Way to be on top of it, Ed

KTRK's Ted Oberg advances the ball on the Big Sheriff Is Watching You story.

It's no surprise that when Sheriff Thomas was sued, the county's lawyers wanted to know who was suing. That's pretty standard in any lawsuit. To do that background work, the county attorney has 10 investigators on his staff. You pay those investigators - nearly $721,000 a year in salary alone, but in this case - with the sheriff being sued himself - his office didn't call the county attorney at all.

Instead the surveillance instead was done by the sheriff's investigative support unit - a group of detectives led by Major Juan Jorge.

Jorge is the one according to the sheriff's office who ordered and supervised the surveillance mission and he isn't returning our calls.

If his detectives came up with anything they certainly didn't write it down or even document their trip to the house. We checked.

We have every report or document the investigative support unit created in the last two years - that doesn't concern an ongoing investigation. And there's nothing, not even a single document or email, on the Ibarra surveillance. So whatever they found they never passed it on, leading to the still unanswered question - why were they doing it and what did they find?

My guess? They found nothing, because if they had found anything remotely unsavory, they'd have found a way to publicize it, or to use it in the trial. But they got bupkis, so they did what they could to bury the whole thing. Thankfully, they were as effective at that as they were at digging the dirt.

Your County government at work:

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett in his first comments on the issue admits he's talked to the Sheriff about the surveillance.

Ted Oberg: Have you asked the sheriff why he did it?
Judge Ed Emmett: No.
Oberg: Have you asked any questions about the surveillance?
Emmett: We had a brief conversation.
Oberg: Have you asked the sheriff any questions about whether he knew it was going on or why?
Emmett: No I did not.
Oberg: What questions have you asked the Sheriff?
Emmett: That's between me and the sheriff.
Oberg: You're also the leader of county government and we'd like to know what you are doing to address this issue?
Emmett: I think what I am doing is very public.

But he's not doing anything on the surveillance issue. It is in his mind a settled legal case and he is leaving it the sheriff to decide if anything needs to be done now or in the future.

Ted Oberg: In this instance, is it right or wrong?
Judge Ed Emmett: In this circumstance, I will not talk about it. It's a settled case.

As Oberg notes, the Ibarras are talking about filing another suit, which would make this case rather unsettled right now. Last month, the question was asked by blogHouston when "some grownup in Harris County government [would] insist to Sheriff Thomas that he's wasted enough of the public's money". Apparently, Judge Emmett is not interested in being that grownup. Note also that Sheriff Thomas isn't speaking about this, so as yet, we have no answers as to why this surveillance, which should have been conducted by the County Attorney's office, was done in this fashion. Any more questions about why it's time for a change in Harris County?

Business tax turmoil

Not too surprisingly, small businesses are complaining about the new margins tax even though it still hasn't been officially collected yet.

Small businesses launched a fresh push to change the revamped franchise tax Thursday, saying they're facing huge increases that will force them to raise prices and put off hiring people or making planned purchases.

"It's a boondoggle that's nailed small business to the wall," said Kurt Summers, an Austin businessman with the National Federation of Independent Business/Texas.

He spoke at a meeting of the coalition, which includes NFIB/Texas, the Independent Electrical Contractors of Texas, Air Conditioning Contractors of America Texas Chapter, Associated Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors of Texas and Texas Courier & Logistics Association.

There was a suggestion of a ballot-box backlash based on the tax, which hasn't yet been collected. Tax reports had been due Thursday, but State Comptroller Susan Combs pushed that back to June 16.

Asked if the issue would affect how he votes in November, Jason Miller of San Antonio-based Dependable Express didn't hesitate: "Absolutely. I'm definitely going to look out for those that are going to look out for us."

His wife, Shelly Miller, said their company, because it was organized as a limited liability partnership, didn't have to pay the previous franchise tax. She said figures are being worked on but that she can already tell that the new tax bill will be higher than they'd expected.

"The money we had set aside to hire another person and purchase another large truck -- we're not able to offer that position and not able to buy" the vehicle, she said.

Rod Steinbrook of Supershot Delivery Service in Houston said he's expecting an increase from about a $500 bill under the old franchise tax to either $11,000 or $15,000 under the new tax, depending how it's figured.

"We'll have to raise prices," he said. "We're hampered with the fuel costs, also."

I have some sympathy for these folks. This tax is the sort of public policy you get when you have unwieldy restrictions like the constitutional ban on a state income tax and a shortsighted head-in-the-sand political environment that forbids any rational talk about the appropriate level and distribution of taxation. One reason why this tax made it through was the lack of opposition from the big corporations, who knew they'd make up the difference in property tax cuts. The smaller guys got shafted, and I can't blame them for being upset and wanting to do something about it.

But the sympathy only goes so far. The fact was that the old franchise tax was a joke, and was in dire need of replacement. Whether the margins tax is the best we can do, given current conditions, is certainly debatable, but what shouldn't be debatable is the idea that some form of business tax, one that actually gets levied on most businesses, is a requirement for a tax system in today's economy. Simply repealing it doesn't solve anything, especially given that this tax was imposed to (partially) pay for the massive property tax cuts of 2006. In an ideal world, we'd burn the whole thing down and start over from scratch, but since that will inevitably lead to verboten topics like an income tax, that ain't gonna happen. All I'm saying is that in the absence of a complete reboot, we need to accept the idea that the tax burden needs to be shared more broadly if we're serious about offering relief to anyone who really needs it.

Astrodome lease in the works

We may finally have an agreement for what to do with the Astrodome.

Entrepreneurs seeking to reinvent the Astrodome as an upscale convention hotel have reached a proposed lease agreement with the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp., county officials said today.

But before the deal can become a reality, the sports corporation will enter into what are expected to be thorny negotiations with the Houston Texans and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo over whether the convention hotel would violate their rights.

"We expect that when the rodeo gets this, they will have questions, and there will be negotiating and compromising," said County Attorney Mike Stafford.

The proposed lease was expected months ago, but it took the sports corporation longer than expected to work out details because the county attorney's office has been reviewing it carefully, Stafford said.

The last update I have on this was February 20. I sometimes forget it's still out there, in need of some form of resolution. The last real news had to do with the quarrel between County Judge Ed Emmett and the rest of Commissioners Court over whether or not to give Astrodome Redevelopment more time to negotiate a lease. I'm not even sure what deadlines were still in effect, if any.

Commissioners Court will have final whether the convention hotel goes forward.

The court could decide to approve the deal without getting the Texans and the rodeo to sign off on it. But a top rodeo official has threatened to file a lawsuit if the rodeo believes that its rights are violated.

Whether the deal happens "depends on the will of Commissioners Court," Stafford said. "If their will is strong enough, I think this (proposal) will be carried out."

It's been six months since the Texans and the Rodeo first voiced their complaints. You'd think there could at least have been some back-room negotiations going on with them. I think in the end, this is likely to go forward regardless. But it would be nice if we could avoid another lawsuit.

The proposed 50-year lease calls for Astrodome Redevelopment to pay the county $2.5 million in rent, plus 2 percent of adjusted gross revenues annually. Astrodome Redevelopment has estimated the county could receive about $6 million annually from rent and its share of adjusted gross revenues.

The rent would rise 3 percent every fifth year. And the county would receive 3 percent of adjusted gross revenues annually starting the hotel's sixth year of operations.

I've said before that I'm basically okay with this concept. If some private company wants to spend its own money trying to make a successful go at a hotel/convention center from the Dome, I say knock yourselves out. This ought to relieve the County of its ongoing expenses with the Dome, and who knows, it might even work. As long as we won't be left holding the bag in the event it doesn't work, I see no harm in this.

Name one, John!

Seems to me if you're going to go on the record to condemn a bill for containing pork-barrel provisions, you ought to be able to name at least one such provision in said bill if asked to do so. You know, to demonstrate that you've at least read the bill that you're condemning. Otherwise, this may happen:

John Culberson (R-TX): ...it contains provisions that have nothing to do with our troop's survival and safety in the field. To burden our troops with pork, with tax increases, with special provisions that have nothing to do with the war, adds to, I think, the obvious misuse of the process and I urge members to vote against the pork and support our troops.

David Obey (D-WI): I yield myself 30 seconds...I'd like the gentleman from Texas to point out a single piece of member pork in this bill.

Culberson: Does the gentleman yield?

Obey: Yes.

Culberson: Mr., Mr. Chairman, there's a number of un-un-unnecessary provisions in this...

Obey: Name one.

Culberson: Well, why are we separating out, sir, why aren't we just passing...

Obey: (nearly yelling) Name one.

Culberson: Why are we...

Obey: (yelling, finger pointing) Can you name one or can't you? The fact is there is not a single piece of member pork in this bill. You ought to...

(pounding gavel, "time expired")

Culberson: (inaudible)...why are we passing provisions in this bill with tax increases?

There's video as well, so go see for yourself. Sometimes it's just too easy, you know? Oh, and support Michael Skelly. Among other things, he won't do that.

Lose that highway

Imagine if instead of building more highways we got rid of some of them, or at least relocated them.

Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state's busiest highway.

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway -- an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 -- will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

More than a dozen cities have proposals to remove highways from downtowns. Cleveland wants to remove a freeway that blocks its waterfront. Syracuse, N.Y., wants to rid itself of an interstate that cuts the city in half.

[...]

In the 1950s and '60s, mayors, governors and planners thought downtown highways would help keep cities alive by paving the way for suburban commuters to get in and out. Today, many of those same groups view downtown highways as a plague, wrecking neighborhoods, dividing cities and blocking waterfronts. Many big cities have long-term plans that call for eliminating some downtown highways or reducing their scale.

The future of many of these highways will be decided in the next few years because the old roads are nearing the end of their life expectancies. The federal, state and local governments must decide whether it's smarter and cheaper to renovate highways or to build new routes.

Some cities want traffic routed around downtowns. Others want tunnels or highways that pass under streets. A number of cities want to close highways and replace them with -- nothing.

In Oklahoma City, the interstate will be moved five blocks from downtown to an old railroad line. The new 10-lane highway, expected to carry 120,000 vehicles daily, will be placed in a trench so deep that city streets can run atop it, as if the highway weren't there.

The old highway will be converted into a tree-lined boulevard city officials hope will become Oklahoma City's marquee street.

By tearing down the Crosstown Expressway, the city hopes to spur development of 80 city blocks stretching from downtown to the Oklahoma River -- an area that contains vacant lots, car repair shops and a few small homes.

"We've always been a good place to live, but we've never had a city we could show off," Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett says. "Moving the expressway makes it possible for a day to come when hundreds or thousands of people will live downtown."

Imagine what Houston's downtown might look like if the elevated highways that bound it had been built as tunnels instead. Midtown, south of the I-45 Pierce Elevated, might not have been the blighted wasteland that served as post-apocalyptic Detroit in the Robocop movies back in the 80s. The just-beginning-to-gentrify areas immediately east of US59 might have been a part of downtown all along instead of being spoken of as an extension of its boundaries. Obviously we can't know what things might look like now, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

And it's something we should think about, because there's clearly value to be added by not situating highways where they will detract from the surrounding areas.

Many unpopular highways run along rivers or lakes. The path made sense when they were built because the route was flat, in existing rights-of-way and connected highways and busy ports.

Now, especially in old, industrial cities, waterfronts are often vacant, leaving the prettiest scenery blighted by highways carrying traffic passing through.

Cleveland wants to convert its West Shoreway, next to Lake Erie, from a 50-mph freeway into a tree-lined boulevard. "There was less appreciation for the scenic value of waterfront when the shoreway was built," says Cleveland Planning Commission director Robert Brown. "We need to connect the city to its parks and lakefront again."

That's not our problem in Houston, but our highways still pack an awful lot of ugly in them. Think about how I-45 from Intercontinental Airport into downtown looks now, and then consider the vision presented by the I-45 Parkway. Which looks better to you? Sure, that vision costs more, but the aesthetic has value, and that value should be taken into account when considering the costs of each alternative if we want to make a fully informed decision.

In other cities, highways cut cities in half. "It's our very own Berlin Wall," Syracuse, N.Y., council member Van Robinson says of I-81.

Like many urban interstates, I-81 demolished a black neighborhood. The interstate has created a tale of two cities: thriving Syracuse University on one side, struggling downtown on the other.

I-45 did that, too, to the Fourth Ward and Freedmen's Town. Those neighborhoods are revitalizing now, but in doing so they are pricing out the folks who were there before it was cool. And, as is typical for Houston, the rebuilding of those neighborhoods wipes out much of its history. Some of that can and will be preserved, but no matter what happens, the people who were displaced, and the people who wound up on the "wrong side" of the metaphorical tracks can't ever be compensated enough for what they lost.

Anyway. I don't ever foresee Houston seriously considering these options - we recently spent a ton of money renovating the Pierce Elevated, so even if we would consider them, it wouldn't be any time soon - but it's worth thinking about, if only to imagine what it might be like.

The Rosenthal investigation

After being rebuffed by interim DA Ken Magidson on the existence and/or status of an investigation into Chuck Rosenthal's email activities while he was in office, Rick Casey turns to the feds Attorney General's office and finds them much more loose-lipped.

I asked Magidson because Bert Graham, who served as acting district attorney for a month before Gov. Rick Perry appointed Magidson to replace Rosenthal, had told me that the attorney general's office had offered assistance in a criminal investigation of the disgraced DA.

The attorney general's office had dropped an earlier investigation when Rosenthal had resigned, but that investigation was to determine whether he should be removed, not indicted.

"We are not going to comment on whether there is an investigation," Magidson declared forcefully. "It would be unethical and improper."

[...]

I suggested to Magidson that the Rosenthal controversy was a matter of public concern. The evidence that he had used his staff computer for his political campaign had emerged from court records made public in a federal lawsuit.

Some citizens might believe Rosenthal had paid enough of a price by losing his job and his reputation. But others might take the position that a district attorney, of all people, should be prosecuted if he committed a crime. Either way, the public has an interest in the decision and the reasons behind it.

"I don't care what the public thinks," Magidson retorted. "I will do what is right."

I think Casey raises a reasonable point here. The things that Rosenthal did that would lead to an investigation of him are well known. He resigned his office over them because of their possible illegality as well as their impropriety. The AG's office was involved initially to see if there were grounds to force him to resign, before he finally spared them the trouble. Frankly, I think most people have been assuming all along there's an investigation, because that possibility has been part of the discussion from the beginning. Given all these circumstances, I don't think it would compromise Chuck Rosenthal's privacy to confirm or deny the existence of a formal investigation. At the very least, I don't think the question is as clearcut as Magidson makes it to be, however honorable the sentiment behind it is.

A few minutes after our conversation, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott returned the call I had placed to him asking for information on any Rosenthal investigation.

"What's your fax number?" he asked.

A few minutes later I had copies of an exchange of letters between Magidson and Eric J.R. Nichols, deputy AG for criminal justice.

[...]

So it appears Magidson is, indeed, conducting an investigation. His use of the assistance offered by the attorney general will spare his staff from the awkwardness (and possible conflicts) of assisting in the investigation of their former boss.

I think it is appropriate that there is an investigation, and though I don't think much of our Attorney General, it's better for that office to be handling it. I look forward to seeing the result of their efforts.

The top ten science hoaxes

Another top ten list, though I don't feel as strongly about this one's contents. It feels a bit too oriented towards modern phenomena, as such lists often are, but I'd have to do a little research before I could do more than just quibble about it. I will say, it's a shame that the potato-powered server doesn't work. Check it out. Link via Beyond Bones.

California Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage

Good for them.

The California Supreme Court decided today that same-sex couples should be permitted to wed, ruling that gay unions must be given the "respect and dignity" of marriage.

In a 4-3 vote, the court became the first in the country to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation. The Massachusetts high court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in 2003, but under a different legal theory.

The court held that people have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice and struck down marriage laws limiting matrimony to opposite-sex couples as a violation of the state constitution's equal protection guarantees.

"One of the core elements embodied in the state constitutional right to marry is the right of an individual and a couple to have their own official family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationships of other couples," wrote Chief Justice Ronald M. George, joined by Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

State laws that have limited gay unions to domestic partnerships "impinge upon the fundamental interests of same-sex couples," George wrote.

To me, this is a no-brainer. From a civil perspective, marriage is a contract that confers certain benefits on each partner, like inheritance rights and various tax breaks. It has nothing to do with morality or religion. If the Catholic Church or John Hagee or whoever want nothing to do with marrying same-sex couples, this ruling changes nothing about that. Isn't that how it should be?

The question, as Stace puts it, is whether this restores gays to the spot of #1 target for Republican candidates, or if immigrants remain in place as the new gays, politically speaking. Personally, I think the message of the special Congressional elections this year is that the voters aren't paying a whole lot of attention to this kind of campaigning - bigger issues, like the war and the economy and the price of food and gas, are higher priorities in their minds. Have the Republicans learned that lesson, or will they lean on old familiar ways? I wouldn't put it past them, that's all I know.

I have statements from Equality Texas and Freedom to Marry beneath the fold. Let's enjoy this win; it's well-deserved. E.J. Graff has more.

MORE...

"Crazy ants"

Um, ew?

In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

The hairy, reddish-brown creatures are known as "crazy rasberry ants" -- crazy, because they wander erratically instead of marching in regimented lines, and "rasberry" after Tom Rasberry, an exterminator who did battle against them early on.

"They're itty-bitty things about the size of fleas, and they're just running everywhere," said Patsy Morphew of Pearland, who is constantly sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. "There's just thousands and thousands of them. If you've seen a car racing, that's how they are. They're going fast, fast, fast. They're crazy."

The ants -- formally known as "paratrenicha species near pubens" -- have spread to five Houston-area counties since they were first spotted in Texas in 2002.

The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

"At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.

The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.

That's a relief, because apparently they're hard to kill, can cause problems due to their attraction to electrical charges, and stack their dead to cross safely over places that have been sprayed with pesticides. Did I already say "ew"? Because I think I need to say it again.

Mincberg calls out Emmett's ethics task force

Remember this?

Amid his election campaign and a wave of ethics controversies in county government, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett christened an ethics task force Wednesday with the aim of placing new restrictions on officials' on-the-job behavior and relationships with business friends.

"It's clear we need some improvements," Emmett said, "and it's a shame that the work of 16,000 county employees could be tainted by scandals involving a few."

After studying government ethics guidelines across the nation, the task force will report to Emmett in three months on rules changes that can be adopted by the county or would have to be approved first by state lawmakers. Then the county judge will try to get backing for the changes from the four county commissioners.

That was reported on February 14, meaning it's now been three months since then. Which led David Mincberg to wonder where that report is.

"I'm surprised Ed Emmett failed to follow through on this promise," Mincberg said in a statement. "He's simply dropped the ball. We need an independent Board of Ethics that is both free of politics and gets the job done."

Emmett did not specifically remember setting a 90-day deadline, but he acknowledged he may have said that at the press conference. Still, he did not sound concerned about the delay.

"I have purposely set up the task force to go do their work without interference from me or any other politician," he said.

Emmett spokesman Joe Stinebaker said the panel is working on a broad outline of changes they'd like to see, such as what should be disclosed, who they can require to disclose it and who they actually want to require to disclose it. The recommendations should be ready by the end of the summer, he said.

In other words, about three months later, assuming no further delays, of course. Has no one ever explained the concept of underpromising and overdelivering to Ed Emmett? He even got a little reminder about the report's due date a couple of weeks ago. Gotta do better than that. Mincberg's full press release is beheath the fold.

MORE...

New Whole Foods coming

It's to be built near where I used to live, on the last open plot of land in what's now a pretty dense corridor.

Whole Foods Market plans to build a store between downtown and River Oaks as part of a 13-acre development that will include apartments and shops.

The Austin-based natural and organic grocery chain will lease the northeast corner of West Dallas and Waugh from the Finger Cos., the firms said Tuesday.

Alongside the market, the Houston-based developer is preparing to build a six-story, 445-unit apartment complex on the property. Construction will start early next year.

"It's a great intersection," president and CEO Marvy Finger said. "It's very exciting."

Plans for the site, along West Dallas between Montrose and Waugh, call for additional retail space and possibly a high-rise residential tower.

Finger said the project will tie into the AIG office complex, to the north of the site.

Years ago, when I lived on Van Buren just off of West Dallas, there was a little family-owned cafeteria where this is now - I can't remember the name any more, but it had been there for decades. It closed in 1994 or so and was eventually torn down, leaving the now-vacant lot that is to be built on. Most of the south side of West Dallas, from Waugh where the CVS and Pei Wei now are all the way down to LaRue, across the street from Nino's and Vincent's restaurants, was vacant as well. It made for some good places to let your dog run around back then, but it's all townhouses now.

"That whole corridor is getting very urban," said Scott Shillings, senior vice president of Staubach Retail.

Area land prices are more than $100 per square foot, according to David Cook of real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

No kidding. You can see what some of the neighboring area looks like in my Montrose Density photo essay. There are still the lots at Montrose to develop, but once this and the new development on the site of the old Allen House apartments are built, pretty much all of West Dallas from Shepherd to I-45 will be a very dense, very urban corridor. It's a huge change from even ten years ago.

Robinson versus Peveto, the continuing story

Back in 2006, I blogged about a battle between Pam Robinson, the owner of Walter's on Washington, and some neighbors - the Pevetos - who apparently don't like the noise. (She's had this problem before at a previous location on Durham - see here and here for details.) Now according to John Nova Lomax, she's fighting back.

[Robinson] filed suit against the Pevetos for tortious interference with contract, private nuisance, harassment, business disparagement, abuse of process and actionable civil conspiracy. They are asking for a temporary restraining order, a permanent injunction against the noise complaints, and damages.

The Pevetos aren't backing down -- last month, they returned Robinson's volley by taking their tale of woe to the mayor and city council at a hearing in City Hall. A few days later, Robinson told that same august body her side of the same story.

"It was very frustrating," Robinson says. "I don't like hypocrites, and I sat there for over an hour listening to people go on and on about false burglar alarms. The council and the mayor were saying that someone needs to pay for this, that it was a waste of police time and resources. And I went, 'Oh boy, wait till I get up there and I tell them about my 212 false alarm noise complaints. They should pay, and the only one paying is me.'"

That's right. There have been 212 noise complaint calls about Walter's, and so far, according to Robinson's attorney, only one has resulted in a citation, and even that one was dismissed. (Robinson says that three were made when the club wasn't even open.) Additionally, both Walter's and the Peveto residence are mere blocks from one of the busiest rail-freight terminals in America. Why don't all those long trains running bother the Pevetos?

"At what point is enough enough?" asks Robinson, in Bob Dylan mode. "I think [city council] did understand my plight, that yes, it does interfere with my business when the police show up, even though we're not doing anything wrong. We're not squirming when they come; we meet 'em, we greet 'em, we shake their hand. We don't scatter like rats!"

"I should just be deemed not a nuisance and left alone," she says.

I've said before and I'll say again, I sympathize with Robinson here. She and her bar were there first. I don't know how you can move into a locale like the Pevetos did and not have any idea about what goes on there. And I think Robinson raises a good point about the number of police calls the Pevetos have made. One way or another, the city should do something to solve the underlying problem, either by charging the Pevetos for false alarms, or trying to shut Robinson down for being a persistent violator. The current situation is clearly untenable.

A brief history of the Pig Stand

The Observer has a nice story on the history of the Pig Stands, which sadly went into bankruptcy in 2006, thus causing the Houston location on Washington to close.

The year was 1921, and America was crazy for bathtub gin, hot jazz, and Henry Ford's Tin Lizzie, which sold a million that year and ruled the roads.

In North Texas, two far-sighted entrepreneurs opened a modest eatery on the busy Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike that would change the way Americans ate.

Upsetting convention, their tiny "Pig Stand" had no dining room. Instead, it offered speedy curb service to hungry motorists, allowing them to grab a quick bite behind the wheel.

"People with cars are so lazy, they don't want to get out of them," was the sentiment attributed to Jessie G. Kirby, one of the Pig Stand founders.

The somewhat unflattering insight rang true.

[...]

"It was an early, pioneering effort to bring fast food to the motorist. As the first drive-in, it introduced a lot of new elements that later became popular," says historian Dwayne Jones, now executive director of the Galveston Historical Foundation.

"They really started it: the image building. The use of the pig. The use of neon. And very quickly, they adopted a corporate building form, the pagoda, which would be the image of the Pig Stand for the next 20 years," says Jones, who has written a brief history of the chain.

Along the way, the Pig Stand introduced such gastronomical innovations to the national menu as Texas toast, deep-fried onion rings, and a regional tour de force: the chicken-fried steak sandwich.

[...]

Crazy as it sounds, the once-mighty, pioneering chain could make a comeback if the right pieces fall into place, according to [Vincent] Liuzza, the [bankruptcy] trustee.

"I grew up in the restaurant business, and this is a real unique thing. It has a lot more value than the numbers we're talking about today if someone can use the history," Liuzza says.

"I believe there is some restaurant company that will pay several million dollars for the brand. They could build a chain on that name and be the oldest drive-in in the world," he says.

Then, perhaps, this pig could truly fly.

We can only hope. Check it out.

Big Sheriff is watching you

Unbelievable.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office acknowledged Tuesday that deputies were assigned to watch two brothers who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the department over their arrest during a 2002 drug raid.

Sheriff's Capt. John Martin said one or two members of the department's investigative support unit conducted surveillance on Erik and Sean Ibarra for five or six hours over a three-day period last October.

While Martin and First Assistant County Attorney John Barnhill said the unit did nothing illegal, the Ibarras are threatening to sue.

South Texas College of Law professor Adam Gershowitz said the department's actions may have opened the door for a harassment or invasion of privacy lawsuit.

"It certainly doesn't make it good policy or acceptable just because it's not criminal," Gershowitz said.

I think "vindictive" might be a good descriptor here. The only possible reason to be doing this is to hope, however vainly, that you can catch them doing something illegal - moderately suspicious or embarassing will do in a pinch if you're doing video surveillance - and use it at trial to attack their character. Does any of that sound like a good use of public resources?

Lloyd Kelley, the brothers' attorney, said he was preparing to sue on behalf of the Ibarras and other people who sued the department and believe they were trailed by deputies.

"I just don't see how the sheriff's department can continue this kind of reign of terror," Kelley said.

Martin dismissed Kelley's accusations, describing the surveillance as a routine step in preparing for trial.

He said he was not sure what the deputies were looking for, other than "background information." Nothing useful came from the surveillance, beyond confirmation of the Ibarras' address, he added.

Oh, spare me. I just said what they were looking for. You can call it "background information" if you want, but that doesn't change anything.

He said the unit has conducted similar operations in the past for the county attorney's office, usually in workers' compensation cases. He said he could not say how much was spent on surveillance of the Ibarras because it was part of the unit's normal operations.

"We're not talking about some long, drawn-out, resource-intensive operation," he said.

Barnhill said the county attorney's office did not request the surveillance in this case. He said the office has 10 investigators who handle that work, though the sheriff's department may have assisted once or twice.

Translation: Mike Stafford, who has enough problems of his own to worry about, wants no part of these shenanigans. You're on your own, bubba.

Gershowitz said it was normal for attorneys to gather background information before trial, but it would be unusual for the person or entity being sued to do the spying.

"It just sort of looks bad," he said. "They may have had the best of intentions, although it's hard to see that, but it looks inappropriate."

Houston City Councilman Adrian Garcia, who is running for sheriff as a Democrat, said the department abused its authority.

Garcia is holding a press conference this afternoon, so I imagine he'll have a lot more to say about this. Here's KTRK video about this story, from Monday and yesterday. You can count on there being more to this as well.

The city budget for 2009

The Mayor's proposed budget for 2009 has something for everyone, which no doubt also means something for everyone to complain about.

Mayor Bill White unveiled a record $4 billion budget proposal Tuesday, calling for a sharp increase in spending on public safety while cutting the property tax rate by a half-cent.

The mayor's fiscal 2009 budget also would, if approved, create a dedicated set-aside of tax revenues to pay for drainage improvements, fund the addition of 150 police officers and add 50,000 homes to the curbside recycling program.

"Because we've enjoyed strong economic growth, and because we're running City Hall more efficiently, we can afford a tax rate cut of half a penny per $100 of valuation to bring our tax rate down," White said.

City revenue is projected to be $4.07 billion in the new fiscal year, which begins July 1. That would be an increase of 6.7 percent over the current fiscal year.

For the first time, the general fund -- the part of the budget paid for by property and sales taxes, fees and fines -- will top $2 billion. The remainder of the budget is made up of user fees for water, sewer, the airports and entertainment facilities.

"It's a big budget we have, but the citizens can be sure we have gone through it with a fine-toothed comb," White said. "Wherever we can find savings, we try to squeeze out savings, which is one reason we are able to deliver far more services with a lower tax rate."

The budget would provide an additional $105 million for police, fire and EMS. Public safety spending makes up 58 percent of the general fund.

I can't wait to hear the complaints from certain factions that both the tax cut and the increase in spending on police are too small. Why, if only we'd budget like the federal government has been doing these past few years, we could have more of each and have enough money left over to fund an invasion and occupation of Galveston. You just have to think outside the box a little, and not worry too much about what will happen after you're term-limited out.

New to this year's budget is a dedicated funding source for drainage improvements. Subject to council approval, 0.3 cents of every $100 in property value would be dedicated to flooding projects.

The rate would rise gradually, reaching 0.75 cent by 2017.

Next year, the set-aside could raise $2.6 million.

The city has scheduled $211 million in capital drainage improvements in its current five-year capital plan.

In his Looking Forward to 2008 essay, Noel Freeman called for the city "to set the budget for drainage infrastructure maintenance and improvements at no less than $100 million for FY2009 and to set a five year plan to increase that number to $150 million by FY2013". I don't know about the first part of that, but it would seem that the second condition has been more than met. Putting more resources into drainage improvements, especially as the city continues to densify, is a very good thing in my book.

Plug pulled on Philly wi-fi

Alas.

Question: What ever happened to municipal Wi-Fi?

Answer: Not much.

Unless you want to count Earthlink's announcement today that it will discontinue its municipal wireless network in Philadelphia, an experiment once touted as a new model of low-cost, public wireless access in cities.

After it became clear that the project would cost more than Earthlink had originally anticipated, the company sought to sell the $17 million network to a nonprofit group.

That effort fell through "due to unresolved issues among the city, Wireless Philadelphia and the nonprofit," Earthlink said. Wireless Philadelphia is the organization in charge of managing the network. Earthlink did not say which nonprofit it had approached.

Earthlink said it would ask a federal judge to allow it to remove its equipment from city streetlights and cap its liability for the failed project at $1 million.

Well, with Houston out of the picture, this is more of academic interest than anything else. Sort of the end of an era, really. Glenn Fleischmann sums it up.

If someone offered you $17m of outdated equipment on a network that never worked to specification that wasn't completed, and that already had known high annual costs, and which a private firm gave up as a bad job that they couldn't turn a dime on--would you take that deal? No. EarthLink will ultimately have to pay much more than $1m, I predict, and I suspect some of the settlement will leave gear in selected neighborhoods behind for more modest networking purposes. It's not going to be as easy as releasing a press release, although I haven't read the contract's provisions for this set of circumstances, and I'm not a lawyer.

The failure in Philadelphia, and EarthLink's exiting the entire muni-Fi business, represents the end of a bad model in which a company agreed to assume all risk and costs associated with building a public access network. When the assumptions were that networks would be cheaper and easier to build in 2005, and that citizens in many larger cities had few affordable broadband options, it made some sense to build a network on spec.

Three years into this, however, it's clear that that capital investment is 2 to 3 times higher than what was anticipated to reach a level of service quality that people will expect; that, when presented with potential competition, DSL and cable operators will slash prices and offer cheap 1-year or "lifetime" rates with long-term contracts; and that wireless broadband delivered via Wi-Fi isn't the best of ideas for indoor service.

If it contributed even in some small way to getting DSL and cable operators to slash prices and offer cheap longterm rates, then this was not a complete failure, though I suppose that's not of much comfort to EarthLink. Whether wi-fi was the best way to deliver this or not, I still think it's a worthy goal to make ubiquitous connectivity a reality. Dwight always thought it should be considered by cities to be a utility and delivered as a public service for free. Maybe that would have been a better way to go, assuming a reasonable cost model was possible. Maybe that will still happen in some form some day. For now, we've got some bubbles and that's about it. Thanks to Mr. Crap on Twitter (see, I told you this thing was more useful than you'd think) for the heads up.

Slow down, you move too fast

I know this will be a shock to everyone who drives in Houston, but so far the high price of gasoline does not appear to be having any effect on how fast people drive.

If drivers are slowing down to save money in response to soaring gasoline prices, the evidence was hard to find on the road last week in Houston.

Despite the fact that fuel efficiency for most automobiles drops sharply at speeds above 60 mph, a two-day visual survey showed sports cars, luxury cars, clunkers, motorcycles -- even a school bus -- motoring along at speeds that were neither economical nor environmentally friendly.

[...]

"You have to get where you're going," he said.

To check whether fuel costs had lightened motorists' feet as well as their wallets, a pair of Chronicle reporters and a photographer gassed up ($3.60 a gallon, regular) and hit the road Wednesday and Thursday afternoons with the cruise control set at 60 mph.

We covered all but two of the radial freeways, driving between downtown and Beltway 8, plus all of Loop 610, much of Texas 225 and half of the Sam Houston Tollway.

The tally: 1,021 vehicles passed us, and we passed 16, a ratio of about 64-to-1. On Thursday we were skunked 478-to-0.

We chose 60 mph because, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, most cars get their best mileage between 30 mph and 60 mph and because the legal speed limits on most of the area's freeways and tollway system are 60 mph and 65 mph.

[...]

About half the drivers seemed to be going only a little faster than we were, but the other half were really flying, so the average probably was around 70 mph.

Many of those in the biggest hurry drove some of the least thrifty vehicles, including pickups, SUVs and 18-wheelers.

Boy howdy is that even less of a shock. Knock me over with a feather, ya know?

Just a guess here, but I'd bet that a lot of people really haven't internalized the concept that increased speed means worse gas mileage. According to the government, which provides a handy if somewhat generic chart, "you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas". That's based on gas at $3.51 a gallon, so with prices already higher than that, you're sailing past $4 a gallon as well. I think people know at some level that faster driving means less fuel economy, but I doubt many of them have numbers in their head to make it tangible. You tell me - does putting it in these terms change your perception?

By the way, if anyone out there drives an RV, the effect is even more pronounced for those vehicles. You'll see your fuel economy cut in half as you go from 45 MPH to 70. Ouch.

Perry says again that he's running again

From last week:

For those who didn't hear -- or believe -- him the first time, Gov. Perry said again today that he is running for reelection in 2010.

He told reporters at a public event in Fredericksburg that he is like the chief executive of a successful corporation and definitely planned to seek a third full term.

"I look at it like this, is that if Texas were a corporation -- and we would be one of the most efficient, most successful corporations in the world -- and if you're a stockholder in that corporation, why in the world would you want to change your CEO when things are going well?" he said, according to the Associated Press.

I like Brown Bess' comment that at the 2006 shareholders' meeting, 61% of them voted for a different CEO. Perry was fortunate that his opposition that year was fractured. He won't be so lucky next time.

By the way, not that I consider these things to be representative of anything, but it's still amusing to see that no one defended Perry in the comments to that post. I know he claims not to pay attention to things like his approval ratings, but you have to figure his advisers are aware of them. I wonder how they plan to deal with it if he really is serious about ginning it up again in 2010. Do they believe his "successful CEO" schtick? I have a hard time imagining it, but stranger things have happened.

Mount Rush Hour revisited

When I snapped a picture of David Adickes' latest installation, on I-10 just north of downtown, I assumed (Adickes being a Presidential-sculpture guy and all) that all four of the giant heads on display belonged to US Presidents. I see now that this was a wrong assumption. Page 53 of the May edition of 002 Magazine has the explanation:

These four men are nicknamed "Mount Rush Hour," Adickes tells us, "but its real title is Tribute to American Statesmanship. I define a statesman as someone who cares more for the country than his/her own political career. And Lawd knows, we need some. The four figures: Washington, Lincoln, Houston, and Stephen F. Austin were truly statesmen."

OK then. My identification of the two on the left as Franklin Pierce and Martin Van Buren didn't make much sense from that perspective, so I'm glad to have this cleared up. And a tip of the hat to Jeff N for not being as blinkered as I was and calling the Sam Houston bust correctly.

Times are tough if you work for tips

Yet another story in the Chron about the effect of the bad economy and higher prices on ordinary Americans.

Amid a tottering economy, rising inflation, increasing unemployment and a housing market meltdown, waiters, beauticians and pet groomers report that customers are growing tightfisted.

It is hard to determine just how much people are cutting back on tipping, but the stakes are huge.

The restaurant industry in the U.S. employs 13.1 million people, making it the nation's third-largest employer, behind the federal government and the health-care industry, according to the National Restaurant Association, a trade organization.

Many others work for carwashes, nail salons, taxi companies and in other jobs in which tips play a role in their wages.

The slowdown in tips is another blow for increasingly squeezed service workers who often don't have much of a cushion to fall back on when times get tough. Some restaurants have closed in recent months or have begun scaling back and laying off employees.

[...]

On a typical Saturday night, Brian Best once earned as much as $200 in tips as a server at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. at Universal CityWalk in Hollywood. Since the fall, Best's tip take has slid to about $120 on a weekend night.

"People just don't have the money. They will go out to eat, but won't tip as much," Best said.

He now receives 10 percent to 15 percent of what his customers spend at the eatery, down from 15 percent to 20 percent before the economy's nose dive.

"I am hanging out a lot less at clubs and bars. I don't have the money," Best said.

Remember the "Trickle-Down Effect"? It would seem to be at play here. I just hope we all can hold on till January 21, because we're not going to get any help before then.

Obama's voter registration drive in Texas

This is encouraging news.

In a sign that Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama is not prepared to concede Texas to the Republicans in the fall, his campaign announced an intensive voter registration effort beginning [Saturday] in the state's four largest media markets -- Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.

The kickoff will be a training effort for volunteers to seek out the unregistered Texans who fit the profile of a Democratic voter. The effort could affect several down-ballot races, including a couple of Tarrant County state House contests, Democratic analyst Kelly Fero said Friday.

"Texas is definitely in play, more so down the ballot in state Senate and House races than in the presidential," said Fero, who's not aligned in this year's presidential sweepstakes. "But the presidential race will significantly shape some of the down-ballot races and create a tide that could sweep incumbents out of office and challengers into office."

The smart money back in March held that once the Democratic primary ended, whoever got the presidential nomination would need Texas only for its deep-pocket donors. The drive to register new Democratic-leaning voters, being conducted in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, might mean the GOP can't have Texas' 34 electoral votes that easily. But state Republican Party spokesman Hans Klingler brushed aside the notion that any Democratic presidential nominee has achance to take Texas this year. The state has been rock-solid Republican in every presidential race since 1980.

"As [then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate] Tony Sanchez showed in 2002, you can spend millions of dollars on voter registration in Texas and still come up double-digits behind the Republicans in Texas," Klingler said.

Hey, if the state GOP wants to act as if it's still 2002 out there, they are more than welcome to be my guest. The rest of us know better.

The downballot race issue is one worth keeping in mind. My concern is that whatever new voters Obama will turn out in November will primarily be people who are there to vote for him, and don't have much interest in other races. The big dropoff in the primary from the Presidential race to the Senate and other statewide races is a potential danger sign. I don't think it's necessarily going to be a problem - at the very least, I know there will be money spent in Harris County to push the straight-ticket-Democratic message - but it is something to pay attention to. A boost in turnout is only beneficial if it helps all candidates.

Speaking of turnout boosts, this BOR diary, which builds off the models created by Poblano, shows how various turnout scenarios radically change the landscape for Obama. I'm hesitant to invest too much in this - we all remember how new voters were going to carry Kinky Friedman to the Governor's mansion in 2006, right? - but it's hard to see record-breaking primary turnouts in state after state (Indiana, like Texas, had more Democratic votes cast in their primary than John Kerry received in the 2004 general election) and not believe that this time it's different. Read it and see what you think.

Finally, check out Matt Stoller on the network Obama has built nationwide. There's a lot there to feel good about, and more than a little to be queasy about. Either way, there's a lot to think about.

What's the matter with Dallas suburbs?

Farmers Branch. Irving. Now Carrolton.

A newly elected mayor near Dallas says his top priority will be ridding his suburb of illegal immigrants, the same focus that has drawn national attention in a neighboring city.

But Ron Branson said Carrollton will not simply copy the blueprint of Farmers Branch, where an ordinance barring apartment rentals to most illegal immigrants has been put on hold by a federal judge.

"I do not want to rubber-stamp what they did," Branson said in today's editions of The Dallas Morning News. "We want to make sure we're not profiling, we're following the law, and take advantage of ordinance opportunities."

The victory by Branson in Saturday's election gives Dallas neighboring suburbs with mayors who share a common goal of driving out illegal immigrants in their cities.

Is there something in the water up there? I just don't understand the obsession with this issue. And I know it's all tied up in anxiety about the war and the economy, because we had about the same number of undocumented immigrants in 2004 and 2005, back when the nation was still obsessed with gay marriage. But that "issue" ran its course, and we needed some other scapegoat for these more uncertain times, and so here we are, at least until the next batch of undesireables come along.

I hope some economist or sociologist is keeping track of these immigrant-hostile towns and doing a study on how they fare in the wake of these policies. It seems likely to me that their immediate effect will be to make their demographics older and whiter, as non-immigrant Hispanics who rightly perceive these policies to be threatening to themselves leave along with the undocumented folks that they hope to drive out. That doesn't strike me as being a good thing for the local economies, but who knows, maybe they'll draw new white-flight residents to counterbalance that. Like I said, I hope someone is studying this to see what happens with these places.

It should be noted that even though the anti-immigrant candidate won in Carrolton, it wasn't necessarily about that issue.

[Carrolton Mayor Becky] Miller had led by 9 percentage points in early voting, but those ballots were cast at least a day before a Dallas Morning News story delved into her background. She wound up losing by 9 percentage points.

[...]

Mrs. Miller had accused Mr. Branson of "dirty politics" for questioning her statements to colleagues that her brother died in Vietnam.

The mayor, who is white, gave Mr. Branson a soldier's name, but a check showed the young man was black and had been born within four months of her, so he couldn't have been her brother.

Mrs. Miller later said she deliberately misled Mr. Branson out of anger over his prying.

After her father said there was no brother who had died in Vietnam, she said her father has Alzheimer's disease. Later, she said the "brother" was actually an unrelated young man raised by her family. She declined to provide his name, citing painful circumstances.

Checks then raised questions about Mrs. Miller's statements that she sang professionally for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, had ties to the Eagles frontman Don Henley and attended Western Kentucky University.

Spokesmen said the three singers didn't know her, and a Western Kentucky official said the school had no record of her attendance there.

Mrs. Miller has since said she's not surprised the singers didn't remember her after 30 years. She insists that she did attend the college briefly.

Uh, yeah, sure. If you haven't figured out by now that being a public official with a phony resume is a recipe for disaster, I will have no sympathy for you when you lose. Even if it's to a xenophobe.

Twitter

I've gone and drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid, so those of you who can't get enough of me and want to know what sort of thing I consider too trivial to blog about, there you have it. It's oddly addictive, and more useful than I'd have thought. Ginger has some good thoughts on what makes Twitter worthwhile.

Anyway, the URL is http://twitter.com/kuff if you want to follow me. I'll probably put one of their widgets on the sidebar at some point, and I'm open to suggestions as to what else might be useful - maybe even this, if I get motivated. Let me know what you think.

Texas blog roundup for the week of May 12

From the home office in Orlando, Florida, home of the 2008 BlackBerry Wireless Enterprise Symposium, I bring you the best of the Texas Progressive Alliance for the past week. Click on for the goodies.

MORE...

The rarest play in baseball

Three words: Unassisted triple play!

Indians second baseman Asdrubal Cabrera turned the 14th unassisted triple play in major league history, accomplishing the feat Monday night in the second game of a doubleheader against Toronto.

Cabrera made a diving catch on a line drive by Lyle Overbay, touched second base and then tagged out Marco Scutaro to quickly end the fifth inning.

Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki made the last unassisted triple play in the majors, on April 29, 2007, against Atlanta. Oakland second baseman Randy Velarde last turned the trick in the AL, on May 29, 2000, against the Yankees.

This was the record third unassisted triple play by a Cleveland fielder.

Indians shortstop Neal Ball made the first one in history, in 1909. Cleveland second baseman Bill Wambsganss turned the only one in the World Series, in 1920 during a Game 5 win over Brooklyn.

The Indians also have been victimized three such times. The last player to pull an unassisted triple play against them -- Ron Hansen, in 1968 for Washington -- is now an advance scout for Philadelphia and was at Progressive Field to see Cabrera's feat.

"First one I've ever seen from the stands," Hansen said. "That kid is a real good fielder and has a great future.

"On a play like that, it's just reaction and he reacted right."

Awesome. It's stuff like this that makes you remember what a great game this is. Way to go, Asdrubal!

More financial gloom from the school districts

As we know, school districts are sounding the alarm about their rising costs and the lack of capability they've been given to deal with those costs. Here's more about this problem.

Unless a fix is enacted during next year's legislative session, school districts will be faced with difficult choices, including closing campuses and firing teachers, said Mike Falick, president of the Spring Branch school board.

"It's an untenable system. No business in the world would be able to survive with fuel, health insurance and salary increases and a flat revenue source," Falick said. "It's not sustainable.

Some school districts eventually will face "insolvency, some in a shorter time than others," he said.

Humble Independent School District is about two years away from insolvency, Superintendent Guy Sconzo said. It will cover a $7 million budget deficit this year and a projected $23 million deficit next year by dipping into its $53 million reserve fund.

Humble ISD has cut spending by $17.5 million since 2002, Sconzo said, but is struggling with inflation and enrollment growth. Each new student costs the district about $6,800, but it gets only $4,937 from all sources to educate that student, he said.

"As we reduce more, we get on the road of becoming Minimum ISD. We will be able to comply and meet state laws and regulations, but we can't do anything more than that because we can't afford to," Sconzo said.

It's going to take pressure from places like Humble to make something happen on this. People move to the suburbs for the schools. They're not going to like being told that those schools can't afford to do things they expect them to do.

House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, said inflation has had a significant impact on public schools in his home district, especially in transportation and energy costs.

"For more than 60 years we have generally required school districts to cut spending or raise taxes to deal with inflationary pressures," he said. "I continue to believe that a long-term solution for public school finance will require updating the distribution formulas and re-evaluating these long-standing practices."

Craddick appointed a special legislative panel to explore education problems and said he expects they will be a high legislative priority in 2009.

[...]

Money for public schools is pegged on what districts were getting per student in 2006, called "target revenue" in school finance jargon, and officials complain those amounts are arbitrary, punishing some districts and rewarding others without rhyme or reason.

School officials also are miffed that the state benefits from rising property values. Instead of school districts keeping extra revenue from appraisal increases, the state subtracts that amount from its education funding to those districts. The only extra money for school districts goes to cover student enrollment increases.

Developing a permanent cost-of-living index to help schools cope with annual inflation will be a top priority next year, said Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, chairman of the House Select Committee on Higher and Public Education Finance.

Lawmakers also will consider allowing tax revenue from property value increases to stay in school districts, he said.

Some school officials contend the state should spend at least $4 billion of a projected $10.7 billion budget surplus next year on public education.

Yes, remember the surplus? Some of that is fueled by increased sales tax revenue, some by taxes on oil, and some by rising property tax revenues. In a system that wasn't designed to fail, the schools would be able to benefit from this. Speaker Craddick may say that he recognizes the schools' need for ways to deal with inflationary pressures, but he's never been a friend to the public schools, and I have serious doubts about his willingness to actually fix what's broken here. It would be much better to have another Speaker in place so we don't have to depend on whatever largesse he may have.

Art Car Museum curator killed in crash

How sad.

The parade was over, and Tom Jones had parked his eye-catching ride, Swamp Mutha, inside the Art Car Museum.

He and two friends sat on the curb in front of the museum, reveling in the afterglow of their pet public art exhibition -- Houston's Art Car Parade.

As they shot the breeze just after 2 a.m., a speeding Pontiac crested the railroad tracks on Heights Boulevard. The driver was going so fast when he hit a parked Toyota Camry 50 feet away that Jones' friend Dion Laurent only had time to think one word.

"No."

The parked car launched into them, flinging Laurent against the fence and pinning Jones and his other friend.

"They were in agony," Laurent said, shuddering.

Jones, a pillar of the Art Car community and curator for the Art Car Museum, died Sunday morning from internal injuries. The other two men survived.

What a tragic end to Art Car Parade Weekend. A memorial for Tom Jones on Flickr is here. My sincere condolences go out to Tom Jones' family and friends, along with my thanks to Jones for everything he did to make these weekends the special and unique experience that they are.

Early overview of the County Attorney race

At this point in the overviews, I've basically covered the races where I think the candidates have a good chance to affect their vote totals in a significant way. The remaining races, for County Attorney, District Clerk, and Harris County Department of Education Trustee, will I believe primarily be determined by the Presidential vote. Not completely, of course - as we saw in the introduction, even the judicial races have a certain amount of variance. No race is beyond at least some measure of control by the candidates, but some have more than others.

And of those "others", I believe the County Attorney race has the greatest potential for breaking away from the pack. Democrat Vince Ryan, who served in the County Attorney's office in the 80s and who unsuccessfully ran for County Judge in 1994, has some name recognition for being a three-term City Council member, from 1987 to 1993. (He was also in the news last month for suing his former employer; that may or may not be to his ultimate political benefit, but it did get him in the news, which other candidates in these races will have a hard time doing.) He should be able to do enough fundraising to get his name out there more. As the trick to these races is making sure that the voters who should be supporting you go far enough down the ballot to find you, that will help him.

Ryan also has a couple of decent campaign issues to work with, thanks in part to Sheriff Tommy Thomas. I mentioned before that Harris County Judge candidate David Mincberg sent out a press release criticizing County Judge Ed Emmett for the amount of money that was spent defending the Sheriff's office in the Ibarra lawsuit. That same criticism can and really should be made against County Attorney Mike Stafford, since the issues that were singled out by Federal District Judge Kenneth Hoyt were about how Stafford handled the case. Similarly, it was Stafford who signed off on Sheriff Thomas' 14-day email retention policy, which State district Judge David J. Bernal ruled violated state law. Both of those incidents give Ryan the opportunity to question Stafford's judgment and competence, while tying him to Tommy Thomas and Chuck Rosenthal, two of the biggest albatrosses in county politics this year.

For a normally low-profile office for which there usually isn't much competition - Stafford was unopposed in 2004 after winning a special 2002 election to fill the unexpired term of his predecessor, Michael Fleming, who himself was unopposed in 2000 after winning a close race against Sylvia Garcia in 1996 - that's good news for a challenger. As for Stafford, let me take a moment to explain what the County Attorney does:

The Harris County Attorney's Office was the first County Attorney's Office in the State of Texas to be created solely to serve a major urban county's civil law needs. The Harris County Attorney's Office represents the County and its elected officials in all civil matters and also serves as the legal representative for several separate legal entities that operate within Harris County, including the Harris County Hospital District, the Harris County Flood Control District, the Harris County Appraisal District, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, and the Greater 911 Emergency Network.

If I'm Michael Stafford and I can't get someone from, say, the Flood Control District or the 911 Network to say something nice about me and what my office did to help them that I can put on a mailer, then I deserve to lose. Ryan may have issues to club Stafford with, but those issues aren't "his" in the public's mind right now; they're mostly Tommy Thomas' problems. Assuming his unopposed campaign last time didn't make him complacent about raising and hoarding contributions, he ought to be able to get a head start in defining himself to the voters and give them a positive impression before Ryan can make him look bad. I'll be surprised if he doesn't try something like that.

Basically, I think if this race gains a higher profile through Mike Stafford being in the news, or through successful fundraising on Vince Ryan's part, it's good for Ryan. If the race remains obscure, it's better for Stafford. None of it may matter - the Presidential coattails may well be the determining factor - but I think there's a decent chance that we'll hear some things from this campaign. As with many of these countywide races, that will be the first time in awhile for the County Attorney. If nothing else comes out of this year's election, being able to focus even a little more than we normally do on those offices is a net positive.

PREVIOUSLY:

Introduction
District Attorney
County Judge
Sheriff
Tax Assessor

Restaurants and the rising price of food

The folks in the food business are feeling the pinch.

Restaurants across town are facing the same problem this Mother's Day, one of the busiest dining-out days of the year: a reluctance to pass on their higher costs to customers who themselves are dealing with higher food and fuel costs.

Instead, they tighten their belts and get innovative: bake their own bread, grow their own eggplant, use fewer high-end ingredients, reward employees for being less wasteful and buy smarter.

Wholesale food prices have shot up about 8 percent in the last year, the highest jump in three decades, according to the National Restaurant Association.

The rising cost of fuel, corn and soybeans are among the reasons. Chicken and pork prices are expected to spike soon.

All this has chefs, cooks and owners improvising.

Three weeks ago, Mia Bella owner Youssef Nafaa began baking his own bread, after watching his wholesale bread prices rise.

And Patrenella's executive chef, Ryan Hildebrand, is growing more of his own vegetables.

When he came to the Heights-area Italian restaurant a year ago, a vegetable garden already was in place.

But with the price of some vegetables shooting up, Hildebrand is making the garden a more integral part of the restaurant.

"It definitely saves us money," he said. "It's not big enough to supply all the volume we go through, but it supplements us. I try to make all the specials garden-driven."

[...]

Tracy Vaught, owner of Backstreet Cafe, Hugo's and Prego and co-operator of Trevisio in the Texas Medical Center, said her crews are updating cost sheets and holding themselves more accountable for errors in cooking, service and administration.

"Mistakes cost a lot of money," she said.

In January, Vaught launched a profit-sharing program for her managers tied to them saving her restaurants money, and "it's working like a charm," she said.

Vaught has raised some menu prices "in targeted ways, but not across the board and very modestly."

Open City will raise its menu prices very gradually, 3 to 5 percent, every few weeks, Aly said.

"We tell owners not to be afraid of a menu price increase if it's done correctly, and the perception of value and quality is still there," said Chris Tripoli, president of A'La Carte Foodservice Consulting Group.

It's easier for a customer to accept a somewhat higher price than a smaller portion or lower quality, he maintained.

I'm not sure I agree about the portion size issue. I suppose it depends on the restaurant and the portion size in question. I think there's plenty of places that could serve ten percent less food with each entree, and nobody would notice or have much grounds for complaint. Not cutting back on quality I agree with, but quantity? Maybe this will finally be the solution to America's obesity problems. Hey, you never know.

Bad franchise!

While I mostly agree with this list of the Top 10 Worst Sports Franchises, I can't really take seriously any list that would overlook the Philadelphia Phillies. The Twins, for all of Calvin Griffith's penny-pinching, have had far more postseason success, including two World Series titles since 1987, than the Phils may ever have. The Boston Bruins may be a lousy hockey team now, but any organization whose description includes the words "Up until 1997, the Bruins made the playoffs in 30 consecutive seasons" just doesn't make the cut in my mind. Not a bad effort overall, but with that one big glaring omission.

"You walk wrong"

Ever wonder why your feet hurt? Apparently, shoes are the problem. Not just stiletto heels, mind you - pretty much all shoes, including and especially shoes designed to cushion the feet, are problematic.

Last year, researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, published a study titled "Shod Versus Unshod: The Emergence of Forefoot Pathology in Modern Humans?" in the podiatry journal The Foot. The study examined 180 modern humans from three different population groups (Sotho, Zulu, and European), comparing their feet to one another's, as well as to the feet of 2,000-year-old skeletons. The researchers concluded that, prior to the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet. Among the modern subjects, the Zulu population, which often goes barefoot, had the healthiest feet while the Europeans--i.e., the habitual shoe-wearers--had the unhealthiest. One of the lead researchers, Dr. Bernhard Zipfel, when commenting on his findings, lamented that the American Podiatric Medical Association does not "actively encourage outdoor barefoot walking for healthy individuals. This flies in the face of the increasing scientific evidence, including our study, that most of the commercially available footwear is not good for the feet."

Okay, so shoes can be less than comfortable. If you've ever suffered through a wedding in four-inch heels or patent-leather dress shoes, you've probably figured this out. But does that really mean we don't walk correctly? (Yes.) I mean, don't we instinctively know how to walk? (Yes, sort of.) Isn't walking totally natural? Yes--but shoes aren't.

"Natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person," wrote Dr. William A. Rossi in a 1999 article in Podiatry Management. "It took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement head to foot." In other words: Feet good. Shoes bad.

[...]

Here's another example: If you wear high heels for a long time, your tendons shorten--and then it's only comfortable for you to wear high heels. One saleswoman I spoke to at a running-shoe store described how, each summer, the store is flooded with young women complaining of a painful tingling in the soles of their feet--what she calls "flip-flop-itis," which is the result of women's suddenly switching from heeled winter boots to summer flip-flops. This is the shoe paradox: We've come to believe that shoes, not bare feet, are natural and comfortable, when in fact wearing shoes simply creates the need for wearing shoes.

Okay, but what about a good pair of athletic shoes? After all, they swaddle your foot in padding to protect you from the unforgiving concrete. But that padding? That's no good for you either. Consider a paper titled "Athletic Footwear: Unsafe Due to Perceptual Illusions," published in a 1991 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. "Wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having additional features that protect (e.g., more cushioning, 'pronation correction') are injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes (costing less than $40)." According to another study, people in expensive cushioned running shoes were twice as likely to suffer an injury--31.9 injuries per 1,000 kilometers, as compared with 14.3--than were people who went running in hard-soled shoes.

Fascinating stuff. Check it out.

Gas prices and sports fans

The rising price of gasoline has many effects.

Soaring gasoline and food prices and the nation's housing crisis have local sports fans reconsidering how they will spend their money this summer.

For now, most fans aren't ready to part with season tickets, but the threat of $4-a-gallon gasoline has some rethinking how many times they will visit the ballpark this summer, the peak of the baseball season.

"When fuel goes up, so does everything else," said John Heyde of Montgomery, who is retired from the U.S. Coast Guard. "My pension stays the same. I have to cut someplace, so I watch more games on TV. Other people like me that are retired aren't going to games like we used to. We used to be diehard all the time."

To offset the price of going to games, fans say they are willing to make sacrifices elsewhere, including cutting back on what they spend once in the ballpark. Others, like the McKee family, are getting creative by using the city's mass transportation system, carpooling in groups to save on fuel and parking, and searching for discount tickets.

Good thing the various stadia are all easily accessible by the city's mass transit system, no? That's something that Sugar Land could not have offered the Dynamo.

When it comes to sports, consumers often have an open-wallet policy, said Dr. Merrill J. Melnick, a sports sociologist at The College at Brockport (N.Y.).

"When fans decide where they want to cut costs, denying themselves access to sports events might be real low on their list," Melnick said. "The real identified fan isn't going to let the pump determine whether they root for their favorite team. It seems to me that's one area they are less likely to cut corners. The identification between a fan and a favorite team is a very strong bond."

But, Melnick added, if gasoline reaches $4 a gallon, "that might put a fans' loyalty to the test."

I forget who said it, but someone on the Baseball Prospectus noted that a feature of modern stadia is their smaller capacity. They're designed to cater more towards high-end customers and less towards the bleacher bums; thus the explosion of luxury suites and field-level seats with extra amenities like waiters for refreshments. You'd think this sort of season-ticket holder would be less sensitive to the price of gasoline, since they're already paying a fortune to be at the game. If so, then I figure baseball at least will mostly weather this storm, though it may cause attendance figures to level off or decline a bit.

The fear of a slowdown in consumer spending hasn't affected the city's four major professional teams, with the Astros, Texans, Rockets and Dynamo reporting increases in season-ticket sales. The Dynamo, coming off back-to-back Major League Soccer titles, had a 25-percent increase from 2007 to this season, team president and general manager Oliver Luck said.

Luck credits affordable tickets -- the average price to watch a game at Robertson Stadium is $18 -- for the increase.

"We're fairly inexpensive," he said. "I think the fact we are affordable is a blessing for some families."

Cheap seats will always be a draw. And as noted, assuming the downtown stadium ever gets built, being a stop on two rail lines won't hurt them, either.

The "virtual fence" gains fans

Despite a bad review from the Government Accounting Office, the so-called "virtual fence" managed to impress some Congressfolk recently.

Sections of Texas' border with Mexico eventually could be secured by the same kind of high-tech "virtual fence" that's been deployed in Arizona, key legislators said Friday after touring the state-of-the-art surveillance network.

The comments by two subcommittee chairmen with the House Homeland Security Committee -- Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and Christopher Carney, D-Pa.-- followed an inspection tour Friday of the $20.6 million virtual fence near Sasabe, Ariz.

The project links high-tech surveillance towers, cameras, radar, ground sensors and unmanned aerial drones along a 28-mile section of the 1,947-mile international border.

"In Texas, there is an outcry and a great deal of conflict over installing physical barriers along the border," said Jackson Lee, chairman of the panel's subcommittee on transportation security and infrastructure protection. "What I have seen here today can be a very effective 21st century tool to secure our borders."

Carney, the chairman of the panel's oversight subcommittee, called the virtual fence "a tremendous concept" that's ready for eventual deployment elsewhere along the border "once we make sure the bugs are ironed out."

Carney, who toured the area with Jackson Lee and five other lawmakers, said the virtual fence was best suited for sparsely inhabited stretches along the border. "If we can ever get the technology to match the dedication of the Border Patrol personnel here, we'll have an impenetrable border," he said.

[...]

Jackson Lee said the lawmakers' inspection tour turned her from a skeptic into a believer that the blend of high-tech surveillance and targeted deployment of Border Patrol agents could intercept illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.

Flaws in the system have been slashed from 53 to just four, she said.

"I've changed my assessment because the technology did not work -- and now it does," she said.

I remain skeptical for now. I'll say again that given a choice between this and a physical fence, this "virtual" concept is a million times better, and likely to be a lot cheaper as well. It's still not a fix for what's actually broken with our immigration system, and as such I think it's a mis-prioritization of our resources. But if it helps to appease the fence fetishists out there, it's less objectionable than some other options. That's the best I can say about it at this time.

Where the people will be

I love stories about demographics.

By 2050, the area between Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth will become a single "mega-region" containing 70 percent of the state's population, city planning experts said at a national forum on Friday.

Experts attending the Washington conference, dubbed America 2050, said the Texas mega-region, which will be one of 10 in the U.S., will house 24.5 million of the state's projected 35 million residents.

I wish the definition of this region were more precise. I presume it really means the Houston, San Antonio, and D/FW metro areas; if it does, then ten of the state's 15 most populous counties, accounting for a bit more than half of the total population, are in it. And that doesn't include runnerup counties like Brazoria, Bell, McClennan, Ellis, and Wichita (see here for an Excel spreadsheet with populations by county as of 2004). My guess is we're already at about 60 to 65% of the whole enchilada as it is.

[Regional Planning] Association president Bob Yaro said the Texas Triangle is different from the nation's other regions.

Large swaths of undeveloped land, he said, exist between the metropolitan areas in Texas, unlike Southern California or the Northeast.

Because the distances between the Texas cities are too great for automobile commuting and too small for cost-effective air links, he said, high-speed rail should be an important new approach.

If there's some way that private companies could make money off of it, they would be interested in building a high-speed rail network, said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But he added that the prospect of profit seems unlikely unless the firms are allowed to use existing rail lines. That, he said, "ain't going to happen because we're having enough trouble moving freight."

True enough, though of course there is another option, that of government investment in such a rail network. Wasn't the Trans Texas Corridor supposed to have a rail component? I'm not sure if that's gotten lost amid the shouting over toll roads or if it's been quietly dropped; the point I'm making is that just as investing in roads is an asset to managing growth, so may investing in alternate forms of transportation be. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Yaro said he was impressed by Metro's light-rail project.

"The fact that Houston's there, moving ahead with this thing in what has been until recently the most automobile-dominated place in the country is really a big step forward," he said.

Some of us certainly think so. We still have a long way to go with it, though.

Bike to work

You don't need subtitles to enjoy this pro-bike-riding ad from Hungary:

But if you really want to know what they're saying, Ezra has a translation.

Now here's the real question: What kind of a reaction do you think an ad like this would get in Houston?

Let's get serious about innocence

The Chron had a story yesterday about an "Innocence Summit", which focused on matters of wrongful convictions and what can and must be done about them. The first thing to remember here is that this isn't an abstract issue:

Nine wrongfully convicted men who spent a collective 148 years in Texas prisons met with a select group of prosecutors, judges and police chiefs in the Senate chamber Thursday to urge the state to establish a commission to investigate claims of innocence.

"I'm crying out for mercy today for someone who may still be in prison," said James Curtis Giles, who served 10 years in prison for rape before DNA testing proved him innocent.

[...]

Alejandro Hernandez said he spent 13 years in prison for murder based on a faulty police photo lineup. He said some innocent people could avoid conviction if a person not involved in the investigation handled photo lineups so they would not know which person was the suspect.

Billy Smith fought for five years to have the DNA test that exonerated him and prompted his release from prison after serving 19 years of a life sentence for rape that was based solely on a bad eyewitness identification. He said the state needs to provide better compensation for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

"I'm a victim. Make no mistake about that," Smith said.

Grits has two informative reports from the summit, which offer some hope for movement on the issue, plus a post of changes to lineup procedures in Dallas, which will help prevent future injustices.

New York criminal defense lawyer Barry Scheck, who directs the Innocence Project that has represented many of those freed in Texas, said "enormous progress has been made" in Texas.

Scheck praised Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt for making major improvements in the Houston crime lab. But Scheck said every police department in Texas needs to be improving its handling of eyewitness identifications as well as the collection of DNA evidence.

Hurtt said the state should consider funding regional crime labs so that the police are not in charge of them and they can be run on a more professional and efficient basis.

It always comes down to money - or really, given our current state of surplus, to how we prioritize spending that money - doesn't it? If we devoted one tenth of the resources to things like independent regional crime labs that we did to building more prisons, we wouldn't need to hold Innocence Summits. We'd finally be able to say that we really are doing the best we can to prevent these tragedies. And by the way, an independent crime lab has been a campaign theme of Clarence Bradford since he first announced his candidacy.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said efforts by his office to review innocence claims have restored confidence in the criminal justice system locally. Watkins said that several years ago drug dealers knew Dallas juries would not convict them because of a police evidence-planting scandal.

Watkins said one of his prosecutors recently was worried he could not get a conviction in a murder case because of publicity surrounding the wrongful-conviction release of 27-year inmate James Lee Woodard. But he said the jury took only five minutes to convict because confidence in the Dallas criminal justice system has been restored.

Maybe you have confidence in the criminal justice system, but if you've noticed that the vast majority of the people who are now being released from prison after being exonerated by DNA evidence are people of color, you might understand why not everyone shares that confidence.

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, has been leading the effort to have an "innocence commission" formed in Texas. Ellis told the gathering that he has asked Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders to establish such a commission but has not heard back from them.

Perry's top criminal justice adviser, Mary Anne Wiley, said the governor shares Ellis' concerns on issues such as improving the legal defense for people on trial and separating control of crime laboratories from the control of police departments. But she said he does not want to create another layer of government in the criminal justice system.

I'm sorry, but if the best Rick Perry can do is wring his hands and fret about "another layer of government", whatever that means, then it's a lie to say he shares Sen. Ellis' concerns. If he actually did share those concerns, he'd want to do something about them. Until such time, he remains part of the problem. And if you read through Grits' posts, you'll see that the Governor's intransigence is putting him increasingly at odds with members of his own party. Ensuring that the guilty are convicted and the innocent are not is not and should not be a partisan issue.

Another Republican for SD17

We have a second announced candidate for State Sen. Kyle Janek's soon-to-be-open seat.

Houston lawyer Grant Harpold has announced that he will run to replace outgoing State Sen. Kyle Janek.

Harpold, a Republican precinct chairman, said if elected, he will pursue GOP stances on lower taxes, smaller government and immigration.

He has lived in the district since 1992 and never has held public office.

"I feel I can have some new ideas on these issues," he said. "Perhaps, new ideas and new ways."

Houston money manager Austen Furse, a Republican, also has started to campaign for the seat.

Furse seems to have lined up a fair amount of establishment support so far. I don't see Harpold being more likely to win than he is.

State Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land, and Gary Polland, former Harris County Republican Party chair, are two others who have expressed interest in the race.

On the Democratic side, State Rep. Scott Hochberg, of Houston, is among possible contenders.

"I would expect one or more will surface by the end of the month," said Gerry Birnberg, chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party. "We will have a viable candidate for that position."

For all the speculation about this race so far, the only Democratic name I've heard has been Hochberg's, and I think it's safe to say he will only run in a non-November election, so he doesn't have to give up his House seat unless he wins. I'm sure there are other people thinking about this, but no chatter about them has reached my ears or Inbox.

ICE versus employers

Jay Aiyer, who is an immigration attorney, has a suggestion for the process of verifying eligibility to work.

The reality is that the overwhelming numbers of businesses never knowingly hire anyone they believe is here illegally. They are required by law to inspect employment authorization and to determine if a person can legally work. One problem is that there is no realistic way to verify the authenticity of documents.

A possible solution would be to invest in a workable national database that can accurately determine the work authorization of workers. Instead, the government has decided to step up arrests and detention that cost millions more.

Programs like the "E-Verify" program are still too error-prone to be of assistance, and current law doesn't even require such verification. Moreover, while businesses must visually inspect documents, they run the risk of being accused of discrimination if they ask too many questions. Additionally, the documents themselves often can be easily duplicated and forged, making it even more difficult.

Businesses have a duty to inspect work authorization documents and maintain an "employment eligibility verification form" known as an I-9. For the most part, the majority of employers try their best to comply. But the federal government should not place the entire burden of enforcement on them. Instead the government needs to bring employers in as partners.

We all recognize that there are some employers out there who collude with document vendors to their advantage. That is where ICE's resources should be targeted -- not in random raids.

All businesses should conduct regular audits of their own hiring policies and procedures to make sure that all employees are properly filling out I-9 documents. However, federal authorities need to recognize that businesses ought to be encouraged and applauded for a self-audit process without potential penalties from ICE.

I'm a lot more skeptical of self-enforcing processes for businesses these days, given how things have been with the Bush administration. Still, there's a lot here that makes sense, and I do agree that the random-raids method of keeping businesses in line is not helpful. At the very least, I'd like to see more of the debate be along these lines. It's about finding practical solutions that can garner support across the spectrum.