Tuesday, March 02, 2021

Texas Tuesday Masks Coming Off Round-up


Everybody seems to think we know what's up.


Guvnuh Quixote -- pronounce that however you like; I'm rolling with "Kwiksoat" -- has been under tremendous pressure from the Trump Caucus of the TXGOP to give Texans back the freedumb to die for the economy.  What better than Texas Independence Day to declare it?


I'll be celebrating Taco Tuesday myself (wearing a double mask).


In the latest criminal justice developments:


That's our transition to the Lege, which was mostly buried in meetings that have been consumed with blaming and finger-pointing about the Texas Blackout.  In the abridged version of events, PUC chair (and Abbott appointee) DeAnn Walker testified before committees in the Texas House and Senate, and her answers to their questions about winter preparations to the state's power grid, its subsequent failure, etc., were found to be universally unacceptable.  Lite Guv Dan Patrick called for her head yesterday, and within hours, she resentfully submitted her resignation letter.


I have more links regarding who will ultimately pay for their mistakes (hint: it won't be them) that I'll save for the next Wrangle/Round-up.  The Legislature's planned short work week was lengthened by other matters.


It gets worse, but we'll move on.  COVID numbers are improving, but the gains will be lost if the mask mandate, restaurant and bar restrictions, and/or limits on social gatherings are loosened.


And that's my segue to the social injustice news of the week.

Last week, our producer Davis Land headed out from his neighborhood in Houston to talk with people trying to restore their homes after a devastating winter storm knocked out power for so many Texans. It was nearly 80 degrees -- a huge change from a couple of weeks back, when many Texans were shivering under coats and blankets, waiting out a deep freeze and a utility shutdown. But after the cold let up, what was left behind was a mess of plumbing: burst pipes and sagging walls full of leaking water. There simply aren’t enough hands to do the work.


D Magazine caught up with Jim Schutze, whose decades-old book, The Accommodation, will be re-printed after CBS This Morning aired a story about its topic -- Dallas' complicated racial and political history -- last weekend.


No, I am certain we won't.  The freeze and its aftermath was very likely the last straw for some.


Let's move toward the end of this Round-up with some overdue election news.


Here's a thread with the standard "can the Donks do it" speculation, short a couple of candidates from Svitek's list above.


With 18 hats in a jungle primary, and perhaps more, anything is possible.  The election is in May.


Another too-long post, so let's close it here and save the rest for later.

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Monday, March 01, 2021

The Weekly Wrangle from Far Left Texas

So Joe Biden's H-Town photo opp seemed to go well.



Perhaps he should have skipped making the remarks at the end of the afternoon, though, as the Aricept had clearly worn off.



"Representatives, uh, Shirley Jackson Lee, Al Green, Sylvia Garcia, Lizzie Pannili, uh, excuse me," Biden said and winced. "Pannell, and uh, what am I doing here?" he said. [...] "I’m going to lose track here," he added.

Prior to his day trip, he was not wrapping up a good week.  Few Houston journalists noticed or cared, apparently.  No inquiries were made -- or if they were, left out of the reporting.


Fuck it, I guess (right?).  Texas has bigger problems (right?).


Yes we do.


Kuff would like you to be more mad at the Public Utility Commission.  Socratic Gadfly offers his suggestions for people to fill those vacant "unaffiliated" board positions on ERCOT.  And whatever we're calling the winter storm and subsequent blackout, it's true that as bad as we all had it, the least among us had it worse.


A total of 509,206 people were still impacted by boil water notices as of Sunday night, with 458 boil water notices in effect, according to the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ).

San Angeloans had already been boiling water for a couple of weeks prior to the Big Freeze, as documented all over.  The Texas Living Waters Project urges the Lege to use this session to address the long-running water infrastructure challenges laid bare by Winter Storm Uri.


The death toll in Houston so far is 51.  In Austin, 86.  The full tally may not be known for weeks. Environmentally, we all got crushed again.


Should I mention all of this as just the usual failure of Texas Republicans, Texas government generally ... or is it is a failure of capitalism?


What do you think it is ... if it's not?


It's not all bad news.  Some people out of state even stepped up to help.


And those plumbers from New Jersey, who've decided to stay in Houston awhile, plumbers being the people most needed right now.

Citrus farmers in the RGV, also devastated.  We're beginning the 15th month of 2020, it seems, even as the outlook for the pandemic brightens.


Dos Centavos tells us about his successful vaccination experience. And Robert Rivard for the San Antonio Report is firm about the need to continue taking the pandemic seriously.

Too long today to include election news, social justice/injustices, and all the rest of the usual Wrangling, so I'll add that tomorrow or later in the week.  Here's our wrap.

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Sunday, February 28, 2021

Sunday "Party Unity" Funnies

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Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Welcome, Joe Biden, to Texas. Here's a Round-up just for you.


I know you've been a little busy, Mr. President, and I don't want you to get the wrong impression; your sycophants are doing just fine in that regard.  You have, once again, a grand opportunity here in the Deep-In-The-Hearta to "build back better", not to mention bluer, and if you flunk this one, we'll all have that strong Republican Party you and Nancy Pelosi keep saying you want -- in Texas, and all across the country -- two years from now, and for another ten years or so after that.

Try not to fuck it up by making more promises you won't keep or telling outright lies about the amount of aid you say you will provide.

Speaking of grand deceptions ...
“If all consumers don’t benefit from this, we will have wasted our time and failed our constituency,” then-state Sen. David Sibley, a key author of the bill to deregulate the market, said when the switch was first unveiled in 1999. “Competition in the electric industry will benefit Texans by reducing monthly rates,” then-Gov. George W. Bush said later that year.


Here's the deal, though: we complain about these assholes when they're not working, and then we complain about them when they are.


In fairness, they know they're going to be busting their guts all summer in special session on redistricting, so they might as well take long weekends -- you know, the five-day kind, from Thursday through Monday -- every week until May.  They always cram all their work into a few late-night skull sessions anyway, and besides the job pays shit.  It's always been about the bennies, and Borris Miles will be the first one to tell you that chasing skirts around the Pink Dome ain't what it used to be.

Yeah, life is tough all over, especially for those ERCOT folks -- most of whom didn't live here anyway -- who just cut and ran away from their jobs.


Then again, it's not like they went to Utah last week.  Or Cancun.


You think any of those CEOs who live in California are having second thoughts about relocating their companies to Texas?


For me, the question used to come down to, "Why can't the Democrats in Texas figure out how to beat the worst Republicans in the nation?"  Looks like they're finally figuring out that they're worthless.


(Don't miss Kuffner's predictably saccharine take on this.)

Need mo' background on the Lone Star Epic Fails? Don't see ^there^, see here.

The TexTrib and ProPublica collaborated on the story about how the state repeatedly choked in protecting the grid from extreme weather.  Greg Palast emphasized that this all began when we got collectively "Lay'd" in the '90's by W. Bush.  Scott Braddock retweeted Mike Hixenbough's point about the Texas Railroad Commission escaping scrutiny regarding the frozen oil and gas pipeline infrastructure.  And Brad Friedman spoke to TSU professor Robert Bullard about the crisis.

"Texas prides itself on being the Lone Star State," (Bullard says). "But this severe weather event and the power outages and loss of water has shown us that we are the ALONE Star State. Our energy policy of 'go it alone', keep the federal government out, doesn't make any sense. And it's never made any sense. We need to rejoin the United States [and] rejoin the grid."

Of all the cartoonists I read -- and I read a lot -- the most consistently ironic is the conservative Ben Garrison.  There is a cottage industry that's sprung up around mocking out his cluelessness.


Yes, those damned windmills.  First they caused cancer, then they froze up (not in places like Norway or the Antarctic, but in West Texas), and now launching strikes on tanker trucks and bomb trains.


I'll have more on COVID, social injustices, whatever Biden says or does (or doesn't) later in the week. Here's a few giggles at Ted Cruz's expense.

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