T'was the Week Before Wrangle

With the next-to-last week of 2018's best lefty blog posts and news round-up, the Texas Progressive Alliance is hoping Mueller Time is a bigger celebration than was Fitzmas (some thirteen years ago).

A federal judge in Texas accepted the arguments of Attorney General Ken Paxton and struck down the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in a ruling that will face years of appeals and create lots of uncertainty for millions of Americans over their healthcare insurance.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth sided with the argument put forward by a coalition of Republican-leaning states, led by Texas, that Obamacare could no longer stand now that there's no penalty for Americans who don't buy insurance.

The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the law in 2012, by classifying the legislation as a tax. But since Congress removed the individual mandate in 2017, O’Connor ruled, there's no way the ACA can be allowed to stand.

"The Individual Mandate can no longer be fairly read as an exercise of Congress's Tax Power and is still impermissible under the Interstate Commerce Clause — meaning the Individual Mandate is unconstitutional," O'Connor wrote. "The Individual Mandate is essential to and inseverable from the remainder of the ACA."

Without the system being upheld by a wide pool of mandated participants, the ACA cannot stand, O'Connor ruled.

But at a time when we spend $3.5 trillion every year and are still uninsured, underinsured, being bankrupted by medical bills, co-payments, remainder bills that the insurance company did not pay, and even dying because we cannot afford our medications ... is the ACA really worth saving?

Republicans should be careful what they wish for. If the Supreme Court ultimately strikes down the Affordable Care Act, it will speed the day when America finally moves to Medicare for All. https://t.co/ZrcPobPB3U

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 15, 2018

The smartest healthcare activists realize that this court decision hastens the day when America can have Medicare for All.  But does our new Democratic Congress have the political will to force the issue?  Can they even make it a campaign issue for 2020?  Time will tell, but there are certainly reasons to be pessimistic.

Off the Kuff posted some extremely long and boring spreadsheets full of statistics that nobody except a few political consultants in Harris County could possibly give a shit about.

SocraticGadfly took a skeptical look at the Betomania 2020 Kool-Aid, one of dozens of articles about the phenomenon that shows no sign of ebbing.  O'Rourke himself has marveled at his rock star hysteria, teasingly suggesting "it's a great question" whether he is ready for a run at the White House.  As he rose in the early polling, many Democratic activists began questioning his progressive bonafides.  (You will recall that this blogger answered that for himself last January.)  The NYT dug out -- and published in October -- the story behind his family's shady real estate deal in El Paso, and the Segundo Barrio residents who never forgot his role in it.)

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs exposed the oozing neoliberalism of Houston mayor Sylvester Turner in two posts, the first excoriating his interference in the developments surrounding HISD's legacy African American schools ...

In 2015, Bell got tarred and feathered by Turner and the whole La Griglia crowd for being a MO-ron because he proposed getting the COH more involved with HISD.

Sly should’ve taken his own advice. #TxLege

— Texan Jake Barnes (@TxJakeBarnes) December 16, 2018

... and the second, reminding Houstonians of the only consistent talents Turner has demonstrated over the last three years: his leadership void and political courage deficit.

Democratic infighting over whether to monetize voter data for 2020 spilled out into the open.

.@DNC Chair @TomPerez goes to war with state parties over voter data https://t.co/Gr6Zhe4QBm @HinojosaTX: what's your response? @TexasDemocrats #DNC #ToShareOrToSell #ThatistheQuestion #CapitalismOrSocialism #IstheLargerQuestion

— More Powerful Than Putin (@PDiddie) December 16, 2018

In more 2020 musings, John Coby at Bay Area Houston -- the mangeist, most flea-bitten blue dog in the Alliance -- declares who shouldn't be running for the Democratic nomination.  Tip: they're all well to the left of him.  David Collins had the counterpoint using Beto/Bob as the repetitive example, which centrists like Coby just can't understand.

Kyle Kulinski at Secular Talk deconstructed Julian Castro's announcement of presidential exploratory committee formation.



The Dallas Observer's Stephen Young snaps some of the corporate media (and associated sycophants like Frank Luntz) back to reality with their weird infatuation over Ted Cruz's beard.

Better Texas Blog updates the status of public school finance one month away from the next legislative session.  And Progrexas wishes to remind you that it can't be fixed until everybody agrees on the definition of the word "fix".

A preview of 2019 Austin and Washington attractions?

Texas Leftist notes the worries of the Texas Vietnamese community in the wake of the latest Trump administration deportation threats.

Texas Standard read a DHS report and noticed how a portion of SpaceX's south Texas launch facility will get cut by Trump's border wall.

A child speech pathologist who worked with elementary school students for 9 years in the Pflugerville Independent School District (which includes part of Austin) lost her job after she refused to sign an anti-BDS oath, reports Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept.  A lawsuit on her behalf was filed in federal court, alleging a violation of her First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.

San Antonio had a week of swirling political winds; read more about them at the Rivard Report.

The critics of Texas Central, the bullet train between Dallas and Houston, want the Lege to administer more oversight of the project via limiting the use of eminent domain, writes Matt Zdun for the Texas Tribune.  (But in a Republican, pro-business, 'less government is best' environment, there is probably not much appetite for that.)

 (click to enlarge)

Emotions ran high at a public hearing on the coastal spine proposed along the Bolivar Peninsula, as residents and property owners decried the massive project.  It's intended to protect Houston and Galveston from future hurricanes and storm surges, but the concerns are that it will leave the sparsely-populated Galveston and Chambers County vacation and fishing communities surrendering their livelihoods.  Areas north and east of where the 'Ike Dike' would end would also be unprotected.

Texas Vox celebrated the closing of the filthy coal-fired Deely plant, on the southeast side of San Antonio and operated by CPS Energy.

Joe Nick Patoski at the Texas Observer asks if Texas' overcrowded and underfunded state parks are being loved to death.

Somervell County Salon followed up on an obscure comedian's strange take about Trump's sniffling being a symptom of his crushed-Adderall snorting habit.

Elise Hu reported on brain-machine interfaces at the University of Houston.

The Bloggess presents the Ninth Annual James Garfield Christmas Miracle.

Swamplot has the perfect gift for the Astrodome-phile in your life.

Millard Fillmore's Bathtub re-visits Banksy's seminal modern Nativity portrait, and alludes to Trump's border wall.

Dan Solomon at Texas Monthly ponders the demise of the breastaurant.

And Harry Hamid's story moved ahead to 3 a.m.

Sunday 'Hung by the Chimney' Funnies

He's seen what you've been Tweeting!
He knows that you're a fake!
He knows you know that what he knows has been keeping you awake!

Oh, he's made a long list, redacted it twice,
Putin bought you and he knows the price,
Robert Mueller's poking around!

‘(Mulvaney) would have given up a very valuable appendage to get that job’

Sylvester Turner's leadership crisis

The reason people like Boykins (and Buzbee) keep stepping up with suggestions to resolve the dispute between the city and the firefighters is because there is a paralysis of leadership in the mayor's office.

Houston City Councilman Dwight Boykins on Thursday proposed charging property owners a monthly garbage collection fee to finance raises for firefighters while avoiding job cuts for other city staff.

Under the proposal, most Houston homeowners would be charged a flat, monthly fee between $25 and $40 to help the city absorb the cost of raises for firefighters mandated by the pay parity charter amendment approved by voters last month.

Unveiled at a Thursday press conference, Boykins' proposal comes amid a legal challenge by the city over the constitutionality of Proposition B, the charter amendment granting firefighters equal pay to police officers of corresponding rank and experience. The amendment was approved last month by 59 percent of voters.

"I believe the issue of pay parity was settled at the ballot box," Boykins wrote in a Thursday letter to Mayor Sylvester Turner and his colleagues on council. "As elected leaders, our primary mission is to settle on an appropriate and responsible way forward. To this end, I am convinced that introducing a garbage collection fee is the most plausible plan to provide firefighters a pay raise while ensuring that no city worker loses their job."

Mayor Turner turned this down flat, as he has in the past.  He is simply too terrified to raise a tax or a fee in an election year.  He used "fiscal conservative" language to dog-whistle to the moderate Republicans that he will need to be re-elected that he stands by their side.

Turner’s office issued a statement in which the mayor said he was opposed to the idea: “Council Member Boykins and the Firefighters Association's proposal to enact a $25 monthly garbage collection fee to pay for a firefighter’s 29% pay raise, underscores what I have been saying for months. The City cannot afford Proposition B. This measure will cost the city more than $100 million each fiscal year. I will not support forcing Houston homeowners to pay a costly new tax on trash collection to pay for firefighters’ salaries.”

So the city -- in cahoots with the police officers' union, which has inserted itself into the dispute against the firefighters, buying the mayor's bluff/threat of layoffs -- will keep litigating, in the hopes that their lawyers might eventually get them a favorable legal ruling where the court of public opinion and referendum has failed them.

In response to a lawsuit by the Houston Police Officers Union, which opposed the parity amendment, a state district judge earlier this month issued a temporary restraining order blocking implementation of the measure. A hearing is scheduled for (today).

Here's more on the details of CM Boykin's proposal, and some history.

Boykins estimated the proposed fee could raise $107 million to $172 million annually. Disabled veterans would be exempted from the fee and senior citizens would pay a to-be-determined discounted rate, he said.

[...]

He said trash collection could occur twice a week if city council adopted a $30 monthly fee; a $40 fee would allow heavy trash pickup twice a month.

Houston is the only big Texas city without a garbage fee. Austin charges a monthly garbage fee of between $25 and $50, San Antonio charges roughly $20, Dallas charges $27 and Fort Worth charges between $12.50 and $23.

[...]

It’s not the first time local officials have eyed — or killed — garbage fees: Turner shot down the idea in 2016, when it was suggested as a way to offset a new contract with trash haulers. Boykins floated the idea at an October council meeting, and previously has suggested a garbage fee as a way to raise money that would not count against a voter-imposed revenue cap.

Former Mayor Annise Parker also floated a garbage fee in 2014 to plug a budget deficit, an idea that was shot down by the city council.

The longer this drags out, the greater the ill will between the parties grows.

I thought it was bad enough months ago that Turner, a Democrat, chose to bully a Democratic constituency, a civil workers union, with Republican strong-arm tactics.  He's also enabled conservatives to rally behind the firefighters and form an organized opposition to him, a pretty stupid thing to let happen.  And in what may have been from the unintended consequences department, the dispute has exasperated a simmering animosity between police officers and firefighters and the lack of respect each appears to have for the others' job.  In short, the vitriol has reached toxic levels.  Perhaps the judge will recommend binding arbitration for the two parties at today's hearing (and the mayor's attorneys won't decide to challenge that with another lawsuit).

Speaking of third parties, someone ought to be polling Houstonians regarding Boykins' proposed garbage fee increase.  Because if the city or the firefighters have some of their cronies doing it, we'll just get spin.  Not that more public opinion against him seems to influence this mayor.

In the meantime, Sylvester Turner needs to focus on this and not on HISD.  This is his real challenge for 2019; why he chose to meddle in the school issues demonstrates, on its best day, a political attention deficit disorder on the part of the mayor.  You would think he had staff smart enough to advise him of this.

Fresh ideas -- and perhaps fresh leadership downtown around the horseshoe on Bagby -- appear to be more greatly needed with each passing day.