" on the campaign.

"One down, one to go," Buzbee said at a Houston news conference. "The court today threw out what we believe to be the greater of the two charges." He added that the abuse of power charge is "hanging by a thread."

Thanks goes to Justice Bob Pemberton, who declined to recuse himself from the case despite the glaring conflicts of interest.  I also had a conversation in a podcast with Brad Friedman of Bradblog about the indictments and their chances back in May.

Michael McCrum, the San Antonio-based special prosecutor leading the case, has long maintained it deserves to go to trial. He said he wasn't certain whether he'd appeal Friday's ruling since it affects an underlying statue that will impact many cases, not just Perry's.

"Obviously we're ready to proceed to trial on the other count," McCrum said, though he noted he doesn't yet know when such a trial would begin because Perry can appeal the abuse of power charge to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas' highest criminal court. With that court on summer recess, doing so is "going to cause an extended delay," he said.

Buzbee remains confident he can spring Goodhair.

Buzbee said he considers the remaining charge nothing more than a misdemeanor and said the Court of Criminal Appeals "will throw it out on its face." The abuse of official capacity nonetheless has a maximum sentence of 99 years in prison, while the voided coercion charge carried a 10-year maximum sentence.

I don't see a conviction sticking, I really don't even see a trial even happening anytime soon because of the possible appeal to the CCA, as McCrum mentions.  There are simply too many Republicans who have Rick Perry's back.

See DFW CBS and the Christian Science Monitor for additional insight, including the ramifications on his presidential bid.  And again Charles with more and many links to others.

We don't need another HERO referendum *Update*

But we will get one anyway.

The saga over a Houston city law that protects LGBT people from discrimination just took a sudden turn. The Texas Supreme Court intervened in the court fight over the effort to repeal the initiative, ordering that the Houston City Council must either repeal HERO on its own or allow it to be challenged at the ballot in the next election. Either way, the city can no longer enforce it.

[...]

According to the Court, all that mattered is that the City Secretary initially certified the referendum. It doesn’t matter what was discovered later about the validity of those signatures, or even the fact that the Secretary later acknowledged the flaws that were found. “The Charter requires the City Secretary to ‘certify’ her findings, and the only findings she expressly certified were her own,” the Court explained. It’s as simple as “no takesie-backsies.”

That's legal crapola, but SOP for nine Republicans on the SCOTX (I always enjoy typing that anagram because it rhymes with "Kotex", which is exactly what the Texas Supreme Court is).

It’s unclear if there is any remedy for LGBT advocates, particularly given the ample evidence that there actually were not sufficient signatures. This included video evidence that the petitioners were well aware of the rules they broke that should have invalidated the signatures they collected, evidence of possibly forged signatures, and a jury’s ruling that the valid signatures just did not add up.

Brad Pritchett, who runs the HOUequality site that has defended HERO throughout this process, told ThinkProgress, “The certification has been boiled down to ink on the page. If someone turned in 20,000 forged signatures, this ruling says that as long as there are 20,000 on that page, it counts. No other certification necessary.”

The city is still reviewing its options, but will likely allow the ballot initiative to advance rather than repeal it. Pritchett is optimistic that, particularly given all that it has endured so far, “If HERO is on the ballot this November, there is no doubt that Houstonians will do the right thing and reaffirm the need for HERO once again.”

Pritchett recently left the Harris County Democratic Party to take a job with the ACLU of Texas.  His husband is Noel Freeman, the former chair of the HGLBT Caucus.  I believe he's correct that a ballot up-or-down vote will favor the proponents.  The good news is that the issue should boost turnout for municipal elections just four months away that heretofore have not been generating much in the way of news coverage.

As for the political English (i.e. cue ball spin) I see Chris Bell gaining some advantage over Sylvester Turner, who has been a latecomer to the human rights issues of LBGTQ people.  Update: Towelroad details Turner's bumpy history, including the old rumors of his being homosexual himself.  But the community doesn't seem to be holding any of his past against him, and he has packed the Caucus with over six dozen purchased memberships in advance of the endorsement vote.

Former congressman Chris Bell has been actively encouraging supporters to join and show up for the August meeting, while City Councilman Stephen Costello has pursued what his campaign described as a "low-key effort" to get people to join the caucus' ranks.

Turner, on the other hand, opted to write the group a $3,040 check two weeks ago - enough for at least 76 memberships, according to spokeswoman Sue Davis.

"It's something that's done every year," Davis said.

Not to this extent, Ms. Davis (as we will see in the next excerpt).

Does HERO hate get goosed?  Does this development help Ben Hall, or is Bill King going to try to seize back the mantle of Anti-HERO Crusader?  As referenced in the previous excerpt, it probably doesn't do much for Stephen Costello, despite one of his backers being the afore-mentioned Mr. Freeman.

Former caucus president Noel Freeman, a Costello supporter, said campaigns also purchased or sponsored memberships during his tenure, though not enough to sway the outcome of the endorsement process.

"I never saw an endorsement vote that was so close that (it) would have made a difference," he said, adding that he never saw a campaign purchase more than 45 memberships during his tenure from 2011 to 2013.

We'll also have to watch how this goes with the At-Large city council posts.  AL-1, for example, has Democratic County chair Lane Lewis -- you may recall that a former Texas blogger, to his discredit, demanded and others as well suggested Lewis' resignation -- squaring off with Tom McCasland, who is supported by a large contingent of the most conservative Houston Democrats that I know.  So far he's all about mobility (though there's this Tweet from yesterday).

Charles has more and more linkage to other reactions.