Saturday, September 11, 2021

The 2022 dilemma for Texas Democrats


Not sure where to start, so for what few Team Blue friends I have left, I'll ease into this with some recent reporting (which, both inside and outside the state, has been terrific all year).  Jim Henson, whom regular followers know conducts the polling for UT and the TexTrib, does my aggregating.


You could stop with those two pieces if you didn't want your sensibilities offended by what comes next.  But I try as hard as I can to tell the truth here.  And the truth is brutal.


Toonist Mike Fluggenock's excerpt from The Atlantic above implies what I've been saying for awhile now: there will be no Congressional relief from the ravages of SB1 (or SB8), and the litigal and judicial remedies are far away and uncertain as hell.



And with redistricting teed up, Dems in Texas are in deep doo-doo.


Some of those who would be most likely to break the quarter-century losing streak at the statewide level -- Beto, a Castro -- realize these circumstances, and will not respond to the exhortations of those who wish to hang their hopes on someone, anyone, which without the FTP Act or a liberal SCOTUS would be more of an albatross around their neck than a laurel wreath on their head.

Still, it seems the best-connected TexDonks don't understand this.


Read the whole thing and weep (if you care, that is) at the elitist white privilege.


There's more, and it's worse.


Read all the replies. It turns out that "literally" does not mean literally.

This might be less embarrassing for Evan if no Democrat was actually running for Texas governor, but there are three listed here and a few more possibles here.  What Evan and Harold and others such as Charles Kuffner mean is both heavily insinuated and plainly stated: you're not worthy of consideration unless you can raise the millions of dollars necessary to hire political consultants to tell you what to do, who will earn commissions from TV, radio, and direct mail media buys, and so on and so forth.

As if this was the model of success for Texas Democrats over the past 25 years.  Repeating myself again: if Greg Abbott loses in 2022, it will be in the Republican primary, and 'money raised' won't have a got damn thing to do with it.

Abbott raised $2.27M during the first special session. His largest contributors for the period were Houston foundation president Nancy Kinder ($250K), Midland investor Douglas Scharbauer ($100K) and San Antonio alcoholic beverage distributor Alan Dreeben ($75K).

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Speaker Dade Phelan, Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Land Comm. George P. Bush (running for AG against Paxton), Agriculture Comm. Sid Miller and Railroad Comm. Wayne Christian -- all also on the GOP primary ballot in 2022 -- raised $450K combined during the same period.

Former Republican Party of Texas chair Allen West raised $404K during the period, including $160K from Lake Forest, Ill. shipping supply company owner Richard Uihlein. Texans supplied 42% of West’s contribution total. In addition to Uihlein, West raised $73K from out-of-state donors.

(Since I'm on this topic -- and since Chuckles Kuffner doesn't seem to be reporting it yet -- Lee Merritt, one of the two Democrats running for the right to take on Paxton in the fall of 2022, collected more than all of the AG GOP contenders combined.  So there's that.)


Still, Progress Texas keeps throwing out wish lists.


I simply don't think anyone who broke quorum and then slinked back to the Capitol -- that excuses Gilberto Hinojosa's daughter -- is going to be running for a promotion to the Mansion.  I could of course be mistaken.


There's a link in that story with a list, Do.

Remember: Kuff is the one who said this was always going to happen, so I suppose he's not as upset about it as others.  The Vote Blue No Matter Poo crew is like that.


I. Am. Not. Falling. For the Banana. In the Tailpipe. Trick. Again.

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Thursday, September 09, 2021

The Thursday Wrangle from Far Left Texas


People keep asking me: "Why do you call him Governor Fish Lips?"


SB8 -- the Texas abortion ban -- has been the hottest topic of the week, with more than enough media coverage to link to.  So I selected only a few of the secondary headlines, in case they got buried in your news review.


I'm leaving a lot out: the DOJ's announcement this morning, Mimi Swartz at Texas Monthly identifying the legal mind behind the bill, AOC's description of Abbott's ignorance.  Here's Amanda Marcotte from Salon about that.


Marcotte has it exactly right.  More Texas politics in the next post, under construction; wrapping up the Lege-between-specials business with a few more items before moving on to the rest.


Another fix-what-I-vetoed.

I thought I was caught up on environmental and criminal and social justice posts this week, but I wasn't.  So here's more of that news.


More Musk further down.  And a story I've been tardy on: meet the new Downwinders at Risk.


That's my segue.


Elizabeth Rossi of Civil Rights Corps and Amanda Woog of the Texas Fair Defense Project, writing at Grits for Breakfast, excoriate Harris County DA Kim Ogg and the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board for lining up behind the "tuff-on-crimers".  And Law and Crime tells us about a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas who has appointed himself the Emperor of ICE.

A couple of state policy developments worth noting:


If you still want to understand why Musk can pick up the phone, call Abbott, and say, "stop whatever it is you're doing and come out here and eat my ass", this time-lapse drone video of Musk's truck factory on the east side of Austin -- still under construction but nearing completion -- is nothing short of mind-blowing.

Wrapping today with these.

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Tuesday, September 07, 2021

The Tuesday Morning Wrangle from Far Left Texas




You won't find anything about Labor Day on Houston's longest-continuously published blog, but if you'd rather read about precinct data sorted by SBOE races, or some campaign finance reporting ... why are you here?


Moving on to some environmental news.


And the Texas Living Waters Project showcases a film that captures Houstonians’ memories of water outages during Winter Storm Uri.


Criminal and social justice developments include the following:


And a couple of updates (albeit aged) on two massive interstate expansion projects in Austin and Houston.


And the soothers.

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Monday, September 06, 2021

The Labor Day Wrangle



AUSTIN — All over America this weekend, people will be celebrating the achievements and advancements in society made by the labor movement. While some whose politics fall on the right side of the spectrum may only choose to use it an excuse to grill meats and drink beers, the truth is that Labor Day is all about celebrating unions and things like paid vacations, a forty-hour work week, and the minimum wage, all secured by the efforts of the labor movement.

In the Lone Star State however, a new executive order signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (Q-Gilead) means that Texans will be celebrating something else this weekend.

“With the stroke of this pen, I hereby designate this weekend as Forced Labor Day Weekend,” Abbott said as he signed the order. “We will gather together and honor the teenage rape victims who are forced by law to carry their stepdaddy’s baby to full term. We will celebrate the fact that here in Texas, we value every single life. Until it’s born, and then literally fuck off.”

Parades will be held in various cities and locales, Abbott announced.


In his new book, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, New Yorker writer Eyal Press profiles the workers we won't see politicians sidling up to for photo ops this Labor Day. He writes about drone operators, prison guards, poultry plant workers, and oil riggers. They do our dirty work and, as Press shows, they pay a price for it.

Flor Martinez, a Texas poultry plant worker, devours painkillers at the end of her grueling shifts. Stephen Stone's dangerous job on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig puts him in the way of a massive explosion that almost cost him his life. But Press is most interested in documenting a kind of hazard that is not typically accounted for in government safety reports: what he calls "moral injury." He borrows the term from military psychologists. It describes the impact of having to carry out tasks that violate a person's core sense of self.

Those psychic injuries can take a physical toll. Harriet Krzykowski, a mental health counselor, is so traumatized by the moral compromises her harrowing prison job entails that her hair begins to fall out in clumps. An analyst with the military's drone program suffers headaches, night chills and joint pain. Press' project is to ensure that a complacent public — those of us who consider ourselves at a remove from the jobs he describes — takes responsibility for our part in creating the conditions that allow "dirty work" to occur.


Praise the few victories and the fighters.


And prepare for the battle ahead.

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