Friday, April 30, 2021

"Briscoe Cain is His Name"* Week-Ending Wrangle


And Cain is what he raised yesterday at the state capital.

(Yesterday afternoon, self-described 'parliamentary guru') Rep. Briscoe Cain, the chair of the House Elections Committee made an unexpected move when he tried to replace the Senate’s priority voting bill with his own. His scheming fell short thanks to one abstention from Republican Travis Clardy and led to the bill being withdrawn, but it signals how contentious voting legislation has become.

Update 8:50 pm, April 29: The House Elections Committee passed SB 7 on a party-line vote 5-4 late Thursday night. In a committee substitute, Chairman Cain replaced the text of SB 7 with his bill, HB 6, and then proceeded without a public hearing because he argued the text of the substitute already received a hearing two weeks ago. Despite claims by Cain and Speaker Dade Phelan that the House priority voting restriction bill is very different from SB 7, they used this maneuver to move the Governor’s emergency item on election integrity faster as the session enters its final month. It also allows the two chambers to negotiate what they like (known as "conference committee") in each of their omnibus voting restriction bills to send to the Governor’s desk.

Before voting it out of committee, Democrats tried to add amendments to prevent intimidation by poll watchers and voter assistants’ mistakes from being criminalized and to collect data on the disparate racial impact of penalties in SB 7 and AG investigations opened from them. All were voted down also on party lines.

The outrage from the afternoon move couldn't even catch up to the evening's. That's how fast this House is working under Speaker Phelan's lead. Expect more of the same on the rest of their agenda.


And RoofieGate was quickly swept under the rug.


Yeah, they just don't give a shit what anybody thinks (unless you're voting in their primary election, that is). Speaking of elections, there's several happening around the state happening tomorrow, and one in the Fort Worth area for the Congressional vacancy. There should be a runoff in that one.


Some Texas Democrats were giddy, some more practical after Biden's speech Wednesday night, and the announcements previously that two Texans are heading to Washington to serve the president.


Not all good news for Team Donkey, though.


With respect to Gonzalez and ICE, I've already done all the pushing back on Twitter I'll be doing for now. Will wait to see what he does before commenting further, but don't have much in the way of expectations on reforms. ACAB.


I'll dedicate the rest of this post to catching up on topics I've neglected for awhile, so first up: environmental news.


Your takeaway from the poll below? Eleven percent of self-identified Texas Democrats either do not think -- or are unsure -- that climate change is happening.


'Not as bad as the TXGOP' is a bar too low, y'all. Do better.


And yes, we still have to fight our legislators to stop rewarding the oil companies and punishing the greens for trying to fix things.


A few COVID updates:


And some criminal and social justice developments.


I'll wrap this Wrangle with the latest from Boca Chica, or Starbase, or whatever they're calling it.


And a few soothers.


*With all apologies to Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Taco Tuesday, Hold the Roofie Wrangle



Texas suffers under many ailments, but one is not an overabundance of critical thinking.  Big Lies over inconvenient truths rule, man.


This was last Friday's news, which barely makes a ripple among the daily atrocities, it seems.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dispatched a top aide to the ERCOT operations center on the night the grid operator made the controversial decision to leave electricity prices at maximum levels -- a move blamed for creating a multi-billion dollar mess.

Abbott has squarely placed the blame for the blackout boondoggle on ERCOT, which operates the power grid, and called for its CEO to resign right after the lights started coming back on across Texas on Thursday, Feb. 18. The ERCOT board eventually fired its CEO.

Unmentioned while Abbott was distancing himself from the power outage fiasco and railing against ERCOT on TV: a top energy policy adviser, Ryland Ramos, spent the previous night -- and into early Thursday morning -- at the agency’s operations center in Taylor, outside of Austin. That’s where ERCOT’s high-tech control room, handling the flow of power to most Texans, is located.

Also on hand at the previously undisclosed meeting were Public Utility Commission Chair DeAnn Walker, an Abbott appointee who later resigned under bipartisan pressure, along with representatives of four of the major electric transmission and distribution companies in Texas.

Ramos returned to the operations center Friday morning, February 19 -- right after the price cap was lifted -- and stayed there most of the day, according to ERCOT visitor logs obtained by Hearst Newspapers.

Abbott spokesman Mark Miner said neither the governor nor Ramos “were involved in any way” in the decision to keep prices at the maximum, which contributed to bankruptcies and billions in losses that will reverberate in the Texas economy for years to come. He said Abbott wanted Ramos at the operations center because he felt ERCOT was spewing “disinformation” about the crisis.


Just helping get the power back on.  Keeping those price surges under control.  Looking out for us while we froze, every step of the way.  I'm sure nobody was scream-blaming anybody for anything, regardless of what the Guvnuh was saying publicly and nevermind those heads that tumbled off the chopping block a few days later.

One thing Abbott loves is his money.  He likes to raise it, he likes to control it, he likes to hand it out to his friends and supporters.  What he doesn't like to do is spend it on anything having to do with the public good.  How would that help him at all?


With all the money Abbott has collected over the years, you'd think we -- maybe I should say 'they', since it wasn't my money -- could have gotten a little better government for their investment.  Wonder how Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn and Rich Kinder's heirs and some of those other billionaires are feeling these days about those millions wasted.  Oh well, easy come easy go.  As $60 oil reminds us, at their level money is fungible.  Like people.  Especially poor people, poor sick people, children, old folks, and Brown and Black people.  And women.  Besides, the Texas Freeze really didn't kill that many Texans, comparatively.


As long as none of our freedumbs get sacrificed, it's all good.


I'm far from Ms. Abrams' biggest fan, but when she speaks -- and acts -- on voter suppression, it comes from an unfortunate wealth of experience and knowledge.  Pay attention, Texas.

Or don't, I suppose.  Maybe that's a big part of the problem here.


It's probably time for me to move on to another topic.  More Republicans behaving badly?  There's one we haven't had enough of lately.


I'm trying to care about the TX-6 election.  It's just not registering.  Mostly because there are 23 candidates, and the latest poll shows the wife of the deceased GOP incumbent and the lady Blue Dog with the Spanish surname leading.  That sounds about right to me. *zzzz*

Here I will make space to add some Tweets that emphasize the real absurdity of what we are all going through with the Lege at the moment.


Amber Briggle is the parent of a trans child.


Yes, this one is satire, but I'd rather the first two were as well.

Two environmental updates; not at all greasy or smoky.

I don't understand why ATT and Kroger, two companies I subsidize entirely too much, keep showing up on my shit list.


 But there's good news ...


I'm not through with Lege business yet.  When they're not moving the bad bills as fast as they can, they're stalling the good ones.


Dade Phelan is a Trump/Patrick/Abbott shithole conservative, and I will keep saying it until everybody gets it.  But guess what?  If you're wondering how bad we have it in Texas, just realize there are plenty of influential Texas conservatives who think he's too liberal.


(Not familiar with critical race theory?  It's not the boogeyman.  Tangentially, expect some long and long-winded bloviating on this topic from Gadfly shortly, if he hasn't posted about it already.  You know he's the expert on everything.)

Gerrymandering will be hot, but not until the special session, commencing sometime this summer (or perhaps fall), and it's worth boning up on now.


Fun to look forward to.  I've run long here again so I'll save the rest -- criminal and social justice posts and assorted what-not -- for tomorrow or the next day.  Here's the "calm down" portion.

You a fan of beer and bicycle riding?


ACL posted Denny Freeman's obituary.

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