Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Monday, August 27, 2018
The Weekly Wrangle
Reminiscences were the theme of the week, as Texas Progressive Alliance bloggers and news sources looked back at Hurricane Harvey, John McCain, and other people and events in the week that was.
Last Tuesday's conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea by Michael Cohen -- which occurred within minutes of each other -- was a turning point for the Trump presidency, and both items were briefly summarized by Somervell County Salon.
Socratic Gadfly remembers Senator Maverick (not fondly, either).
#Harvey1YearLater was an opportunity for many Houstonians to contribute their stories to the narrative of the region's most destructive storm in over a century. Following the successful bond election on Saturday, the Houston Chronicle followed up with a report indicating that the county still hasn't decided how to fix its flood infrastructure. The Texas Tribune collected its reporting all in one place for a compendium of good reading. The AP, via Talking Points Memo, noted the chutzpah of Big Oil recommending taxpayers foot the billion-dollar bill for the Texas Gulf coastal spine, to protect their Southeast Texas refinery and chemical plant infrastructure from the next mega-hurricane (caused by climate change, that they caused).
Grist focused on Meyerland's recovery, while Offcite went to a couple of Houston's poorest neighborhoods, Kashmere and Trinity Gardens, to gauge the rehabilitation efforts.
Meanwhile, as developers began building new homes in the floodplain (an abandoned golf course in west Houston), Mayor Sylvester Turner and city council's reaction was ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The neoliberal storm rages on in the Bayou City, as Harvey's damage did absolutely nothing to change the way bidness goes down at City Hall between the developers and the Democrats.
In election news, Beto O'Rourke is quickly becoming a cult of personality for Democrats, not just in Texas but across the country. The Sulphur Springs News-Telegram opined about "Havana Ted McCarthy Cruz and Robert Francis Kennedy O'Rourke" playing debate chicken. Socratic Gadfly took down the Buzzfeed puff piece about Beto. And Off the Kuff took a look at the latest Senate race poll and compared O'Rourke's numbers to those of Lupe Valdez.
The Dallas News reported that Valdez's missing pistol was located exactly where it should have been: in the Dallas County Sheriff's Department property room. It took a second audit to locate it.
The madness of Dan Patrick was on full public display, as our state's lite governor went on Fox to rage at CNN and MSNBC for the death of Mollie Tibbetts, and challenged Geraldo Rivera -- and not Mike Collier, his actual November election opponent -- to a debate.
Doyin Oyeniyi at Texas Monthly has the latest on Reality Winner, sentenced to five years and three months in prison for leaking classified information.
Leif Reigstad at TM also has another update on Amazon's HQ2, showing Dallas and Austin as frontrunners for the coveted economic prize. Austin isn't all that thrilled about it.
Fracking is using up already-scarce water in the Permian Basin, says Courthouse News. The coming underground water war between Mexico and the US is part of the focus of the Texas Observer's nine-part series, "Shallow Waters".
David Collins riffed off of Quetzal Cáceres's post at Black Agenda Report about fauxgressives and fauxcialists.
Neil at You Must Act Right Now was witness to an act of civil disobedience at the proposed location of the baby jail/family detention jail in Houston.
The Rag Blog's Paul Buhle eulogized a pair of global peace leaders, Uri Avnery and David McReynolds.
And Harry Hamid wrote about his annual near-death experience.
Last Tuesday's conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea by Michael Cohen -- which occurred within minutes of each other -- was a turning point for the Trump presidency, and both items were briefly summarized by Somervell County Salon.
Socratic Gadfly remembers Senator Maverick (not fondly, either).
#Harvey1YearLater was an opportunity for many Houstonians to contribute their stories to the narrative of the region's most destructive storm in over a century. Following the successful bond election on Saturday, the Houston Chronicle followed up with a report indicating that the county still hasn't decided how to fix its flood infrastructure. The Texas Tribune collected its reporting all in one place for a compendium of good reading. The AP, via Talking Points Memo, noted the chutzpah of Big Oil recommending taxpayers foot the billion-dollar bill for the Texas Gulf coastal spine, to protect their Southeast Texas refinery and chemical plant infrastructure from the next mega-hurricane (caused by climate change, that they caused).
Grist focused on Meyerland's recovery, while Offcite went to a couple of Houston's poorest neighborhoods, Kashmere and Trinity Gardens, to gauge the rehabilitation efforts.
Meanwhile, as developers began building new homes in the floodplain (an abandoned golf course in west Houston), Mayor Sylvester Turner and city council's reaction was ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The neoliberal storm rages on in the Bayou City, as Harvey's damage did absolutely nothing to change the way bidness goes down at City Hall between the developers and the Democrats.
In some cases, MUDs directly lied to residents about whether their housing units were located in the region’s floodplains. In others, they directly disfigured water flow patterns of the land, opening it to more hazardous flooding against the complaints of residents.
And yet Houston developers have continued to push this privatized model, arguing that without MUDs, developers would have to pay for utilities with their own capital, likely resulting in poor service provision — if not cuts altogether.
The local debate about MUDs reflects the confidence of Houston’s developers and the weakness of the opposition, both in the council and outside of it. This balance of forces allowed real-estate capitalists to transform a statement about privatization’s fundamental insolvency into an argument for its acceleration.
In election news, Beto O'Rourke is quickly becoming a cult of personality for Democrats, not just in Texas but across the country. The Sulphur Springs News-Telegram opined about "Havana Ted McCarthy Cruz and Robert Francis Kennedy O'Rourke" playing debate chicken. Socratic Gadfly took down the Buzzfeed puff piece about Beto. And Off the Kuff took a look at the latest Senate race poll and compared O'Rourke's numbers to those of Lupe Valdez.
The Dallas News reported that Valdez's missing pistol was located exactly where it should have been: in the Dallas County Sheriff's Department property room. It took a second audit to locate it.
The madness of Dan Patrick was on full public display, as our state's lite governor went on Fox to rage at CNN and MSNBC for the death of Mollie Tibbetts, and challenged Geraldo Rivera -- and not Mike Collier, his actual November election opponent -- to a debate.
Doyin Oyeniyi at Texas Monthly has the latest on Reality Winner, sentenced to five years and three months in prison for leaking classified information.
Winner is a Kingsville native who joined the Air Force after graduating high school. During her time in the military, Winner worked as a linguist and translator in Arabic and Farsi with the National Security Administration in Fort Meade, Maryland. She later left the military and moved to Augusta, Georgia where she worked as a contractor translating Farsi for the NSA. It was while contracting in 2017 that she printed out and mailed a classified document regarding Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election.
[...]
Winner’s defense requested that she serve her sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, a federal prison in Fort Worth, where she can get treatment for her bulimia and be closer to her family in Kingsville. On Thursday, Judge J. Randall Hall Judge agreed to make the recommendation to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for Winner that she be detained in Texas.
Leif Reigstad at TM also has another update on Amazon's HQ2, showing Dallas and Austin as frontrunners for the coveted economic prize. Austin isn't all that thrilled about it.
Fracking is using up already-scarce water in the Permian Basin, says Courthouse News. The coming underground water war between Mexico and the US is part of the focus of the Texas Observer's nine-part series, "Shallow Waters".
David Collins riffed off of Quetzal Cáceres's post at Black Agenda Report about fauxgressives and fauxcialists.
Neil at You Must Act Right Now was witness to an act of civil disobedience at the proposed location of the baby jail/family detention jail in Houston.
The Rag Blog's Paul Buhle eulogized a pair of global peace leaders, Uri Avnery and David McReynolds.
And Harry Hamid wrote about his annual near-death experience.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Sunday Funnies
"A man in his position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous".
Oh, and strip superdelegates of power ...
Women (and everyone who loves and supports them) will take to the streets today -- #WomensEqualityDay -- with rallies and marches to #StopKavanaugh.
Friday, August 24, 2018
Beto O'Rourke: a cult of personality
He's morphed from an upstart longshot right into a presidential wet dream for swooning Donkeys in the span of a couple of weeks.
When Jon Tilove at the Austin Statesman featured 'Beto 2020' in his column/First Reading blog last week, I rolled my eyes.
That was the first I had read about this (like I've said before, I quit Facebook weeks ago; I'm no longer privy to the hive mind of Democratic activists ... and feel much healthier as a result). Tilove, who normally has something valuable to contribute to the political discussion, had gone off the rails with this prognosticating. Or so I thought.
On Monday, I led the Wrangle with my premise about a brightening forecast for O'Rourke's chances against Poop Cruz. Then Beto's remarks about NFL players taking a knee, video posted by Real News (over 15,000 views and 28,000 reTweets), blew up the Internet. Then the latest poll broke, from NBC News/Marist, showing a scant four-point lead for the Zodiac Killer.
That poll -- look at Kuffner! On it! And look who his first commenter is! -- does not reflect the impact of the viral 'kneeling' video or his recent teevee ad buy, as RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly pointed out yesterday. (And still no mention of the one poll that had Beto just a nose ahead. Very odd.)
So then I start seeing all kinds of fawning comments and Tweets about Beto, from locals to statewides to "Hollywood liberals" (as Rafael puts it) to the chattering political consultant class, all dreamily fantasizing not about Senator O'Rourke ... but President -- or Vice President -- O'Rourke. Just as Tilove above speculated.
Also this, thoroughly refudiated by Gadfly. And this. And this. And way too much more.
It's a shame nobody read the Texas Monthly piece I excerpted in this January post (the original at TM is currently offline) that enlightened me about O'Rourke, and led me to the conclusion that I could not ever vote for him. It's also a shame no journalist has thought to probe a little deeper -- here on the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey -- about why he was one of four Texas Democrats who voted against tax relief for victims of the storm. His answer to this point has been his usual superficial BS.
But the real burning question for me is: how does Julian Castro feel about being Pipped by Beto?
Beyond that, the TexTrib via Progrexas sees the 'kneeling' comments on the video as maybe not helping Beto too much here in Deep In the Hearta. They may, sadly, be right about that.
No. Just no.
When Jon Tilove at the Austin Statesman featured 'Beto 2020' in his column/First Reading blog last week, I rolled my eyes.
If you like Cruz-O’Rourke 2018, you’ll love Cruz-O’Rourke 2020. https://t.co/c7oGdhkDDD 🙄#LetsNotGetAheadofOurselves— PDiddie (@PDiddie) August 16, 2018
That was the first I had read about this (like I've said before, I quit Facebook weeks ago; I'm no longer privy to the hive mind of Democratic activists ... and feel much healthier as a result). Tilove, who normally has something valuable to contribute to the political discussion, had gone off the rails with this prognosticating. Or so I thought.
On Monday, I led the Wrangle with my premise about a brightening forecast for O'Rourke's chances against Poop Cruz. Then Beto's remarks about NFL players taking a knee, video posted by Real News (over 15,000 views and 28,000 reTweets), blew up the Internet. Then the latest poll broke, from NBC News/Marist, showing a scant four-point lead for the Zodiac Killer.
That poll -- look at Kuffner! On it! And look who his first commenter is! -- does not reflect the impact of the viral 'kneeling' video or his recent teevee ad buy, as RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly pointed out yesterday. (And still no mention of the one poll that had Beto just a nose ahead. Very odd.)
So then I start seeing all kinds of fawning comments and Tweets about Beto, from locals to statewides to "Hollywood liberals" (as Rafael puts it) to the chattering political consultant class, all dreamily fantasizing not about Senator O'Rourke ... but President -- or Vice President -- O'Rourke. Just as Tilove above speculated.
The next superstar in the Democratic Party is @BetoORourke. I predict he’ll defeat Ted Cruz this November and be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 2020. And he’s not just what our party’s been looking for, he’s what America desperately needs.— Ken Olin (@kenolin1) August 23, 2018
Also this, thoroughly refudiated by Gadfly. And this. And this. And way too much more.
It's a shame nobody read the Texas Monthly piece I excerpted in this January post (the original at TM is currently offline) that enlightened me about O'Rourke, and led me to the conclusion that I could not ever vote for him. It's also a shame no journalist has thought to probe a little deeper -- here on the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey -- about why he was one of four Texas Democrats who voted against tax relief for victims of the storm. His answer to this point has been his usual superficial BS.
But the real burning question for me is: how does Julian Castro feel about being Pipped by Beto?
Beyond that, the TexTrib via Progrexas sees the 'kneeling' comments on the video as maybe not helping Beto too much here in Deep In the Hearta. They may, sadly, be right about that.
Monday, August 20, 2018
The Weekly Wrangle
The summer heat is on and it's rising in the midterm statewide races. The Texas Progressive Alliance got the kids off to school and then got back to blogging about the coming elections.
Beto O'Rourke enjoyed a swelling enthusiasm for his effort to unseat Ted Cruz and go to Washington as Texas' new junior US Senator. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected favorable polling and mentions of television and Facebook advertising to revise his prediction to a much closer contest, while Kuff seemed to be feeling a little pessimistic about Beto's chances and speculated on some consolation prizes for Texas Democrats.
The TexTrib's Ross Ramsey has an analysis -- reprinted at Progrexas -- of Greg Abbott's attempt to expand gubernatorial power that would make even Pa and Ma Ferguson, among the most corrupt Texas governors in the state's history, blush. (With envy, not shame.) Retiring state legislator Byron Cook warned that the governor's move represented a constitutional overreach, aka power grab.
SocraticGadfly has some fun introducing Lupe Valdez to Aerosmith.
The Dallas Morning News had the best coverage of the Democratic statewides rallying around Texas last week, with the noteworthy development being the "upper-downballot" slate of candidates drafting off of Beto O'Rourke's blue wave machine.
The TSTA Blog sees through Dan Patrick's phony concern about teachers' health insurance premiums.
HuffPo noticed that former Congressman Blake Farenthold is continuing to disgrace himself.
There were many questions raised by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's visit to Houston last week, and the two best were asked in the headlines of articles written by Jeremy Wallace at the Houston Chronicle and Elizabeth Trovall at Houston Public Media.
Grits for Breakfast returned from summer hiatus with a comprehensive criminal justice news aggregation that included links to stories about worsening wait times at DPS TDL offices, probation tailored for youthful defendants, bail reform, red light cameras, "convict leasing", and a lot more.
With the death by suicide of another Harris County inmate -- and a story by The Appeal about DA Kim Ogg's apparent change of heart on her 'reformer' branding -- The Intercept broadens the question to Democrats generally: why aren't they doing more to help candidates who will practice criminal justice reform instead of just preach it?
Harris County officials were "in over their heads" when they struck deals for contingency fees with lawyers who would be litigating on their behalf against opioid manufacturers, says a Yale professor emeritus of law quoted at Forbes.
The Texas Observer's nine-part series on border water and climate change, "Shallow Waters", has part four posted, about the 15 aquifers shared by the US and Mexico at the Rio Grande border and how little both countries understand about them.
Better Texas Blog can't understand the arguments against paid sick leave. Austin became the first city in all of the southern US to pass a mandated paid sick leave policy, but Texas Standard quoted a Houston-based law professor predicting that the Lege will get involved after both the capital city and San Antonio approved ordinances enabling the employee benefit, exerting its eminence over "local control" again (as it has done with local anti-fracking laws, plastic bag bans, and so forth).
The ongoing Harris County flood bond election is noted by Save Buffalo Bayou with information about the new projects recently added.
The Houston Justice Coalition has a full slate of events and media appearances this week.
The Houston Press reports on a local elementary school that believed starting the year off with a big sign that shamed girls was a good idea, and the Lunch Tray takes issue with a partnership between Houston ISD and Domino's Pizza.
BeyondBones warns of the Bananapocalypse.
And the Rag Blog's Ivan Koop Kuper bid farewell to Bayou City troubadour and the "mayor of Montrose", Don Sanders.
Beto O'Rourke enjoyed a swelling enthusiasm for his effort to unseat Ted Cruz and go to Washington as Texas' new junior US Senator. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected favorable polling and mentions of television and Facebook advertising to revise his prediction to a much closer contest, while Kuff seemed to be feeling a little pessimistic about Beto's chances and speculated on some consolation prizes for Texas Democrats.
The TexTrib's Ross Ramsey has an analysis -- reprinted at Progrexas -- of Greg Abbott's attempt to expand gubernatorial power that would make even Pa and Ma Ferguson, among the most corrupt Texas governors in the state's history, blush. (With envy, not shame.) Retiring state legislator Byron Cook warned that the governor's move represented a constitutional overreach, aka power grab.
SocraticGadfly has some fun introducing Lupe Valdez to Aerosmith.
The Dallas Morning News had the best coverage of the Democratic statewides rallying around Texas last week, with the noteworthy development being the "upper-downballot" slate of candidates drafting off of Beto O'Rourke's blue wave machine.
The TSTA Blog sees through Dan Patrick's phony concern about teachers' health insurance premiums.
HuffPo noticed that former Congressman Blake Farenthold is continuing to disgrace himself.
There were many questions raised by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's visit to Houston last week, and the two best were asked in the headlines of articles written by Jeremy Wallace at the Houston Chronicle and Elizabeth Trovall at Houston Public Media.
Grits for Breakfast returned from summer hiatus with a comprehensive criminal justice news aggregation that included links to stories about worsening wait times at DPS TDL offices, probation tailored for youthful defendants, bail reform, red light cameras, "convict leasing", and a lot more.
With the death by suicide of another Harris County inmate -- and a story by The Appeal about DA Kim Ogg's apparent change of heart on her 'reformer' branding -- The Intercept broadens the question to Democrats generally: why aren't they doing more to help candidates who will practice criminal justice reform instead of just preach it?
Harris County officials were "in over their heads" when they struck deals for contingency fees with lawyers who would be litigating on their behalf against opioid manufacturers, says a Yale professor emeritus of law quoted at Forbes.
The Texas Observer's nine-part series on border water and climate change, "Shallow Waters", has part four posted, about the 15 aquifers shared by the US and Mexico at the Rio Grande border and how little both countries understand about them.
Better Texas Blog can't understand the arguments against paid sick leave. Austin became the first city in all of the southern US to pass a mandated paid sick leave policy, but Texas Standard quoted a Houston-based law professor predicting that the Lege will get involved after both the capital city and San Antonio approved ordinances enabling the employee benefit, exerting its eminence over "local control" again (as it has done with local anti-fracking laws, plastic bag bans, and so forth).
The ongoing Harris County flood bond election is noted by Save Buffalo Bayou with information about the new projects recently added.
Early voting on the bonds started Aug. 8 and continues through Tuesday, Aug. 21. The election is Saturday, Aug. 25. The $2.5 billion target is widely considered a small down payment on a $20-30 billion county-wide flood resiliency program that should emphasize buyouts, land acquisition and preservation, floodplain restoration and other non-structural approaches.
The list of 237 projects includes 38 projects that were added as a result of community meetings held across Harris County in June, July and August, according to the district website. Note that the list of potential projects is not fixed or obligatory, and citizens should still have opportunities to influence future plans and priorities.
Six additional projects were added through community input to the projects on Buffalo Bayou below Addicks and Barker dams. (More details at the links.)
The Houston Justice Coalition has a full slate of events and media appearances this week.
The Houston Press reports on a local elementary school that believed starting the year off with a big sign that shamed girls was a good idea, and the Lunch Tray takes issue with a partnership between Houston ISD and Domino's Pizza.
BeyondBones warns of the Bananapocalypse.
And the Rag Blog's Ivan Koop Kuper bid farewell to Bayou City troubadour and the "mayor of Montrose", Don Sanders.
Arlo Guthrie and Don Sanders perform on national television as Houston’s KPFT-FM returns to the air
after the KKK blew up the Pacifica station’s transmitter. Courtesy Kuper Group Archives.
Sanders was at the forefront of the founding of Houston’s progressive, noncommercial radio station and Pacifica affiliate, KPFT-FM, in 1970 and was an on-air personality in the station’s early days.
This was the very same public station that was bombed off the air, not once but twice. Historically KPFT-FM is the only radio station in the United States that has ever been under attack by right-wing extremists. The transmitter bombing was the handiwork of four members of the Pasadena, Texas Klavern of the United Klans of America, Inc. aka the Ku Klux Klan. However only one Klan suspect, Grand Wizard Jimmy Dale Hutto, age 24, was formally indicted and served time for the offenses.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Sunday Funnies
Why did Nancy Pelosi avoid two of the hottest
Texas Congressional races during her Houston visit last week?
Though Aretha Franklin wasn't the first person to record "Respect," her 1967 rendition is by far the best known and most revered. That year is important to mention because it was after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the year of the U.S. Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia and the year leading up to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
It was right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War and the movement for gender equality.
In her 1998 autobiography, Franklin said the song was "the need of a nation, the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect. ... The song took on monumental significance."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)