Monday, February 17, 2020

The Weekly Early Vote Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is gearing up for early voting.


For voters who are still making up their minds, the political calendar is full of events this week, local and national, in-person and broadcast.  Here's a rundown of Tweets with links to details.


As the Texas Tribune's most recent poll -- in conjunction with the University of Texas -- revealed, Bernie Sanders has taken the lead in the Lone Star State.


Bernie named his Super Tuesday co-chairs -- Greg Casar, Austin city council member; Jim Hightower; civil rights attorney S. Lee Merritt; and former TDP vice chair Farrukh Shamsi -- and made a swing through North Texas over the weekend.


And Jolt Action's Movimiento2020 forum in Pasadena brought in all of the presidential candidates as well as a few local ones.


Robert Nagle endorsed Elizabeth Warren for president.  Emily McCullar at Texas Monthly noticed Michael Bloomberg saying things he thought were Texan, so she offered him some help.



And the TexTrib's concurrent survey of the Democratic Senate primary appears to show the race as 'one spot left for the runoff'.


A November pairing of Sanders and a Blue Dog at the top of the Texas ticket would present an uncomfortable dichotomy for progressive and conservative Donkeys.  Nervous political consultants are already wringing their hands.

"There is overall uncertainty which is growing. The real fear for Texas D’s remains Sanders," Bill Miller, a longtime Austin lobbyist who has worked with both Democrats and Republicans, said of a Sanders ticket. “'We’d be fucked' -- that’s what they’re saying. The drain at the top goes down to the bottom.”


The Great State's hottest Congressional primary features progressive Jessica Cisneros against incumbent conservaDem Henry Cuellar.  The Intercept's Rachel Cohen weighs on the sources of support, financial and otherwise.

A coalition of progressive groups and labor unions announced on Monday they’ll be spending at least $350,000 in support of Texas congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros, ratcheting up the momentum in the final two weeks ahead of her high-stakes primary against Rep. Henry Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress.

The groups behind the independent campaign effort are the Working Families Party, the Communication Workers of America, the Service Employees International Union, and the Texas Organizing Project. All have previously endorsed Cisneros, a human rights lawyer and 26-year-old first-time candidate for the House of Representatives. The money will be going toward funding canvassers in Laredo, phone banking, direct mail, and digital and radio ads that will be running in both English and Spanish, according to the groups, whose plans have not previously been reported.

The outside spending comes after Cuellar, who has represented Texas’s 28th Congressional District since 2005, has received nearly a million dollars in support from conservative groups. Last week the Brownsville Herald reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a six-figure TV ad buy for Cuellar. The big business lobby, which is shelling out $200,000 on the ads, hasn’t spent so much on a Democrat since 2014. The Chamber is joining a dark-money group, American Workers for Progress, which has reportedly spent over $700,000 to tout Cuellar’s record on health care. The American Banking Association, a lobby group for the financial industry, jumped in the race last week too, spending $60,000 on pro-Cuellar radio ads.

Cuellar’s campaign has also ramped up its own efforts, running its first negative ad against Cisneros last week, attacking her for supporting abortion, taking money from outside the district, and claiming her opposition to the oil and gas industry will cost residents of the district jobs.

Kuff interviewed three candidates for Harris County District Attorney: Kim Ogg (the incumbent), Carvana Cloud, and Audia Jones.


A few bloggers took time to check in with the GOP.

Mustafa Tameez criticized the Trump administration’s recent attacks on so-called “sanctuary cities”.  Jenny Rollins looked at Mitt Romney's lonely vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial through a Mormon lens.  Paradise in Hell interpreted John Cornyn, and the Texas Signal commented on Cornyn's low name recognition.

There are some ecological news updates.


Downwinders at Risk opened another school year at the College of Constructive Hell-Raising.


Earthworks' Ethan Buckner explained why the environmental activist organization is suing Taiwanese chemical giant Formosa Plastics for their repeated violations of past court agreements over their plastic pollution.


Derrick Broze posted his 5G documentary.


Reform Austin elaborates on these three ways the Census helps Texas.


The Lunch Tray took a closer look at Unilever's decision to mostly end child-directed marketing of ice cream.

Steve Rossignol at The Rag Blog wrote about the Underground Railroad route, including possibly a way station, through Blanco County.

Why would a group of escaping slaves have traveled west from Smithville to escape to Mexico?  For a variety of reasons, not the least being that the Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras path to Mexico would have been the shortest route.  It would have also been in a less populated area, free from the pro-slavery plantation areas of eastern Texas. And it would have been a friendlier route (the possibility of encountering hostile Native Americans notwithstanding).  The German population of the Hill Country was adamantly against slavery and Blanco County voted overwhelmingly against secession in February 1861.  The Freethinker German settlements of Sisterdale and Comfort, both militantly political against slavery, would have been along the route.

Another tantalizing clue for the existence of a way station on the Texas Underground Railroad in the Hill Country is given in the autobiography of Dr. Adolph Douai.  Douai was an ardent abolitionist and a refugee from the 1848 revolution in Germany. He resided for a period of time in Sisterdale, 10 miles as the crow flies from the headwaters of the Blanco River.   Douai remarked: "The Negroes often escaped to us and then easily fled to Mexico."

The Morning Consult details the damage the Houston Astros' brand has suffered as a result of the sign-stealing scandal.  SocraticGadfly saw new manager Dusty Baker worrying about beanballs for the Astros and thought about plenty of other punishment tactics that other teams could come up with, on or off the field.

With spring on the verge of ... springing, a variety of outdoor activities are on Texans' minds.  It's the beginning of Mardi Gras Galveston week, and here's a great list of 23 Hill Country road trips, from bluebonnets to tubing.

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Sunday, February 16, 2020

Sunday 'Slow Bern' Funnies




Chuck Todd: 'I don't understand how Bernie is considered a front-runner'


A True Centrist Democrat Story, in four parts



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Friday, February 14, 2020

The Election 2020 Update: It's Bernie, bitches

The nice thing about posting this today is not having to post about Biden collapsing, about bitter Liz spewing, about Amy Klobucop rising, BootEdge doing whatever he's doing, Money Bags apologizing, and the usual MSNBC frothing rants about soshulizm.  I really should mention Yang, Bennet, and Patrick dropping out, though.

Okay then.


Went to the Houston campaign office opening last night.  We got there right at 6:30; both front rooms were almost full.  Maybe 100 people, about ten of which were my shade of pink.  I went hypoglycemic and had to leave around 7 so I missed the opening speeches, but the music was getting loud and the crowd was festive.  Took some pictures, but none of them are as good as this.


Sanders' approach here in Deep-In-The-Hearta is straight into the barrios.



Austin's East End last night.  Details on McAllen for tomorrow.


He also made an appearance -- along with three other front-runners -- via teleconference at the LULAC forum in Las Vegas.


So some Latinxs (Latinxes?) are apathetic, but it doesn't look that way to me.

-- Bloomey rolled into H-Town for the Harris Democrats' JRR dinner, picked up Sly Turner's endorsement, spoke at the Buffalo Soldiers museum.  Trying to mend fences over stop-and frisk.  Doesn't seem to have gone too well.




As first reported in Monday's Wrangle, Bloomberg's hiring of every single political person in sight has become a fascinating story all its own.

Bloomberg entered the presidential race in November, and has since spent more than $300 million of his own money in his effort to secure the Democratic nomination. Much of the focus on Bloomberg’s historic spending spree has been on the TV ads he’s running in at least 29 states, helping boost him into the top tier in polls and driving up the price of air time for other candidates. Beyond pushing out his competitors, though, Bloomberg’s spending is having a shockingly disruptive effect on Democratic politics throughout the country: He is hiring armies of staffers and canvassers in nearly every state in the country at eye-popping salaries, poaching talent from other campaigns and progressive organizations that are now struggling to fill jobs. In just three months, the Bloomberg campaign has hired thousands of people to staff more than 125 offices around the country, the New York Times reported Thursday.

[...]

Progressive groups, local campaigns, and presidential operations are either losing staff to the Bloomberg campaign, or are struggling to hire people because the former mayor has picked so many political operatives and canvassers up, according to interviews, emails, and messages from dozens of people involved in hiring. Several of them spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity, either not to offend the biggest spender in political history, or not to expose publicly that they are having a hard time finding staff, which the public could perceive as suggestive of weakness.

[...]

During an interview this week on The Hill TV’s show “The Rising,” a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, Chuck Rocha, said the campaign recently lost a staffer in South Carolina to Bloomberg.

“I’ve heard it in every state that we’ve been in,” said Rocha of the Bloomberg effect, adding that one staffer recently came to him and said, “‘Hey Chuck, I’m with Bernie, I’m gonna vote for Bernie, but I’m gonna go get this money, cuz he’s gonna double my salary and pay me till November and I’ve gotta pay my bills when this thing is over.’

And I was like, ‘Look brother, go do what you’ve gotta do. Out of respect, we’d still like your vote, and ask your mommy and daddy if they’ll vote for Bernie as well,’ and he goes, ‘Oh, no problem.’ That’s a real thing.”

The salaries being paid to Bloomberg staffers are well above market rates, and often come with housing included, as well as a laptop and an iPhone. One operative lured to Bloomberg’s office in New York said she observed a seemingly endless wall of iPhones stacked like bricks as far as she could see. Another said that Bloomberg offered a job to one operative who didn’t take it, but still received a laptop and iPhone from the campaign in the mail anyway, presumably by sheer dint of onboarding momentum. One progressive consultant in Arizona has lost multiple hires to Bloomberg and is having a hard time finding workers. “I have heard of new organizers being hired by Bloomberg and then saying they are secretly still knocking for Bernie,” the consultant said.

"We already know what you are; we're just negotiating the price".

That was not snark.
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Monday, February 10, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle

With early voting by mail already under way, and early voting in person a week away, the Texas Progressive Alliance encourages voters to be informed about your ballot choices for the Lone Star primary elections.  Election Day is March 3.

The TPA also wishes everyone Happy Valentine's, and that includes those who may be *ahem* recently single.  Here's a last-minute gift idea for them.


The Secretary of State has promised that Texas will not be another Iowa.

The (office of the TXSoS) confirmed it would report presidential primary votes at the Senate district level on election night, as it has in past presidential primaries. This is important because a majority of the delegates a Democratic presidential candidate 'wins' is based on results in each of the state’s 31 districts.

Earlier (Wednesday, February 5), the Texas Democratic Party said it had been advised that the new election results reporting system would not be able to allocate presidential primary votes by Senate district on election night.

“Texans deserve to know who won their election,” said a tweet posted to the party’s official Twitter account. “If, in fact, the [Secretary of State] refuses to report all of the election results, including presidential preference by senate district, it is a violation of the public trust and fails Texans.”

The state party allocates more than half of its delegates based on Senate district performances, which would have meant that candidates’ final delegate counts would not have been known for potentially several days after the primary election. Democratic caucus results from Iowa were delayed by two days because of issues connected with a new application designed to tabulate votes from more than 1,600 caucus sites.

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State said the allegations made by the Democratic Party were “categorically false,” reported the Texas Tribune’s Alexa Ura.

Progress Texas has been encouraged about the prospects of turning Texas blue for some time.


Be advised, however, that their definition of the words 'progress' and 'progressive' really mean 'any old Blue will do'.  (That's not the standard definition.)

In last week's Wrangle, this blogger ranted about misuse of the word 'progressive'.  This week, both Gadfly and Jaime Abeytia picked up on that with rants of their own. 

Dos Centavos posted his Stace Slate for the primary, illustrating the dilemma of voting for an actual progressive (like Bernie Sanders) and a conservaDem (like Royce West) or a Libertarian who voted in the 2016 GOP primary (like MJ Hegar) or a pretender (like Chris Bell, who endorsed Republican Bill King in the 2005 Houston mayoral runoff over Sylvester Turner).

Don't make this mistake.  Do your homework; know your candidates.


Meanwhile Kuff kept on doing that same boring thing he does with campaign finance reports, this time for Texas Democratic Congressional candidates.  The one thing we know for certain is that the Texas Congressional races in both primaries are awash with too much money.  Another thing to remember is that big checks don't do the talking or the walking for progressive candidates.

Case in point: The Texas Signal, a blog of, by, and for the Democratic political consultant people, ponders the rise of Michael Bloomberg and his presidential campaign in the state.  I'm sure it's a wonderful thing these days to be getting paid a comfortable wage to play politics in the Great State.


Keep in mind that the guy writing the checks wants something in return.


And a Texas Rural Voices reader explains why she supports ... Tom Steyer.

Despite a few TPA members appearing once again not to be 'awake' about progressive politics, there was some hope elsewhere in the Texblogosphere.

Clay Robison at the TSTA Blog noted that public school principals don't have private jets.  Better Texas Blog connected income inequality with the decline in union membership.  And  Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current reviewed the state of election integrity without mentioning 'Russian hackers' once.

With a few words about Trump, SocraticGadfly looked at the recently-ended impeachment process and blogged about why it failed politically, and Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer reminds you not to believe a word Trump or his sycophants say about health care and health insurance.

PDiddie at Brains and Eggs is peddling as fast as he can but is still barely keeping up with the all of the developments from last week in the Democratic presidential primary.  In the second link there he wondered if Iowa turnout may have been dampened by coronavirus paranoia.

(T)here is much more to worry about with the flu.  I got my shot four months ago.  And I am not changing my behavior or buying any face masks or cutting Asian restaurants out of my dining options.

Houston's Asiatown restaurants are getting crushed by the coronavirus fears.

Local leaders say business is down as much as 70% in some spots as customers are too fearful to patronize the part of town.

“I know of one restaurant that has lost $30,000 a day," said U.S. Rep. Al Green.

[...]

Officials said libelous social media posts are spreading misinformation and have led to empty restaurants and stores.

"It is having a significant impact," Green said. "A needless impact, given that there is no reported case. There is no reason to be away from your normal life. So I’m begging people to please come back."

There are lots of opportunities to see Texas Democratic candidates this week.


THE TEXAS JUSTICE TOUR CONTINUES
Free event for Democrats in Williamson & Travis Counties

REGISTER: https://form.jotform.com/92335580529159

Sunday, February 16, 2020
5:30 to 7:30pm
Whitestone Brewery
601 E Whitestone Boulevard #500
Cedar Park, Texas 78613

Meet Democratic candidates for state and local judicial offices, including the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Complimentary food and beverages.

ORGANIZING SPONSORS:
Judge Amy Clark Meachum for TX Supreme Court
Justice Gisela Triana for TX Supreme Court
Attorney Brandy Voss for TX Supreme Court
Judge Tina Clinton for TX Court of Criminal Appeals
Judge Brandon Birmingham for TX Court of Criminal Appeals


Castro has been doing his part for Elizabeth Warren's campaign all across the country.


And there were several events last week that rallied the faithful.


There was a great deal of news about the Texas environment.




-- Anger runs through Hill Country as Kinder Morgan pipeline nears completion


Kinder Morgan’s $2 billion pipeline project, known as the Permian Highway Pipeline Project, has exercised its right to eminent domain leaving a plethora of infuriated Texas Hill Country property owners in its sizable wake.

These landowners are contesting the actions of Kinder Morgan and seeking a remedy. At issue are land valuation and the offers the energy infrastructure giant has made to property owners.

[...]

Property owners see more than just the face value of the land and believe the pipeline company is “either intentionally lowballing landowners or seriously misjudging the value of Hill Country real estate,” reported Austin’s National Public Radio station, KUT.

[...]

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2005 furnished governments with the authority to condemn private property for economic development ...

“On something like a gas transmission pipeline, the legislature has given eminent domain authority to people like Kinder Morgan if they are a common carrier,” Clint Schumacher, an attorney at Dawson & Sodd specializing in eminent domain, said.

A common carrier moves other companies’ gas or oil through its pipeline at established rates reported the Texas Observer, and “Kinder Morgan gains the power to seize private land through eminent domain as a ‘public utility.”

The Texas Observer further noted that due to a 2011 Texas Supreme Court decision -- Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline -- the Texas Railroad Commission, the state entity with oversight, isn’t required to verify a common carrier claim.

-- Peak Permian oil production may arrive much sooner than expected (DeSmogBlog)

-- Winter storm resulted in massive amounts of flaring in Permian Basin


-- EPA promises additional soil testing at southern Dallas Superfund site


Let's close another Wrangle with some news on the lighter side of the ledger.

The San Antonio Museum of Art opens 2020 with a groundbreaking new exhibition titled “Texas Women: A New History of Abstract Art.”



The first large-scale exhibition of its kind, the show features 85 works by female abstract artists who have lived and worked in Texas from the mid-20th century to the present.


Using your company's product, carried to the extreme.

For the past month Felderhoff, who is a co-owner with his brother of Muenster Milling Co, a fourth-generation family business that makes pet foods in Texas, has been eating nothing else but his company’s products and, yes, that means dog food.

“Well, it’s a little naive to say I want to [eat dog food] for 30 days,” he admitted in the first of a series of videos documenting his journey on the company’s YouTube page. “But we want to prove that we believe in what we do.”


“For two years, I have toyed with the idea of eating our dog food for a month,” he wrote on his company’s blog. “Not just as an advertising bit ... far from it. I want people to know that we are so passionate about what we do, that we’ll do anything we can to make sure we’re providing the best food possible for their dog, so much so, that we’ll even eat it ourselves.”

Sure, Felderhoff is doing this for good reasons, like raising the awareness of animal obesity and promoting pet adoption. And, as he admitted to the Houston Chronicle, his products are not exactly fine cuisine for the human palate. “Dog food is not easy to eat,” he said. “It tastes like it smells. One of the things I did that was key is that I did do some intermittent fasting.”


(Sidebar, personal:) Publisher George B. Irish turned off the Light in 1993 from atop a desk in the newsroom as the presses rolled out the afternoon daily's final edition.  Irish had been part of the Hearst executive team that negotiated the $185 million buyout of the a.m.-circulated San Antonio Express-News from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. that included keeping the E-N employees and terminating the Light's.

As VP of the company and GM of Hearst Newspapers in 1995, Irish performed an encore -- not exactly a killing, FWIW -- on the San Francisco Examiner, W.R. Hearst's very first newspaper, by buying the SF Chronicle, which I blogged about here.  (It was quite the story; too bad the links are dead.)  In 2008 Irish left his position as SVP of the Hearst Corporation to become the eastern director of the Hearst Foundation.  As I wrote there, not a promotion.  Irish still dutifully serves Hearst in the same capacity at (by my math) age 75; Frank Bennack, his mentor, turned over the executive washroom keys a couple of years ago to Steve Swartz, who replaced Irish at the helm of the newspaper division and then in the job Irish got close enough to smell but never taste.

Bennack wrote his memoirs last year but is still hanging around as vice chairman of Hearst at 86 years of age.  Not many fresh ingredients in the Good Housekeeping kitchen.
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Sunday, February 09, 2020

Sunday Funnies










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