Starring Sylvester Turner as Stepin Fetchit

It is a very unfortunate thing to have to point out, especially coming from an old white guy speaking about a black man, a prominent Houston politician who grew up in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, who served that district with distinction in the state legislature (if not always to its best interests) and now serves as the fourth largest American city's mayor, a post he has desired for more than twenty years.

Nevertheless, truths are inconvenient, and this is one.  Turner is not the stereotypical character of Vaudeville and 1930's film fame but their careers share remarkable similarities.  Both men are -- were, in Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry's case -- just playing roles dictated by society's circumstances in exchange for money, power, and influence.  Turner in fact might be more accurately described of late as a House Negro or an Uncle Tom, although he is in full command of the house on Bagby and as such has considerably greater influence over the course of events.  But that leadership, more accurately his hypocrisy on the definition of 'progressive', an issue longtime readers know chafes the hell out of me, is causing a little trouble in Bayou City, and it starts with an 'O' and it sorta rhymes with "homeless".  There's also a 'p' for 'panhandling', the most harsh and dehumanizing label that can be applied to the least among us in this regard, but we'll circle back to that in a moment.

Before addressing the ordinance that criminalized homelessness in Houston, advanced by Turner and one of the most conservative members of Council -- I teased it at the top of this post last week -- let's note what has happened since then: attorneys Eric Dick and Randall Kallinen have filed suit against the city on behalf of Phillip Paul Bryant, whose complaint is that the ordinance violates the expression of his religious beliefs.  And Mayor Turner made an appearance at the "Food Not Bombs" weekly feeding of homeless persons at their downtown location last Sunday evening spoke at Houston's rally for the climate at the end of April where he was confronted by a Food Not Bombs volunteer and allegedly retorted: "y'all are parading and pimping the cause" of caring for the homeless.

The mayor's press office, contacted for a response about this phrase, neither confirmed or denied that Turner used those words as of post time.  They did start the pushback early, after I scratched on several members of the mayor's staff for a response on the record.  (Turner was in Philadelphia yesterday for meetings; if his office responds regarding the comment specifically and not with more spin, I'll update here or post fresh.)

It's hard for me to understand why the mayor and all the Democrats on Council would join the Republicans in making poverty a crime -- who is the victim of this crime? -- but some Democrats are scared of panhandlers, so there is obviously that.  Public sentiment runs strongly against homeless congregants, at least according to my neighbors on Next Door, so there's that as well.  Seems to be little question that cracking down on poor people is popular.

But it's more difficult for me to get to the mayor's mindset on this 'pimping the cause', because ... what does anyone have to gain by feeding the homeless that corresponds with the definition of the word 'pimping'?  Does Turner believe there's money, or Doorknob forbid, sexual favors to be had in organizing to share food with poor folks?  Doubtful he believes this.

Let's give our mayor the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is not a full-blown sociopath or psychopath in regard to these continuing efforts to drive the homeless out of town.  His ordinance makes no provisions for where the folks being shoved out from under the overpasses might go; so far, just some friendly chats with non-profits about maybe stepping up their game a bit.  And hey, that's working; he claims two or three people he's gotten off the streets in the last week or so.  Just a few thousand to go.

Honestly, I feel he's just a little overly concerned about holding onto his job, particularly in a year when municipal elections are unlikely to be held, and he's following the lead and using the tactics of the neoliberals who were elected before him to do so.

Turner has paid some heavy dues -- no pun -- in saving the city's budget from the "awful" pension deal for policemen and firefighters that has long threatened Houston's financial future, a problem negotiated by his predecessors long ago which, like so many other municipal retirement obligations across the country, became unfunded liabilities due to the GOP's relentless efforts to drown government in the bathtub via tax cuts.  But Houston's dilemma was most certainly a steel can kicked down the road and smacked into his head by Bill White and Annise Parker, two more of the most conservative, corporate Democrats you can find anywhere.

Turner is smart enough to see a successful model for re-election, and in this town you can talk like a Democrat but you better act like a Republican.  He didn't just barely defeat Bill King because he was a progressive, after all.

And Turner has talked a good game while playing a hard and winning one: he browbeat the Lege into passing his reforms after threatening to lay off thousands of police and firemen, which made obstinate jackass Paul Bettencourt fold like a cheap card table.  Some pretty strong jiu-jitzu; stoking fear of increased crime rates goes straight to the GOP lizard brain.  Let's tip our hat to him on that.  But in the long run, HPD and HFD will go into retirement with much less security because nobody in charge has dared to suggest increasing taxes to pay for unfunded mandates, a reality for a long time now.  Democrats have gotten rolled on that one for decades, not just in Houston and not just public employees but teachers and those of us in the private sector as well.  (How's your 401K been doing over the past twenty or so years compared to your dad and granddad's pension?  A little too much wave in the gravy?  Too rough a ride on the old stock market roller coaster?  Ready to have Wall Street take over Social Security?)

Turner showed up at the Climate March on Saturday and made another speech emphasizing unity and inclusion.  He's fought hard for sanctuary for DREAMers and the undocumented against the Austin Republicans and the Trump Deportation SS, aka the Texas DPS.  He's big on holding the fort for the LGBT community, and they'll once again be strongly behind him whenever he next stands for re-election.  Those people are well-organized, after all, and the Latino bloc remains the so-called sleeping giant in electoral politics.

Not so much the homeless.  Hard to have a photo ID if you don't have an address.  Trying to figure out where your next meal might be coming from is a little more important than voting in the HISD recapture election wrapping up, after all.  And if we don't have any city elections this year ....well, there goes some accountability for Democrats to act like they care about working people, non-working people, and those less fortunate than that, and to be more concerned with little girls who live in the Heights who want their sidewalks fixed, or the moderate Republicans in River Oaks and Tanglewilde Tanglewood (thanks for this correction to DBC in the comments, also with his take) who despise seeing those dirty people holding signs begging for money at the intersection.  And who write fat checks to politicos.

It's probably not Turner being a sick dude with some deep animosity for the poverty-stricken; he just wants to stay in that nice office downtown, with the limo and the bodyguards and all the other trappings of power and influence.  And he needs a lot of corporate cash from the upper crust in H-Town -- the actual sociopaths, in other words -- to do so.  He's completely lost me, however, just like every other Democrat who conducts themselves in this fashion.  This losing touch with their roots and their base seems to be why Democrats in general are failing, but as former CD-7 candidate Jim Henley noted in a FB post about Obama cashing in post-presidency, there remain a lot of very dense Donkeys unable to see the problem.  So they make excuses, or go lower by playing the race card.

I expect this post will draw some of that vitriol as well.  I'm braced.

Sylvester Turner is not Stepin Fetchit, so I sure wish he would stop acting like him.

The May Day Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance participated in the Climate March this weekend and fully supports the cause of workers across the world on May Day.  ('Loyalty Day' can suck ass.)

Off the Kuff takes a very early look at potential Congressional races for 2018.

SocraticGadfly offers his reflections on the career and trial of "Our Man Downtown," John Wiley Price.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme notes that Republican hatred of democracy and people marches on in Texas.

Democrats keep looking for excuses to kick people out from under their tent, and the evidence was everywhere PDiddie at Brains and Eggs looked over the past couple of weeks. There aren't enough Marches, Resistances, and Revolutions to overcome so much squabbling, backbiting, and infighting.  In similar vein, Captain Kroc at McBlogger wants to see the two factions battle it out.

jobsanger cites the Economic Policy Institute in detailing the damage Trump has already done to workers in his first 100 days.

MOMocrats writes about Trump's hundred days in terms of the end of Obama Nation. (This is NOT a play on words.)

The Lewisville Texan Journal posts an op-ed from The Mom of No about the low bar she set -- and barely cleared -- for Easter.

And Txsharon at Bluedaze tells a true fracking story in eight lines of poetry.

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

The publisher of the Austin Monitor, Michael Kanin, has been named the new publisher of the Texas Observer.  Congratulations!

Jonathan Tilove at First Reading wraps up his coverage of Alex Jones' child custody suit by noting the post-trial press conference where Jones berated the media, Trump-style.

DBC Green Blog was a little disappointed in the Climate March but has greater expectations for today's May Day rallies.

Scott Braddock reports on the school voucher astroturfing story.

Robert Rivard makes a case for changing the timing and frequency of San Antonio's elections.

Michael Li rounds up and summarizes the remaining disputes over the Texas Congressional map.

Therese Odell recoils in horror from the transcript of the AP interview with Trump.

Sandra Thompson follows the money that is opposed to bail reform.

Former Rep. Scott Hochberg explains why he is voting Yes on the HISD recapture referendum.

Somervell County Salon has a good laugh with Stephen Colbert about the red button on Trump's desk that summons a butler bringing a Coke.

Ty Clevenger at Lawflog sees the Booger (Robertson) County Mafia growing nervous again.

And Right Wing Watch documented US Rep. Randy Weber's tearful apology to God (sic) for the American sins of pregnancy termination, prayer in public schools, and marriage equality ... but not slavery, or the atrocities inflicted on First People, or even the excesses of corporate greed or war.  What a f'n guy.

Sunday 100 Days Funnies

April 29, 2010:

Democrats continue purge, retrench

A bit over two weeks ago -- during Holy Week, mind, you -- Houston City Council voted unanimously to criminalize homelessness in the city.  Every Democrat joined the conservatives: Mayor Turner, who is at the forefront of the effort, with a strong assist from Republican At-Large CM Mike Knox, but joined by Democrats (Mayor Pro-Tem) Ellen Cohen, ALs David Robinson and Amanda Edwards, and District members Dwight Boykins, Jerry Davis, Robert Gallegos, Mike Laster, and Larry Green.  That's nine alleged liberals who lined up to cast away the least among us.  Four days before Easter Sunday.

To say that action triggered my snowflakes is understating the case.

Since then I've written, edited, re-written, and re-edited my post about it at least a half dozen times.  It's still not ready for me to publish, and the two council meetings since -- one where Houston's strongest advocate for the homeless suffered a seizure, and this past Wednesday's -- indicate no remorse on the part of the mayor or the so-called progressives who hold a majority on council.  I'm still deciding how hot I'm going to flame their asses.  For today, let's take a look at national Democrats behaving badly in similar ways.  It's been a bad couple of weeks for them.

You might recall it got started when Bernie Sanders was on Face The Nation last Sunday and pointed out, to the chagrin of the establishment, that the Democratic Party's current model is a failing one.  That brought rebuke from various quarters, and the leading attack was Sanders' endorsement of Heath Mello, a candidate for Omaha mayor who has espoused some anti-choice views while serving in the NE state legislature.

(A personal note here: my wife has both served on the board of Planned Parenthood when we lived in West Texas, and availed herself of their services on two separate occasions when we first moved to Houston.  I escorted her both times to the clinic's former location on Fannin, encountering the crosses jammed along the sidewalk and the gruesome photos attached to the fence.  We are about as pro-choice as pro-choice gets.  I do not and have never supported Democrats who aren't, or who think that choice is negotiable -- like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for example.)

When Clintonites declared Sanders' endorsement of Mello -- and his missing voice in favor of Georgia's 6th Congressional Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, who happens to be in a runoff to replace HHS Sec. Tom Price against Republican Karen Handel, of Komen Foundation disrepute -- was some kind of compromise of Sanders' long and strong pro-choice record, or when they expanded the conflation to wonder why someone doesn't support the party platform in this regard ... then they just haven't been paying attention to Democrats over the years.  Here's Bill Scher of of the longtime website Liberal Oasis, via Real Clear Politics, to remind them.  My excerpt leaves out some background you might want, so read the whole thing.

Much scrambling ensued. Sanders belatedly threw his support to Ossoff. The liberal netroots activist site Daily Kos withdrew its endorsement of Mello. Mello started talking like he was pro-choice. DNC Chairman Tom Perez tried to defend the party’s endorsement while touting the party’s pro-choice platform. By (a week ago) Friday, he was celebrating Mello’s pivot: “I fundamentally disagree with Heath Mello’s personal beliefs about women’s reproductive health. It is a promising step that Mello now shares the Democratic Party’s position on women’s fundamental rights.” Perez then went further, with an ultimatum to every Democratic official and candidate: “Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman’s right to make her own choices about her body and her health. That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.”

Shock you; I agree with Perez.  Let's hear Bernie out here, and then we'll go to the moneyshot.

First, Sanders revealed his priorities. He tried to characterize his endorsement as electoral realism, telling NPR, “You just can't exclude people who disagree with us on one issue” and the Washington Post, “If you are running in rural Mississippi, do you hold the same criteria as if you’re running in San Francisco?”

True enough. But Sanders doesn’t speak in terms of electoral realism when it comes to anything on his economic populist agenda, such as single-payer health care, free college and a $15 minimum wage. Anti-abortion votes didn’t disqualify Mello, but apparently Ossoff’s pledge to cut “wasteful spending” and his rejection of “Medicare for All” was, until Sanders was pressured, insufficiently progressive to merit endorsement. By putting his favored planks on a higher plane than abortion, Sanders sends a distressing signal to reproductive rights activists about what he is willing to trade away to accomplish his desired transformation of the Democratic Party.

So while the Nebraska Democratic party chair has slammed Perez for his purity demands, Bernie still belongs over there with the pragmatic Hillary and Barack on women's reproductive freedoms.  Red-flag warning: here comes the reality takedown, Donkeys.  Emphasis is mine.

On the other side of the coin, NARAL’s implication that the Democratic National Committee should snub all candidates who are not fully pro-choice also creates major complications. Why? Because Democrats already have people in office who oppose federal funding for abortions and late-term abortion rights, or who define themselves as personally opposed to abortion.

This faction includes several senators up for re-election next year and tenuously clinging to red state turf: Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Joe Donnelly (Ind.). Abandoning them when Democrats are desperately trying to retake control of the Senate would be political malpractice.

While these senators hold views that pro-choice activists deem antithetical to their objectives, their ascension paradoxically occurred in concert with the Democratic Party’s deepening commitment to abortion rights. Two of the four were elected to the Senate for the first time in 2012, when the Democratic convention was as vociferous about reproductive freedom as ever, and the platform was rewritten to explicitly support federal funding of abortions.

... The four red state Democrats simply expressed their opposition to the platform and won their states anyway, defeating far more socially conservative Republicans. Meanwhile, national party officials didn’t go out of their way to spotlight their “pro-life” candidates, which would have muddled their national message and hampered the base turnout needed to re-elect Barack Obama.

As linked above, both Clinton and Obama have said the right words but signaled to the anti-choice faction a willingness to bargain.  By contrast, those pro-birth Dems have actually voted proper.

Of those still in the Senate, Heitkamp and Casey have voted to protect funding for Planned Parenthood. Heitkamp helped filibuster a ban on abortions 20 weeks after conception. Casey, who, unlike the others, was in office at the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term, voted to confirm two Supreme Court justices expected to uphold Roe v. Wade. Surely the others would if given the opportunity. The same could not be said if Republicans snatched their seats.

And we'll find out in 2018, as most of these Blue Dogs are up for re-election.  Let's wrap this with Schur's pragmatic POV.

Abortion rights activists are getting the better of this bargain. Allowing a few marginally “pro-life” Democrats inside the party tent helps maximize Democratic numbers in the Senate without diluting the national party’s message. A zero-tolerance policy would only shrink Democratic numbers in the chamber, weakening the party’s ability to protect abortion rights and resist the rest of the Republican agenda.

Many progressive (sic) Democrats say they want a “50-state strategy,” without considering that party members in some states won’t want to run on every plank in the platform. The trick is to allow individual Democrats to quietly go their own way when state terrain demands it, so as not to suggest any sacrifice of principle by party leadership. There’s no upside in loudly bragging about a Democratic big tent on abortion, and unsettling base voters in the process. Nor is there any value in naming and shaming right-leaning candidates who aren’t trying to rewrite the national party platform.

If I was a Clinton Democrat, I'd feel a little chastened.  But I'm not.  And since I'm not a Sanders Democrat either, the various criticisms of his emphasis on economic populism to the occasional lack of verbal emphasis on women's rights -- again, check his voting record -- or the tired accusations that his politics are racist (Ta-Nehisi Coates has the best nuance for this question, over a year ago) aren't really my battles any more.  About the only reason why I'd like to see Bernie split off from the Democrats at this point is to hasten their crumbling into irrelevance.  That I can get behind, if still cautiously, because his new party wouldn't necessarily be mine.

That would have been enough for one vast Blue schism for the month (and this post), but then Obama decided he was going to give a speech to Wall Street bankers for $400,000.  About healthcare.  And some stupid fucking Democrats decided it was necessary for them to vigorously defend that.

No.  Just no.  Caity, take over.  This one is going to sting, Mules.  A lot.

Could you ask for a more perfect bookend to Obama’s blood-soaked neocon abortion of a presidency than his receiving $400,000 to give a speech at a health care conference organized by a Wall Street firm?

My God I hate every single thing about every single part of this. Let me type that out again in segments, so we can all really feel into it: 

Four hundred thousand dollars. For a former President of the United States. To give a speech. At a healthcare conference. Organized by a Wall Street firm.

Why are Wall Street firms organizing motherfucking healthcare conferences, one might understandably ask? And why are they hiring the man who just completed an eight-year war on progressive healthcare policy and a torrid love affair with Wall Street criminals? These are extremely reasonable questions that might be asked by anyone who is intelligent and emotionally masochistic enough to look straight at this thing, and the answer, of course, is America. That’s what America is now. The man who continued and expanded all of Bush’s most evil policies, created a failed state in Libya, exponentially expanded the civilian-slaughtering US drone program which Chomsky calls “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” to unprecedented levels, facilitated the Orwellian expansion of the US surveillance state while prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and used charm and public sympathy to evade the drastic environmental policy changes we’ll need to avert climate disaster and lull the progressive movement into a dead sleep for eight years now gets paid nearly half a million dollars an hour to continue bolstering the exploitative corporatist nightmare he’s dedicated his life to. [...]

This is your intervention, West Wing Democrats.

I can understand why pro-establishment liberals are defending this man; he stands for everything they stand for. If all you stand for is vapid tribalism and vanity politics and you are willing to sacrifice integrity along with economic and social justice and the lives of other people’s kids in corporatist wars overseas in order to feel like you’re on the right team, Obama is your man. But if you’re an actual, real progressive and not just a latte-sipping NPR listener with a sense of self-righteousness and a pro-choice bumper sticker, you’ve got no business regarding Obama with anything but disgust.

I mean, it’s wrong, but I also get it. The sympathy we’re tempted to feel for that child-killing corporate crony is one of the very few problems that we actually can blame mostly on Republicans. They spent eight years hammering the guy, but they couldn’t criticize any of his actual evil policies because they were all policies that Republicans support too, from warmongering to bolstering the Walmart economy. So they had to make up the most ridiculous bullshit we’d ever heard, which you couldn’t just stand around listening to without screaming and disputing. They couldn’t attack his Orwellian surveillance programs, so they said he’s a Muslim. They couldn’t attack his eat-the-poor neoliberalism, so they said he’s a Kenyan. They couldn’t attack the unforgivable bloodbaths he was inflicting on other countries, so they said he’s a socialist (Ha! Remember that one?). So by attacking these moronic right-wing narratives, we often wound up tacitly taking his side, which fostered sympathy.

I confess: even when I abandoned Obama in 2009 for not supporting the public option, I still felt obligated to spend years fighting back for him against the lies and smears and racism from conservatives and Republicans, battles he would not fight for himself.  I called him weak then, but now I see that it wasn't weakness.  Being a corporatist tool is what he was all along. 

If you needed more evidence that establishment Democrats would rather keep their heads in the sand about their 2016 failures, here you go.

Okay.  If you're still reading, Caitlyn says it all better anyway, so go grit your teeth at her.  I'll have more on the local version of these atrocious neoliberals serving us on America's fourth largest city council soon, and if you think I'm pissed off now...