Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Hillary Clinton's climate goals

They're getting raked over the coals.

Brad Friedman:

"It's so polarized between the parties that Hillary can say anything she wants," (environmental journalist David) Roberts tells me about her plan to add half a billion solar panels to the nation's grid by 2021. "But, as long as the House is in Republican hands they are foursquare against any of this --- any clean energy, any efficiency, anything that restrains fossil fuel in any way...If we're being honest with ourselves, what she's capable of doing is what the Presidency can do without legislative help."

CAF:

If you want a presidential candidate who supports a carbon tax and vociferously opposes the Keystone pipeline, you should vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

If you want a presidential candidate who has thought through how to best communicate to swing voters how a clean energy-fueled America will help, not hurt, economic growth, Hillary Clinton is probably your best bet.

In conjunction with an announcement of her renewable energy strategy, Clinton released the three-minute climate ad “Stand for Reality.”



We can’t fully analyze her program because what she has unveiled so far is only a portion of her overall plan. Vox’s Brad Plumer says, “We’ll need to see more detail” before knowing if her policies are sufficient to meet her goals. The New Republic’s Rebecca Leber notes Clinton still avoids taking clear stands on matters that have divided Democrats: “Keystone XL pipeline, tar sands oil extraction, natural gas, fracking, and Arctic drilling.”

Those who dislike the evasion and want firm pledges to keep as much fossil fuel in the ground as possible will naturally gravitate toward Sanders. Those who don’t mind clever politicking when navigating sticky subjects will be more partial to Clinton.

Among my many issues with the future Madam President is that she will simply not ever be the change we need to have in order to save us from ourselves.  Hers will be a caretaker administration, not a transforming one.  This was among the reasons she was defeated for the nomination seven years ago. (The difference -- and the problem -- is that Barack Obama turned out to be a minimalist transformer himself.)

But her refusal to abnegate KXL, her Wall Street coziness, her perpetual dissembling on her e-mail, and even the botched NYT story about her e-mail are together not as objectionable as one of the very few things she is unequivocal about: her stated preference for war on Iran.

As a presidential candidate you simply do not use the words "if I am president, we will attack Iran" in 2008, and in 2015 soften your rhetoric with words like "existential threat", and not be forced to back those words up at some point.  I say that point will occur sometime in 2017.

And if you think that's progressive, I have a used dictionary to give you.  Post your mailing address in the comments.

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.

Monday, July 27, 2015

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 piƱatas 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.

=====================

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.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

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.