Scattershooting things beside the upcoming city elections

After we note another pair of disasters at the Harris County Jail this week.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office announced that a jailer died after an altercation with an inmate early Thursday morning. And during an afternoon press conference Sheriff Ron Hickman called to take questions on how exactly this happened, he could answer virtually none of them.

Here's what Hickman did manage to say: At 4 a.m. Thursday, three Harris County jailers were transferring an inmate from recreation to his general population cell when the inmate became non-compliant and physically combative, leading one jailer to deploy his pepper spray.

But as for why detention officer Tronoski Jones collapsed moments later in the hallway and died, Hickman said he doesn't know—Hickman wouldn't speculate, at least not until they have more information from the medical examiner.

Hickman also said he doesn't know whether the inmate actually did anything to contribute to or cause Jones's death, or if the inmate even delivered any kind of blow at all—Jones did not have any outward injuries. As for why or how the struggle between the inmate and jailers escalated, Hickman said he did not know at this time. When asked if there was video of the incident, Hickman again said he didn't know.

Among other unanswered questions: Was it unusual for an inmate to be at recreation at 4 in the morning?  “I've been here for 90 days,” Hickman answered. “What do I know?”

Good on him.  At least he isn't blaming former sheriff Adrian Garcia, like I would.

At 9 p.m. Tuesday, spokesman Thomas Gilliland said two detention officers were yelling at each other when one of them, Carlton Bernard Freeney, pulled a knife. Gilliland says Freeney slashed the other jailer, whose identity has not been released, right above his left elbow.

Medical staff checked out the injured jailer, who didn't need to be hospitalized. Freeney, on the other hand, was detained and took a quick trip to, well, jail. He was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (Gilliland said officers can carry knives up to 2 inches long). 

Other than to type "jailers get in fight with pocket knives", I got nothing.  Moving on...

-- Did you feel the summer heat was more than its usual oppressive last month?  Yeah, you weren't alone in feeling that way.  July was only the hottest month in the history of the world.  We seem to be back in our tropical mode here again in Houston, after the six-week drought that burned up a lot of the grass my lawn had grown for the first time in places.  And barely any hurricanes to speak of in the actual tropics.  Weird.

-- Hillary Clinton's email problems are weighing her down.  Congress critters are getting nervous.  It's just a Chinese water torture of some new revelation every single day.  She's now polling behind some of the Republican front-runners in three swing states.  Drip, drip, drip.  Are you ready for another fourteen-and-a-half months of watching her ship slowly list and then slip beneath the waves?  How could she blow such a sure thing?  All the Clinton supporters I know have stopped attacking Bernie Sanders and curled themselves up in a ball on the floor, moaning.

I can't take as much joy in this development as I would like, considering the fact that these people are going to be insufferable if she can't close the deal again.  Far too many of them are the type of Democrat who would vote for Bush before they would vote for Bernie Sanders.

-- Ashley Madison hacked.  Josh Duggar again.  That guy needs saltpeter (even if that is just an urban legend).  Then there's the hundreds of government workers, many with high-security clearances, who also got busted.

Hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — used Internet connections in their federal offices to access and pay membership fees to the cheating website Ashley Madison, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP traced many of the accounts exposed by hackers back to federal workers. They included at least two assistant U.S. attorneys; an information technology administrator in the Executive Office of the President; a division chief, an investigator and a trial attorney in the Justice Department; a government hacker at the Homeland Security Department and another DHS employee who indicated he worked on a U.S. counterterrorism response team.

Few actually paid for their services with their government email accounts. But AP traced their government Internet connections — logged by the website over five years — and reviewed their credit-card transactions to identify them. They included workers at more than two dozen Obama administration agencies, including the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Energy, Treasury, Transportation and Homeland Security. Others came from House or Senate computer networks.

Some of them used pre-paid credit cards to try to hide the transactions from their spouses, but still logged on at work.  No need to be worried about people being black-mailed, though.

"I was doing some things I shouldn't have been doing," a Justice Department investigator told the AP. Asked about the threat of blackmail, the investigator said if prompted he would reveal his actions to his family and employer to prevent it. "I've worked too hard all my life to be a victim of blackmail. That wouldn't happen," he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was deeply embarrassed and not authorized by the government to speak to reporters using his name.

Not quite hard enough, by all appearances.

-- I'm already tired of blogging about other people's inappropriate sexual proclivities (irrespective of the fact they got hacked, which is the real crime), but then there's Jared Fogle.  The news to which I am not linking, either.  Hold the gyro-sandwich-size jokes along with the mayo, please.  If they will hurry up and arrest Duggar, there's a bunk right next to Fogle available.  Maybe they can go to counseling together.

The only thing I'll say is that you have a lot to look forward to on Sunday in the Funnies, because the cartoonists are swarming like flies.

Bell: Garcia must answer for jail atrocities

Groogan at Fox, essentially the only reporter covering the city elections that's asking the tough questions.

Six fired, 29 suspended - the April bloodbath at the Harris County Jail put yet another dent in Sheriff Adrian Garcia's reputation as an effective administrator of the nation's third largest jail.

The mass terminations and punishment capped a seven year tenure riddled with jail related controversy - officers having sex with inmates, inmates raping other inmates and inmates dying after confrontations with jailers. In the minds of many, it just never seemed to get better. For mayoral candidate Garcia, management of the troubled jail looms as a potentially damaging portion of an otherwise solid resume.

In terms of political liability, Fox 26 asked University of Houston political analyst Brandon Rottinghaus to rate Garcia's jail house problems on a scale of one to ten.

"I'd rank this as a seven, rising perhaps to a nine if the issue becomes more pointed from the other candidates," said Rottinghaus.

That's because reforming the jail was arguably the biggest challenge in Garcia's career and consequently a measure of his ability to handle the city's most stubborn problems.

 "The reason is, if it happens multiple times and there is a cascade effect than it starts to look like a pattern that wasn't solved," said Rottinghaus.

It falls to Chris Bell, alone among mayoral hopefuls, to call out the former sheriff.

"He has to answer for the mistakes he made as sheriff and some of those were pretty serious mistakes that are going to cause a lot of people to question whether he really has the leadership skills to serve as the mayor of the 4th largest city," said Bel, adding, "You can't run a jail that way and you can't run a city that way."

In response to the criticism, Garcia offered Fox 26 the following statement:

"I always took responsibility and action for problems that occurred within the HCSO, disciplining or firing those responsible.  All of them were disappointing and some infuriated me.  I always faced the citizens to let them know how we were learning from each, correcting them and moving forward.  I took responsibility for any system failure that occurred during my administration.  And, we placed policies in place to keep them from happening again. This is the type of decisive and accountable leadership Houstonians want for our city."

It's nice that he took responsibility and all, but an effective sheriff would not have allowed things like this to happen in the first place, and would have moved faster to fix them, and put some measures in place to prevent other things like them from happening again.  That's the point here.

There's also these two wretched events.

A Spring woman claims sheriff's deputies violated constitutional protections by conducting a body cavity search on the concrete of a Texaco gas station parking lot during a routine traffic stop in late June.

Charnesia Corley, a 21-year-old African American, was driving in northern Harris County around 10:30 p.m. on June 21 when a male deputy pulled her over for allegedly running a stop sign. He said he smelled marijuana, handcuffed Corley, put her in his vehicle and searched her car for almost an hour. He didn't find any pot, according to her attorney, Sam Cammack.

Returning to his car where Corley was held, the deputy again said he smelled marijuana and called in a female deputy to conduct a cavity search. When the female deputy arrived, she told Corley to pull her pants down, but Corley protested because she was cuffed and had no underwear on. The deputy ordered Corley to bend over, pulled down her pants and began to search her.

Then, according to Cammack, Corley stood up and protested, so the deputy threw her to the ground and restrained her while another female was called in to assist. When backup arrived, each deputy held one of Corley's legs apart to conduct the probe.

"What these officers did out there at the Texaco station was unconscionable. I've worked many big cases and I've never seen that," said Cammack, who plans to sue the Harris County Sheriff's Office in federal court.

Garcia resigned in early May, so technically this incident didn't happen while he was sheriff.  But if you think the culture of the Harris County Sheriff's Office took a turn for the better two months after he left, then you've been smoking some of Ms. Corley's stash from the evidence room.  Sadly, for the lives of six children and two adults, sheriff's deputies topped that.

Earl Yanske heard early Saturday morning that his sister's ex-boyfriend was at her house, armed and angry.

Relatives called the Harris County's Sheriff's Office, asking them to go by the house in northwest Harris County to see if she was OK.

Hours passed.

Sick with worry and stuck in Montana, Yanske dialed David Ray Conley's cell phone number. He didn't pick up. His sister, Valerie Jackson, had two children with Conley, but feared him. She'd taken him back over the years, even after telling police he'd cut her and wrapping an electrical cord around her baby's neck. She'd changed the locks in July, after telling deputies he went after her 10-year-old with a belt.

Around 11 p.m., Yanske's cell phone rang. It was Conley.

"I need to ask you a question," Yanske said. "Did you kill my sister?"

Conley's voice was flat.

"He said, 'Yes I did.' It was like me asking if he went to the grocery store and he said, 'Yeah.' There was totally no emotion in his voice."

Conley, 48, surrendered to sheriff's deputies late Saturday night after a standoff outside the three-bedroom house on Falling Oaks. Authorities said he had broken in through a window, armed and with handcuffs, and methodically shot Valerie Jackson, her husband and six children, including his own son, one by one in the head. All eight died in the house.

Given the couple's history, Yanske said "they should have kicked down that door instantly. "

Chief Deputy Tim Cannon said deputies went to the house three times Saturday, starting in the morning.

Nothing was amiss. They came back in the afternoon. "They did not have enough information at that time to make a forced entry," he said.

On the last check around 9 p.m., they spotted a body through a window. Three officers and a sergeant tried to go inside, but Conley allegedly shot at them.

Conley was charged Sunday with multiple counts of capital murder and held without bail. Authorities identified the dead as Jonah Jackson, 6; Trinity Jackson, 7; Caleb Jackson, 9; Dwayne Jackson Jr., 10; Honesty Jackson, 11; Nathaniel Conley, 13; and Dwayne Jackson, 50.

My emphasis in bold above, to highlight Nick Anderson's cartoon with respect to what constitutes the appropriate time and circumstances for LEO to conduct a 'forcible entry'.  This tragedy also occurred after Garcia left the department, but the long-term failures of both the county's police officers and the CPS division (the latter outside the sheriff's purview, to be fair) is readily apparent.  And nobody's asking the greenhorn who moved in after Garcia moved out, Sheriff Ron Hickman, WTF happened in these two instances, either.  And if they did, he'd be sure to blame it on Garcia as well.

I have my beefs with Garcia as someone I believe is both intellectually in the slow lane and whose record as an executive demonstrates both neglect and cruelty.  Excerpting myself...

(Garcia) seems to be ambling toward the runoff as the most likable -- or least offensive -- dimwit in the race.  So far he is Teflon-coated.  Almost nobody has mentioned his lack of college degree, a la Scott Walker ... (nor his) failing the HPD sergeant's exam more than once, never having been promoted in his 23 years in the city's police department.  I have called him out numerous times: on his ugly record on deportations, his no-bid consultant scandal, his lousy responses to the county jail disaster, and even his whining about the personnel changes his Republican successor at the Sheriff's Office made after Garcia quit that job.

And if only one person in the media -- and one of his competitors -- is willing to get at how these things became commonplace in Garcia's tenure as top county cop, then we have a bigger problem than rogue, stupid sheriff's deputies.  But let's not blame the media for falling down on the job before the fact.  Let's put the accountability for these atrocities where it lies: at the feet of the former county sheriff, Adrian Garcia.

I can't vote for him even if makes the mayoral runoff against Ben Hall.  That's the definition of the lesser of two evils personified right there.  I'll have to pass on that race.

And I hope Chris Bell and Sylvester Turner are doing everything they can so that none of us have to make that choice in December.

Two adverse developments for HERO

First:

The Texas Supreme Court has ordered city officials to reword the ballot language for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, stating in a Wednesday ruling that the current language incorrectly calls for a vote on the repeal of the law, rather than the law itself.

"The City Council is directed to word the proposition such that voters will vote directly for or against the ordinance," the court ruled.

It's an enormous victory for semantics, and Houston attorney Andy Taylor, who's led the anti-anti-discrimination charge (how's that for proper wording?) states in a press release that "Once again, the highest court in this state has delivered a message to the Mayor to stop abusing her authority. It's time to stop the games that are wasting taxpayers' money." And if there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that a lawsuit over hair-splitting sentence structure is a judicious use of taxpayers' money.

That's bad enough, but then there's this:

Within the walls of Mt. Hebron Missionary Baptist church against the backdrop of a Houston Equal Rights Ordinance many consider morally offensive, mayoral candidate Ben Hall welcomed the wholehearted support of African American ministers representing dozens of congregations.

"An end has come to open warfare between the Mayor's office and the church. I invite you gladly, to have and assume your right position in the leadership of this great city," said Hall to members of the Baptist Ministers Association, representing more than 300 congregations.

The pastors say they're backing Hall because he backed them in the battle to allow the HERO ordinance be decided by the City's voters.

"When others ridiculed us. When no one thought we would stand for what was right in the eyesight of God, it was this man, this preacher, this candidate who stood with us and did not care if it cost him his candidacy," said Rev. Max Miller, President of the BMA.

This is a seriously hard couple of shots against tolerance in Houston.

As I feared, Hall is gathering both Republican extremists and black conservatives in a bid to make the runoff against the liberal front-runner.  Mark Jones at Rice finally gets one right.

"The HERO ruling was manna from heaven for Ben Hall and took a campaign that really didn't have a strong issue and was fighting for space and constituencies and gave it a ready-made issue to appeal to both Anglo social conservatives and to African American social conservatives," said Jones.

[...]

Jones says if history is a guide, about a third of the ballots cast in the November city election will be by black voters. He says a candidate who earns 18 to 20 percent could earn a runoff spot.

I'll revisit my prediction: if the election were held today, you'd have Ben Hall and Adrian Garcia in a December duel for mayor of Houston, a result similar to San Antonio's earlier this year.  Sylvester Turner, with all of his endorsements, money, and powerful friends could still get there, of course, and would certainly be the preferred option over Garcia.  But candidly it's difficult to see such a small number of voters as Houston normally turns out for muni elections sending two black men into the final round.

There are still openings for the most liberal and the most conservative Caucasians, Chris Bell and Bill King, but ground game and future developments have to favor them more than they have up to this point.

About that HGLBT Caucus endorsement

So a week from last Saturday, as everybody who cares knows by now, the city's most powerful political constituency made its endorsements for the Houston municipal and county educational elections, coming up fast on the fall calendar.  Several other groups -- the DFA folks, the Tejanos, the Stonewalls, and others I am sure to be leaving out -- followed their lead for the most part.

Sylvester Turner, as Charles has noted, swept the so-called "progressive" endorsers, and Adrian Garcia secured his demographic identity caucus nod.

For this post, let's focus on the HGLBT Caucus, which all involved can agree carries the most weight in muni elections.  It's not disputable that they can throw their bulk around pretty effectively.  And they will need every ounce of it, and all the heavy help they can get, to once again turn back the Christian soldiers who have already gone Godwin on them, the mayor they elected thrice, and her signature accomplishment in office: the city's equal rights ordinance.

The Caucus (as it is known, sort of like The Donald) has beseeched Beyonce' Knowles via Twitter hashtag -- to no avail as yet -- to join their fight.  A few of its members have even signed my petition to kick the NFL and its league championship out of town in 2017 if the referendum on November's ballot fails.  In a crafty move, the ballot language -- being contested in court, as has everything associated with HERO -- is counter-intuitive; a 'no' vote upholds the ordinance, a 'yes' one repeals it.

The battle has begun; make sure you have your remote ready to change the channel when the teevee commercials come on, and reset your ad-blocking software to max for online exclusion (unless you just like getting paint-balled to death with advertising).

So we're up to speed on the latest.  Now, about that endorsement for mayor...

We already knew that Sylvester Turner purchased at least 76 memberships before the deadline in order for whomever they were intended to be able to vote at the Caucus endorsement meeting.  We know that Turner's consultant, Sue Davis, brushed it off as "something that's done every year".  (The Tejanos, for the record, do the same thing; the DFA has a small membership group and its executive committee makes the endorsements.  I have no idea how the process works for the Stonewalls.)  A handful of present and past officers of the Caucus even weighed in and said they had never seen an endorsement that was tilted by this "pay-to-play" mechanism in the recent past history of Caucus endorsements.

Well, they can't say that any longer, because Turner won by a count of 142-85... a margin of 57 votes.

These "endorsement membership drives" are an important part of these clubs' overall fundraising.  For its part, the Caucus also has its own PAC, and is hosting a fundraiser for it to "honor" its endorsees next week.

It might be valuable to go back to the top and click on the links for the groups mentioned in the first paragraph, where you will note that the same names of people are repetitively mentioned in the organizations doing the endorsing... of the same names over and over again of the people running for office.

So let's review.

If a mayoral candidate buys enough memberships in the Caucus to "democratically" earn its endorsement, and then gets feted by the Caucus at a PAC fundraiser, is he really a 'man of the people'?  Or just a very small, select group of people?  Let's only consider this instance of how the Caucus endorses, evaluating funds raised as an element of 'viability' scoring.  I know it's hard, but for a moment ignore the influence this might have in the outcome of the general election or the runoff.

If all that is accurate, then the election of Houston municipal officeholders is not in fact democratic at all, but oligarchic.  Or it might be plutocratic, since so much money is involved in the buying and selling -- and even in fundraising as a viability quotient -- of endorsements for public office.

Keep in mind that this bad business is not, of course, limited to Houston and its candidates for City Hall, and most certainly not limited to socially liberal Democrats and Republicans.  The same thing goes on for those who go to Austin and Washington to represent "us", when they're really only representing a very small number of people, almost all of whom can write their campaigns large checks.

We know we have big problems with too much money in our politics, but some people seem to think it's OK if "our people" win.  That's exactly what the other side thinks as well.  Now do we understand better why so many people who don't vote at all say that 'both parties do it"?  That both parties are the same?

And as Noah commented here, if Turner is "100% in" the runoff... as the candidate of the oligarchy/plutocracy, does he still meet the definition of 'progressive"?

That would be 'no', and it's not counter-intuitive.

My brother Neil communicates this with more brevity than I can muster, and for something tangential and fabulously entertaining, read Michelle Risher's screed at a certain scorned-for-endorsement council candidate.