One more blog that I meant to add to the blogroll yesterday but forgot: Paul Frankenstein. Too much tryptophan, I guess. Anyway, it's there now.
Having watched my recommended daily allowance of football over the T-Day weekend, I've seen approximately 1,539 promos for the ESPN movie The Junction Boys, about how Legendary Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant took a buncha Aggie boys out to Junction, TX and whupped their butts in the summer heat thus turning those who made it to the end into winners. One ESPN talking head mentioned how Bryant worked the players out for four hours in 102 degree heat and didn't let them drink water.
Which made me wonder if the Bear would be quite so revered today if a couple of those boys had dropped dead from heat exhaustion. To be fair, the conventional wisdom in those days was to not drink water during workouts, but still. A little luck can go a long way sometimes.
A decision on whether or not to drop baseball, softball, and the modern pentathlon from Olympic competition has been postponed until after the 2004 Games, thus ensuring that all three sports will continue through at least 2008. This is a good thing.
After 10-minute presentations to the assembly by leaders of the three endangered sports, dozens of rank-and-file IOC members took the floor to question the whole process and push for a postponement.Of the 39 speakers, not a single one spoke in favor of the proposals to cut the sports.
''It is urgent to wait,'' Senegalese member Youssoupha Ndiaye said in a statement that summed up much of the 2½-hour debate.
[IOC President Jacques Rogge, who pushed the reduction,] then conferred with his executive board and submitted a proposal to put off any deletion of sports until after Athens.
Of the 117 attending members, only two raised their hands against the postponement, while four abstained. On a separate motion, the members approved the ''general principles'' of the IOC's review of the sports program.
The last sport dropped from the Summer Olympics was polo in 1936, and IOC members made clear they had no desire for radical change now.
The IOC program commission recommended in August that the three sports be cut from the Beijing Olympics. The report cited lack of global popularity, high venue costs and, in the case of baseball, the absence of top major league players.
I can't speak for softball and the pentathlon, but baseball is played professionally on at least four continents. That seems pretty global to me.
All three sports have hopes now that this issue has gone away. In the case of baseball, there's an obvious step that can be taken to ensure its continued inclusion:
Baseball federation chief Aldo Notari of Italy noted that he had proposed reducing the Olympic tournament from 11 days to five days, a move which would improve the chances of major-leaguers taking part.''The fact that the best athletes are not included in the games -- this definitely will be solved by Beijing,'' he insisted.
Removing his sport from the Olympics would be ''the end of baseball as a world sport,'' Notari said.
Israeli member Alex Gilady criticized Major League Baseball for failing to release top players for the Olympics.
''Major League Baseball so far is part of the problem and not part of the solution,'' he said. ''If the Olympics is so important to them, they can show us.''
If they really do reduce the tournament from 11 days to five, then there's an answer that's so perfect it's sure to never occur to Beelzebud and his merry band: Eliminate the All-Star Game in Olympic years and send a real All Star team to the Games.
If there's one thing we learned in the 2002 season, it's that the All-Star Game really does mean nothing. I haven't watched it in years. I would definitely tune in to the Olympics to see MLB's best play for their home countries. With so many talented players coming from various Latin American nations, there'd be no guarantee of a US win, either. Major League Baseball and the Games would both benefit in the TV ratings.
The logistics can be made to work. The All-Star break is three days. Extend it to a week to allow for travel and the five day Olympic tournament. The time can be made up by scheduling a few doubleheaders or (heaven forfend) reducing the schedule back to 154 games. The Olympics occur later in the year than the All-Star Game usually does, but they still occur during the summer, before pennant races have really kicked in.
This is such a win-win. It needs to happen.
Added some new blogs, removed a couple of others. Some new blogs were added because I saw them in my referral log and liked what they had to say, others came via the recommendation of other bloggers. See? The system works.
On the subject of cocooning, by my count 24 of my links are to libertarian and right-leaning blogs. Let's hear no more talk about that, OK? To be fair, my experience with non-lefty bloggers is quite different from Alex's in that 17 of those bloggers also link to me; in many cases, they linked to me first.
Anway, please welcome the following and give 'em a click:
ArchPundit
Blue Streak
DC Thornton
Free Pie
Mad Kane
Plum Crazy
Sisyphus Shrugged
Tacitus
UnMedia
Larry has some great advice for bloggers concerning site design and generating traffic to your blog. I recommend them both.
The issue of generating blog traffic has occasionally been dicey. Just before I moved from Blogspot to this site I got spammed a couple of times by a new blogger who sent messages to a bunch of people, including big names like Mickey Kaus and Josh Marshall, announcing his blog. I checked it out and might have given him a mention as a fellow progressive if he'd had a link to me on his site. That peeved me, and I wrote a snarky post lampooning him for it. Immature, I know, but it felt good at the time.
After I got permalinked on TAPPED, I received some more mail like that. I checked out each link, was generally unimpressed, and chose not to respond. Unsolicited email could work, especially if you're asking for feedback on a specific post, but really, if you want someone's attention it just seems like the polite thing to do to give some attention (a link, a comment, a response to a post) first. The other way just seems lazy and impudent to me.
(I swear, every time I think about this subject, I sound like a Walter Matthau character: "You new bloggers don't know what it was like getting traffic in the old days! All we had was Blogdex and referral logs! We considered ourselves lucky if our parents and spouses read our blogs! And we liked it that way!")
(Ahem. Go read Larry's posts. I'll be over here in the corner talking back to the television.)
Another appallingly stupid op-ed piece in today's Chron. The author, a professor of history at Tomball College named Tom Lovell, really needs to get out more.
SOME years back, a Rice grad invited me to an Owls home football game. As we awaited the kickoff, the public address announcer -- the affable keeper of the Rice flame, Fred Duckett -- intoned the familiar pre-game admonition cautioning fans against drinking in the stands. But, to my astonishment, Duckett saw fit to include two additional transgressions against public order and decorum, which, if undertaken, apparently could lead to the guilty party's removal from the stadium. As I recall, the two newly minted offenses were "the use of sexist and racist language."I immediately felt vulnerable. Only minutes before I had groused -- out loud, no less -- about the unseemliness of the numerous young women assistant trainers I spotted on the Rice bench. My old-fashioned unease over dressing-room privacy, it appears, was overheard. What looked to be a well-coiffed Rice faculty wife sitting to my front abruptly turned on me with a menacing glare. Would she now, I wondered, hand me over to the nearest usher?
Doesn't your heart just break for the guy? Imagine the burden he must have felt, not being able to make sexist remarks in public without being made to feel like a bad person. Where's Miss Manners when you really need her? Oh, wait, Miss Manners would not side with the professor on this one.
To the best of my knowledge, by the way, the injunction against "the use of sexist and racist language" came from the NCAA, not from Rice. I can't find a citation for this, so I may be wrong. In any event, it wasn't put in place to make a stuffy old professor keep his comments about girls to himself. It was put in place to keep spectators from shouting racial epithets at the players. Given that Rice markets its athletic events as family-friendly, it's not hard to see why they might want to do so.
The object of the professor's wrath was the recent incident in which head coach Ken Hatfield was quoted by the Chronicle of Higher Education saying that he'd consider removing an openly homosexual player from the team. Reaction from Rice President Malcolm Gillis was swift, prompting Hatfield to write a letter to the CHE stating his support for Rice's nondiscriminatory policies and to issue an apology to the campus.
All this has the good professor in quite a tizzy:
Rice's student leftists and administrative apparatchiks -- bent as they are on turning Houston's academic Jewel in the Crown into the People's Republic of South Main -- won't let the matter die a quiet death. They demand even greater dollops of contrition from the humbled coach.Those at Rice who don't adhere to the leftist party line, so dominant in American higher education, are targeted for abusive public pillory. In the China of Mao Zedong the target was intellectuals, former landowners and merchants and their descendants. On Rice's campus those singled out for public opprobrium, it seems, are conservatives, and Christian conservatives in particular, at least those with the courage to speak their minds in the public square.
This tawdry attack on Hatfield raises yet again the question of what has happened to the freewheeling exchange of ideas that not all that many years ago echoed through the halls of American higher education?
There are three points that need to be addressed here.
1. The right to one's opinion does not include the right to countermand one's employer's official policies. The large multinational corporation that I work for has very explicit nondiscrimination rules, including one that covers sexual orientation. Whatever I might think about gays in the privacy of my home, if I were to be quoted in a national publication saying that I'd fire any homosexuals who worked for me, I'd expect to get a call from the HR department telling me otherwise. If I didn't like it, I'd be free to find employment elsewhere. And I assure you, the company I work for is nobody's idea of a hotbed of leftists and apparatchiks.
2. The right to speak one's mind does not include the right to be free from harsh criticism for doing so. Isn't that what a "freewheeling exchange of ideas" is all about? I guess the professor is more interested in ideas that he happens to agree with.
3. I'm a fan of Rice sports. I think Ken Hatfield is the best coach Rice has had since Jess Neely. I want to see him coach at Rice for as long as he wants to. I join many other Rice fans in admiring Hatfield for how he goes about his job. He's a winner with high standards who puts academics first. His honesty and integrity is beyond reproach. Many people, in rising to Hatfield's defense after his remarks were published, noted Hatfield's deeply held principles.
That's all fine and good, but let's not forget that strong principles are not a virtue unless the principles themselves are worthy of praise. As Jonah Goldberg noted in a column written after the memorial service for Sen. Paul Wellstone, another man lauded for deeply held principles
Everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, say that Wellstone's most-admirable quality was that he was a tireless worker for what he believed in. That's fine. Doggedness and determination are wonderful things when in the pursuit of the noble and good. But, it should be remembered that doggedness and determination alone aren't necessarily admirable qualities. Serial killers and murderous dictators are also dogged in their determination to see their wills done. Hitler prioritized trainloads of Jews bound for death camps ahead of needed trainloads of war materiel bound for the front in his dogged pursuit of what he considered to be right. Saddam Hussein chooses not to feed his people and risk war thanks to his willingness to stick to his convictions.Now, it would be wrong to compare Paul Wellstone to Hitler or Hussein and I am not doing that. What I am doing is pointing out that conviction without a moral context or motor is merely a white-knuckled grip on an idea without paying heed to what you grip or why. After all, grabbing a sword by the handle is wise, grabbing it by the blade is folly, and normally we do not think the fingerless fool is as proficient as the swordsman and we do not judge the man who uses the sword for murder to be as good as the man who uses the sword to prevent it.
The same is true here. I join with the Rice students and faculty in saying that Hatfield's deeply held principles about homosexuality are wrong. He's still entitled to hold those principles, of course, and within the bounds of his employee handbook he's entitled to try to convince others that he's right to think that way. My personal evaluation of Ken Hatfield as a good coach and an honorable person is in spite of this particular belief, not because of it.
I've seen a couple of exhortations to observe Buy Nothing Day. I'm not impressed. The idea of picking one day to change one's behavior may have pop culture appeal, but like the Great American Gas Out it will accomplish nothing outside of some publicity for the organizers. After all, if everyone spends the same total amount on Christmas presents that they have in years past, the net effect will be the same. The impact of not shopping today, if it's even enough to be measured, will be nil.
I don't have any beef with the idea of making Christmas less consumer oriented. I'm just saying that it takes year-round behavior modification, not a one-day gesture.
For what it's worth, early indicators are good for merchants. Their allure is insidious and hard to resist, after all:
If markdowns and staying open for 24 hours are not enough, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., the teen-oriented apparel retailer famous for its risque catalogs, hired scantily-clad greeters at their stores.
Now maybe if the Buy Nothing folks made like PETA and hired some naked celebrities...
Tiffany subscribes to Cook's Illustrated, a fascinating magazine even for a non-chef like me. One part chef school, one part science lab, one part Consumer Reports, the magazine is all about finding the best way to do something by trial-and-error experimentation. If you ever want to know why a particular recipe calls for a certain ingredient or technique, this is the magazine for you.
Here's an example of their methodology as they answer the question "How can we cook a turkey in less than two hours?" Includes a full recipe for turkey, stuffing, and gravy, with illustrations in a separate PDF file.
They also have a complete guide to Thanksgiving cooking which requires registration. If you're more interested in what you don't have to cook, check out this report on precooked turkeys and store-bought items like gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Everyone who paid attention agrees that the Texas Governor's race was very negative this year. A new poll suggests that Tony Sanchez got the brunt of the fallout from that:
On a scale of one to five with five being the most favorable, Perry's average favorability rating among those blaming him for the negative campaign was 2.53, while Perry's rating among those blaming Sanchez was 4.25.In contrast, the average rating of Sanchez among those who blamed him for the negative campaign was 1.54 while Sanchez's rating was 3.6 among those who blamed Perry for the negative campaign. Among those blaming both candidates equally, the average favorability rating for Sanchez was 2.65 while Perry's average rating was 2.94.
Make of that what you will. It'd be interesting to see the numbers broken down by party as well - I suspect Republicans gave Sanchez low ratings whether they thought he was more negative or not, and the same is true for Dems and Perry. Nonetheless, this is something to file away for future reference.
Via Greg Wythe comes this hilarious story from the NY Post, that bastion of Murdochian righteousness in the Big Apple:
The staff of the Liquid Assets lounge in South Plainfield says a gaggle of go-go loving ghouls invaded their burlesque hall after the club's owners spotted an otherworldly image on a security video last summer.The ghostly visages, which look like specks of light dragging pale wispy tails across the screen, are not birds or video glitches - and they can't be explained by the company that installed the equipment.
Paranormal investigators who have examined the video claim the strip-house specters may be the spirit of a dead dancer or the souls of Prohibition-era gangsters.
"I've been in the field for 20 years now and this is to me without a doubt a ghost," said self-described "ghostbuster" Jane Doherty. "The way it's moving clearly shows it has a consciousness."
This go-go ghost story goes beyond just the images on the tape.
Doherty said she's felt one of the spirits hanging out in the club's "Champagne Room," peeping on people getting lap dances
I can just hear John Edward explain this to his wife: "No, really, honey, those lap dances were for reseach purposes!"
Today's Chron has this NYT wire story about the history of turducken, the chicken-in-a-duck-in-a-turkey confabulation that Paul Prudhomme claims to have invented. It's a pretty good overview, with some history of stuffing one type of food into another, and they only get precious about quaint Southern folks at the very end. Good thing I just ate lunch, or I'd be hungry about now.
Botox injections have been linked to Immobile Eyebrow Syndrome:
In the new study, published last week in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, researchers from the Indiana University Medical Center examined 29 patients who had received Botox injections in their foreheads.The research found that the shots did not change the resting position of the eyebrows except in a few patients who habitually kept them raised.
But in almost all the patients, eyebrow movement was limited by the shots, said the study's lead researcher, Dr. Mimi S. Kokoska. While the restrictions were less than half an inch, that can be enough to limit expression and to change the appearance of the brow, making it seem flatter or "droopier," she said.
You mean there might be unpleasant side effects resulting from injecting poison into your face? Whoda thunk it?
Well hey, if those eyebrows become a problem, there are solutions available if you want them.
I've tried, I really have, to give a rat's ass about the latest controversy surrounding Little Green Footballs, but I just can't quite bring myself to do it. It's so much ado over nothing at all. So naturally, I'm going to write about it.
LGF is on my blogroll. I don't read it much any more, but it's there. LGF added me to its link list a long time ago, and I've gotten a steady amount of traffic from that ever since. If all this makes me a bad person, then so be it. The Rittenhouse Review didn't link to me before their new policy was instituted anyway.
I link to and regularly read a lot more left-leaning and centrist sites than right-leaning ones. I like what they have to say, and I feel solidarity with kindred spirits. I read a few right-leaning and libertarian blogs (there are only so many hours in the day, after all). If you think I'm cocooning or insulating myself, well, you're entitled to your opinion. Go write a blog entry about it, maybe some day I'll read it.
If you do feel the need to write about any of this, try not to be pompous and overbearing, even if you make up for some of it with unintentional comedy:
When I took a look at what sites were actually listed there, most of the ones I recognized are best described as "the usual suspects", and there was a clear ideological similarity to them. Any site which links approvingly to Warblogger Watch, This Modern World, Ted Barlow, Tapped, Sullywatch, Shadow of the Hegemon, Smirking Chimp, Media Whores, Eschaton, and Counterspin Central is applying a distinct filter to the choices. (Which is RR's privilege, of course.) I also found links to Brian Linse, Patrick Nielsen Hayden (and Teresa), and Avedon Carol, none of which do I consider extremist voices.
Emphasis mine. I don't know if Ted's reading blogs during his hiatus, but if so I hope this gives him a chuckle. Assuming, of course, that an extremist such as he is capable of expressing humor. (Rubbing your hands together while cackling doesn't count.)
Where was I? Oh, yeah. It's my blogroll and I'll link who I want to. Link or link not, there is no "symbolic gesture". If this discussion is in any way responsible for the Nic Cage-Lisa Marie Presley divorce, then the terrorists have already won.
Scott Chaffin shares some Thanksgiving memories of his grandmother. Check it out.
Well, the good news is that the Chron finally addressed the David Rushing issue. The bad news is that they did so in a completely candy-assed way.
What they did was print three letters to the editor which one assumes are supposed to give some "balance" to Rushing's viewpoint. The letters themselves...well, see for yourself. Here's Letter Number One:
Old politics won't workRegarding David Rushing's Nov. 19 Outlook article, "Political Poison: How John Sharp killed the Texas Democratic Party": Rushing must not have been paying attention during the last election because Ron Kirk and Tony Sanchez won their primaries.
Does he prefer a return to the old "Dixiecrat" Party of George Wallace, where only white Protestant males need apply? This thinly veiled racist appeal to the politics of old just won't work. Here's a novel approach: Why not change the message?
The concerns of conservative and moderate Democrats have been ignored and replaced by those of the radical left. It's small wonder the Republicans continue to gain more votes in Texas.
David R. Martinez, Houston
Does anyone understand the point this guy is trying to make? He starts off disputing Rushing's thesis, then he recapitulates it. And what's up with this assertion that the state Democratic Party has been taken over by "the radical left"? Anyone who thinks John Sharp and Ron Kirk are radical anything probably thinks Tom DeLay is a mainstream moderate.
Moving on to Letter Number Two:
Not over white votersDavid Rushing is misguided if he thinks Texas Democrats failed because they lost white voters. Remember college history: In wartime, a president's party usually wins most elections. Saying that Texans will not support an inclusive party makes them appear racist.
Michael Whitlock, Stafford
Unfortunately, the Democrats did fail with white voters, and this was a major factor, probably the biggest factor, in their defeat. Only Sharp drew better than 30% of the Anglo vote. Back in March, after the primaries, the hope was that they could get at least 35% of the Anglo vote - they needed that much to be competitive. 35% of the white vote would probably have carried Ron Kirk to victory, and would have made the Sanchez-Perry race much closer.
There's no question that the ticket did poorly with white voters. It was not, as Rushing contended, because the Democrats were "openly hostile" towards them. You can't counter one wrong fact with another and hope to win the argument.
On to Letter Number Three:
His bias was obviousWhen I looked up David Rushing's credentials, I learned he is a long-time member of the Young Conservatives of Texas and that this organization is powerful in state universities and very influential with Gov. Rick Perry.
How many people read Rushing's article and thought it was unbiased?
Geraldine Allen, Sugar Land
Finally, the crux of the matter - the fact that Rushing attempted to pass himself off as impartial or possibly sympathetic to the Democrats. He deliberately misrepresented himself in his byline, and in doing so gave a distorted picture of his perspective. This is the only letter that really matters, and it gets printed last. Jeebus.
It's stuff like this that makes people across the political spectrum dislike and distrust our hometown paper.
I'm shocked, shocked to report that Southwestern Bell is being accused of stifling competition:
Ten companies are accusing SBC Southwestern Bell of putting up roadblocks to thwart competition.In a complaint filed with the Texas Public Utility Commission, they claim the regional Bell has rejected a higher-than-usual number of orders for access to its network since October.
As a result, the companies contend they have been unable to provide timely and cost-competitive service to some customers who want high-capacity T1 lines for voice and data products, a market historically dominated by Southwestern Bell, the complaint says.
I have no trouble believing that Southwestern Bell is up to no good. The reason why I'm on a cable modem today is because SBC had never gotten around to wiring my two-miles-from-downtown neighborhood for DSL. If there's a glut in the broadband market, it hasn't affected me.
A former Enron employee named Lawrence Lawyer has pleaded guilty to tax evasion charges stemming from his involvement with Michael Kopper in fradulent business deals.
Lawyer, a 34-year-old banker, admitted before Houston-based U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt that he failed to report to the Internal Revenue Service $79,469 in income he received from former Enron executive Michael Kopper between 1997 and 2000.The money was paid to Lawyer for his work on a partnership called RADR, one of several controversial side deals at Enron.
Lawyer, who will cooperate with federal officials, is the third person to plead guilty in an Enron-related case. Charges are pending against four others, including former Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, who faces 78 criminal counts.
The story goes on to describe how RADR, which was basically a scheme to transfer money from one pocket to another and call it "income", operated. Let's hope this is another brick in the eventual cases against Fastow, Skilling, and Lay.
From an op-ed in the Chron, overlooked by me but spotted by the permalinkless Blah3 (it's the first entry for November 26, scroll down a bit) and written by a member of that notorious liberal cabal the Heritage Foundation:
There was a time when at least one senior Bush administration official thought the [Freedom of Information Act] essential because "no matter what party has held the political power of government, there have been attempts to cover up mistakes and errors." That same official added that "disclosure of government information is particularly important today because government is becoming involved in more and more aspects of every citizen's personal and business life, and so access to information about how government is exercising its trust becomes increasingly important."So spoke a young Illinois Republican congressman named Donald Rumsfeld, in a floor speech on June 20, 1966, advocating passage of the FOIA, of which he was a co-sponsor.
And then there's this gem, written by Senator John Ashcroft and spotted by Tom Tomorrow:
There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights.
Boy, those were the days, weren't they?
Four defeated state candidates in Texas are filing suit against the Texas Association of Business, claiming that money that the TAB spent in the campaigns constituted direct contributions, which are illegal under state law.
Okay, this is a little complicated. Let's start with the story:
The TAB, in what it recently bragged was an "unprecedented show of muscle," targeted 22 hotly contested races for the Texas House and two for the state Senate. Candidates supported by the group won 18 of the House races and one of the crucial Senate contests.Overall, 100 of 104 House candidates and 22 of 23 Senate candidates endorsed by TAB's political action committee won in an election that saw Republicans capture a majority of the House for the first time in 130 years.
TAB spent $2 million in the most competitive races. Only $100,000 of that amount came from its political action committee, which publicly identifies contributors.
The remainder was in direct corporate contributions for so-called issue advertising, which criticized the candidates it was trying to defeat but didn't specifically tell voters how to cast their ballots. TAB contends the sources of those contributions are not subject to public disclosure.
State law prohibits direct corporate contributions to political races. But TAB believes it successfully skirted that ban by buying the issue ads.
In two separate lawsuits filed in state district court in Austin, the four defeated Democrats contend the corporate expenditures were illegal.
If I'm understanding this correctly, the plaintiffs are saying that TAB's purchase of the "issues ads" is a direct contribution, and TAB says it isn't.
Here's what I think is the relevant law from the state elections code. I Am Not A Lawyer, so make of it what you will:
§ 253.091. Corporations CoveredThis subchapter applies only to corporations that are organized under the Texas Business Corporation Act, the Texas Non-Profit Corporation Act, federal law, or law of another state or nation.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.092. Treatment of Incorporated Political CommitteeIf a political committee the only principal purpose of which is accepting political contributions and making political expenditures incorporates for liability purposes only, the committee is not considered to be a corporation for purposes of this subchapter.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.093. Certain Associations Covered(a) For purposes of this subchapter, the following associations, whether incorporated or not, are considered to be corporations covered by this subchapter: banks, trust companies, savings and loan associations or companies, insurance companies, reciprocal or interinsurance exchanges, railroad companies, cemetery companies, government-regulated cooperatives, stock companies, and abstract and title insurance companies.
(b) For purposes of this subchapter, the members of the associations specified by Subsection (a) are considered to be stockholders.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.094. Contributions and Expenditures Prohibited(a) A corporation or labor organization may not make a political contribution or political expenditure that is not authorized by this subchapter.
(b) A corporation or labor organization may not make a political contribution or political expenditure in connection with a recall election, including the circulation and submission of a petition to call an election.
(c) A person who violates this section commits an offense. An offense under this section is a felony of the third degree.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.095. Punishment of AgentAn officer, director, or other agent of a corporation or labor organization who commits an offense under this subchapter is punishable for the grade of offense applicable to the corporation or labor organization.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.096. Contribution on MeasureA corporation or labor organization may make campaign contributions from its own property in connection with an election on a measure only to a political committee for supporting or opposing measures exclusively.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
§ 253.097. Direct Expenditure on MeasureA corporation or labor organization not acting in concert with another person may make one or more direct campaign expenditures from its own property in connection with an election on a measure if the corporation or labor organization makes the expenditures in accordance with Section 253.061 or 253.062 as if the corporation or labor organization were an individual.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987.
Sections 253.061 and and 253.062 cover contributions by individuals:
§ 253.061. Direct Expenditure of $100 or LessExcept as otherwise provided by law, an individual not acting in concert with another person may make one or more direct campaign expenditures in an election from the individual's own property if:
(1) the total expenditures on any one or more candidates or measures do not exceed $100; and
(2) the individual receives no reimbursement for the expenditures.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 864, § 243, eff. Sept. 1, 1997.
§ 253.062. Direct Expenditure Exceeding $100(a) Except as otherwise provided by law, an individual not acting in concert with another person may make one or more direct campaign expenditures in an election from the individual's own property that exceed $100 on any one or more candidates or measures if:
(1) the individual complies with Chapter 254 as if the individual were a campaign treasurer of a political committee; and
(2) the individual receives no reimbursement for the expenditures.
(b) An individual making expenditures under this section is not required to file a campaign treasurer appointment.
Amended by Acts 1987, 70th Leg., ch. 899, § 1, eff. Sept. 1, 1987; Acts 1997, 75th Leg., ch. 864, § 244, eff. Sept. 1, 1997.
If you understand all that, you're a) a lawyer, b) smarter than me, or c) both. If so, feel free to enlighten me in the comments.
My ignorance of the legal nuances aside, I think there's a better chance that I'll be the starting quarterback for the Cowboys on Turkey Day than any relief being given to the plaintiffs in this suit. It's pie-in-the-sky, it goes against the state's unofficial motto ("Creating a Friendly Climate for Bidness Since We Kicked Santa Anna's Ass All Them Years Ago"), and the state Supreme Court is full of Republicans who live on campaign contributions. It's just not gonna happen.
But hey, as long as we're dreaming, here's what I'd like to see happen. I've seen this suggestion before, including in the blogosphere (can't remember where, unfortunately), and I think it has merit: Let everyone contribute as much as they want, but all funds go into a blind trust and then dispersed anonymously to the candidates. If candidates don't know who's giving them the quid, they will have less incentive to give back the pro quo.
There are two main flaws with this approach - it requires a bureaucracy to handle the money, and politicians are never going to be truly in the dark about who their biggest supporters are. I don't think the first objection is that big a deal. As for the second, I refuse to let the perfect kill the good.
That doesn't address the "issues ads" that the plaintiffs in this suit are complaining about. I can't think of any way to restrict them that doesn't cause First Amendment concerns, so what I'd like to see is more stringent disclosure laws. If the Citizens For A Better Tomorrow want to run an ad asking why Candidate Johnson hates America, puppies, and motherhood, I think the ad should be proceeded by giving the contact information for CFABT, to wit
"The following ad was paid for by Citizens For A Better Tomorrow, PO Box 666, Boston, MA, 02134, 617-555-1234, http://www.bettertomorrow.org, Jerome Horwitz (President)"
In addition, all officers of CFABT and everyone who contributes above a certain level (say $100) should be publicly available.
Like I said, all that is for the perfect world that I hope to live in some day. In the meantime, I'll try to keep an eye on this case, but I fully expect it to go nowhere.
This is going to be such a fun year for the State Lege. The Legislative Budget Board can't even agree on projections for state economic growth and its implications for next year's budget:
In a battle portending more to come, legislative budget leaders Monday narrowly fended off a conservative move to severely limit state spending in the next two years.Instead, the Legislative Budget Board set a spending ceiling of $54.9 billion for the 2004-2005 budget, enough to maintain existing government services at current levels.
The board, in its most spirited debate in years over setting a spending cap, sided with Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander's projection that Texas' economy will grow nearly 11.8 percent during the next budget cycle.
"I think it was quite significant. Usually the Legislative Budget Board rubber stamps the number unanimously," said board member Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville.
"We were expecting a fight today," he added. "We were expecting a close vote, and we were right.
Three Republican legislators argued that growth is more likely to be 7.8% and that the budget ceiling should be set lower as a result. (Annoyingly, the article doesn't specify what the lower ceiling would have been if they had gotten their way.)
I have to say, I think the pessimists have the better argument. I just don't believe that 11.8% growth next year is realistic. Maybe it's that I'm feeling gloomy about the state of the ecomony overall and the wave of cutbacks, layoffs, and pullouts going on here, I don't know. I sure hope the pessimists and I are wrong, but I wouldn't bet on it just yet.
Despite that, I think the Board was right not to force cuts in existing services by imposing a lower budget cap. I think Ron Wilson gets it right:
"We've got a ceiling here at the Capitol. Am I going to jump high enough to touch it? No, but it's there," Wilson said. "If you have to estimate a ceiling, I'd rather estimate a ceiling that gives us room than one that does not."
When Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander gives her report on revenue in January, then it would be appropriate to revisit this issue. I've criticized Rylander before for her rosy deficit projections, but by January she should be in a put-up-or-shut-up position.
(It should also be noted that the main critics of Rylander's projections in that earlier post I just cited are from the University of North Texas, the same place that gave the lowball 7.8% growth estimate. Guess if I lived in Denton, I'd be a sourpuss, too. Anyway, at least they're consistent.)
No correction or letters-to-the-editor printed in the Chron as of today regarding David Rushing. I'll be keeping an eye on it.
On a slightly egotistical note, this site is higher result in a Google search for "David Rushing" than any of his Houston Review articles. That oughta frost him.
Get ready, there's gonna be another online auction of Enron memorabilia, from December 3-5:
A sleek black Lincoln Navigator that transported former Enron Corp. chairman Kenneth Lay a few blocks to Dynegy Inc. about a year ago to announce the companies' doomed merger needs a new home.The 1999 sport-utility vehicle is among thousands of surplus Enron belongings to be sold at a three-day auction next week in the bankrupt company's continued efforts to raise money for creditors.
"That hauled Lay around a lot," Enron spokesman Mark Palmer said Monday, pointing at the SUV parked outside a Houston warehouse stocked with goods to be sold Dec. 3-5.
A total of 18 vehicles, mostly from the Enron Broadband unit, will be up for grabs along with a variety of crooked E's and a couple of fancy-schmancy brass telescopes from the executive floor. But wait, there's much more:
In a format similar to eBay, DoveBid will conduct a simultaneous online-only auction for more than 220,000 smaller, kitschy items that sport Enron's logo.Those items are left over from the defunct Enron Signature Shop, an online store for company employees.
[DoveBid auctioneer Renee] Jones said the sheer volume of T-shirts, tote bags, plastic mugs, stress balls, socks, jackets and other items was too much to include in a three-day live sale.
Such items were sold in bulk at the September auction, but the eBay-like format will allow bidders to buy single items.
Enron socks! I've gotta get me a pair of Enron socks.
Also, the online-only auction will feature Enron Field memorabilia, which wasn't available in September.That collection includes 500 small replicas of the Houston Astros ballpark before the team bought out Enron's naming-rights contract in March.
Enron Field miniatures! Someone get me a paper bag, I'm hyperventilating over here. And it gets even better:
"If we get immediate payment, we will get it shipped in time for Christmas," Jones said.
Get yer credit cards warmed up, kids. If this doesn't solve your Christmas shopping needs, I just can't help you.
Yesterday, after Mark Yzaguirre tipped me off to David Rushing's more accurate byline, I sent the following email to the Chron:
In Sunday's edition, you printed an opinion piece called "How John Sharp Killed the Texas Democratic Party" (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1674118). The author is David Rushing, whose byline says "Rushing, a Houstonian, is a first-year law student at Southern Methodist University". Are you aware that this same piece appears in the Houston Review, a publication that calls itself "an independent, conservative, student-run journal of news and opinion serving the Houston area"? Are you aware that David Rushing's byline in the Review version of this piece lists him as " a first year law student at Southern Methodist University and state Vice Chairman for Internal Affairs of the Young Conservatives of Texas"?What I want to know is did you leave out this last bit of his bio, or did he? In either case, I believe a disservice was done to the readers. Knowing Rushing's bias greatly changes one's perception of this piece. I believe that a correction should be printed to this effect.
Thank you very much.
Today there was a message on my answering machine from David Langworthy, a member of the Chron's editorial board and the editor of the Outlook page. He told me that Rushing sent the piece to them with the shorter bio, and that the ed board was not very happy about it. He said they will print some sort of correction, possibly in the form of the letters they received (they got at least one more besides mine), and that there will probably be a piece that "balances" Rushing's at some point as well. He thanked me for my "close reading" of the article. I thanked him for calling me and told him I appreciated his followup.
Interestingly, Langworthy mentioned that he wondered at first if Rushing was a really disguntled liberal or a conservative stirring things up. They decided to print his piece because they thought it would stimulate discussion. Looks like they got what they wanted.
Given the earlier example of less-than-forthright behavior by members of the Houston Review, I have to wonder why some of them feel the need to act this way. Maybe Bill Clinton broke their moral compasses, too.
In theory, anyway, according to a poll taken by County Judge Robert Eckels. Eckels is no big fan of rail, but even when he tried to push the anti-rail viewpoint, the support was there:
The poll shows that 66 percent of Harris County voters support a regional light rail system, compared with 26 percent who oppose one.The strongest proponents are those who live inside Loop 610, employed women and men under age 50.
More informative is Eckels' attempt to test the strength of rail support.
Even after respondents were told that a rail system would be financed with money dedicated to roads and freeways, 52 percent supported rail compared to 40 percent who opposed it.
The rail survey has its flaws. Respondents included residents from throughout the county, a larger group than those inside the smaller Metro service area.
But Eckels is right when he concludes from the poll that "there is support for rail because there is frustration with our traffic congestion."
"People want a solution, and they are willing to look at rail as a real option," Eckels said.
As columnist Williams notes, this will not necessarily translate to success at the ballot box when the next referendum comes up. You can be sure that the anti-rail forces will be loud, well financed, and motivated to vote.
One thing that should be noted is that public transportation, in particular light rail, has support across the ideological spectrum. Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation is a big booster of light rail, for example. Given that the opposition to rail here is going to come almost exclusively from the right wing, perhaps proponents here ought to consider enlisting someone like Weyrich to help counter that.
The Houston Art Car Parade, the granddaddy of all Art Car Parades and one of the best reasons to be in Houston in the springtime, is severing its ties with the Houston International Festival, thus allowing it more freedom in scheduling and parade route. This is a good thing all around. If you live in Houston and you've never been to an Art Car Parade, you're really missing out. It's not just the amazing spectacle of the vehicles themselves (many entrants aren't cars - there are trucks, motorcycles, and all sorts of homemade things which can't be adequately characterized), it's also the excellent people watching. Scroll through this page for a sampling. This page has more pictures and links of interest. Heck, just do a Google search on "Houston Art Car Parade" and you'll have enough fun stuff to waste the rest of the day.
I have a lot of respect for people who can actually read something written by Michelle Malkin. Greg Beato has done so here, and the results are quite amusing. Check it out. Via Matt Welch.
I should note that my third blog entry ever, back before I figured out that you should have one post per topic, was in part about Michelle Malkin. I stated my theory that she's actually the love child of Pat Buchanan and Ezola Foster. Now that I'm acquainted with the wisdom of Andrew Northrup, perhaps a better characterization is that she's the poor man's Ann Coulter. I suppose either one works.
(Secret message for Ginger: You should also read what Greg has to say about Pitchfork Media's Top 100 albums of the 80s.)
While writing the article below critiquing David Rushing's op-ed in today's Chron, I was tempted to include a line saying something like "This article is so ridiculous and slanted, I'd almost swear it was written by a Republican posing as a Democrat". I finally took it out because it just seemed too paranoid.
Well, shame on me. Reader Mark Yzaguirre wrote to tip me to the fact that this same piece appeared in the Houston Review, which according to its masthead is "an independent, conservative, student-run journal of news and opinion serving the Houston area." The byline on Rushing's piece here is slightly more informative - "David Rushing is a first year law student at Southern Methodist University and state Vice Chairman for Internal Affairs of the Young Conservatives of Texas". Which leads me to wonder - did Rushing leave out that last bit when he submitted his piece to the Chron, or did the Chron's op-ed page editor excise it? And whichever is the case, why?
On a slightly odd side note, some time after I started writing this weblog I began receiving mail from the affiliated Austin Review at my work address. I have no idea how they found me (especially since my work address has never appeared on this site or my old Blogspot site) or why they thought I'd be a receptive audience. Very strange.
UPDATE: Kevin reminds me in the comments that the Houston Review has a colorful history.
I hate stories like this:
SAN ANTONIO --After satisfying San Antonio's need for grease for 42 years, the last Little Hipps hamburger was flipped Friday.
The burger stand, in a tiny converted gas station just north of downtown, has fed hundreds of thousands of people since it opened in 1960.
The owner, Dick Hipp, is in failing health and made the decision to shut down the joint, even though hundreds still flocked there daily.
"He wants to go out on top," manager Tim Lang told the San Antonio Express-News. "He had the best burgers, the best place. He did it his way."
It's been a common sight to see crowds stretched outside the bright orange, corrugated metal building on McCullough Avenue. After all, the dimly lit dining room officially holds 86 customers -- and that's if one sits in an old-fashioned barber chair.
Little Hipps is known for its mega-size burgers, wonderfully crispy tater tots and Shypoke Eggs, a creation of Hipp's father, Loyal D. Hipp, who died last year.
Sold by the half-dozen, Shypoke Eggs, a staple at A Night In Old San Antonio, are nachos made to look like sunny side-up eggs, with white and yellow cheese.
Many of the employees at Little Hipps have been there for more than a decade and know customers by name and what they want to eat without asking.
Helen Aleman, 66, walks the two blocks from her home to the restaurant, where she's worked as a hostess since 1989.
"It's very sad. It's like my second home," she said last week before the final day. "I'm broken-hearted. I've been crying for a solid week."
Little Hipps insiders say Dick Hipp is not interested in selling the business. No one seems to know what will happen to the building, which sits on a prime piece of real estate near the downtown medical center.
Andrew Weissman, chef and owner of the swank restaurant Le Rêve, said he stopped at Little Hipps on Wednesday with an offer to buy the stand.
"I went over there and asked them if they'd be willing to sell it to me. I wouldn't change a thing," said Weissman, who has eaten at Little Hipps since he was a child.
"I've been going there forever. That's the kind of food I love to eat when I'm not working," he said. "It's very simple, straight-forward, honest food. You get total bang for your buck."
My college roommates and I lived in an old house on McCullough that was easy staggering distance from Little Hipps from the summer of 1988 to 1989. I was there for the summer, before I came to Houston. I visited often the following year. Little Hipps was our usual spot for Happy Hour. At least there's still Chris Madrid's...
Here's the story in the Express News, basically the same thing with a couple of pictures. So long, old friend.
When I saw the above-the-fold headline in the Sunday op-ed section entitled How John Sharp Killed the Texas Democratic Party, I expected a discussion of things like how all three top ticket candidates ran as Rpublican Lites, how Sharp kept the national Democratic Party at arm's length, even how Sharp put all of the party's eggs in the Tony Sanchez basket without giving him a sufficient checking out, but I got none of that. What I got from author David Rushing, listed as a "Houstonian and first-year law student at SMU", was a bizarre diatribe about racial politics. After reading it I have to wonder which campaign this guy was actually watching.
First, let's deal with a few fuzzy facts:
The problem for Sharp and Texas Democrats is that the Democratic Party has wedded itself to racial preferences, a practice that Sharp highlighted by his brazen endorsement of racial preferences for the top three seats. This iron-clad commitment to racial quotas was reinforced when Sharp and Sanchez both backed Kirk against Victor Morales in the Democratic Party run-off for nomination to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Phil Gramm in order to ensure a black on the top of the ticket. (Victor) Morales, the Democrats' 1996 nominee against Gramm, won a higher percentage of the general election vote in 1996 than Kirk did in 2002 against the less-formidable John Cornyn.
Unfortunately, the Election Returns page on the Secretary of State website is acting wonky, so I can't get the exact numbers right now. Victor Morales got 44% of the vote, about what Kirk got. Morales was likely helped by the Presidential election that year - he got roughly the same number of votes as Bill Clinton did. Kirk had a popular President from Texas actively campaigning against him.
What's so wrong with the idea that Ron Kirk was the better, more qualified candidate? He had a bipartisan record of success as mayor of Dallas. Victor Morales had one quirky run for office that generated a lot of favorable publicity for its novelty. He was never elected to anything, having failed in a similar campaign for the 5th Congressional District in 1998. Kirk was a good candidate with a shot at winning. Morales was a one-trick pony whose time had passed.
The choice of Tony Sanchez in particular killed Sharp and the Democrats. There was another Hispanic available, and running hard, for the Democratic nomination. And if Dan Morales (no relation to Victor), a highly qualified, experienced Hispanic with a history of opposition to racial preferences had been the Democratic nominee, the entire fall campaign could have gone differently. The party would have taken down the "No Anglos" sign by publicly repudiating its most divisive policy position. Instead, the Democrats amplified their allegiance to racial preferences.
This is just plain inaccurate. Dan Morales filed for the governor's race at the last minute. Speculation had been that he'd try for Senate up until then. This is not "running hard" for the nomination. Morales barely spent any money during the primary, probably in part because all the support had already lined up behind Sanchez, whose commitment to the candidacy had been known for months, and he got crushed.
I was happy to see Dan Morales run for the nomination. I voted for him in the primary. I do think he'd have been a better candidate, but if there's any blame to lay for his not being on the ticket, it's all on him.
Rushing spends the rest of the article railing against racial politics and quoting GOP politicians accusing the Democrats of playing the race card. I honestly don't know where to begin to respond to him. Race was an aspect of this campaign. How could it not be? But to say that the Senate and Governor's elections were all or mostly about race is to deny reality. The ads I saw on TV were occasionally about issues - mostly about insurance in the governor's race - and a lot about attacks. Rick Perry gained a lot of traction with his ads linking Tony Sanchez's bank to drug money. Sanchez accused Perry of being a special interests tool. Cornyn played the Bush card for all it was worth. Kirk ran warm and fuzzy ads proclaiming himself a moderate who works well with others. What frequencies does Rushing's TV pick up?
I'm just at a loss to understand where Rushing is coming from. I agree that the ticket did a poor job of appealing to white voters. I don't agree that it's because the candidates were openly hostile to white voters.
UPDATE: Greg Wythe unloads on David Rushing as well.
Those new environmental rules that Team Bush has unleashed on us look awfully familiar to us folks in Texas. Well hey, Bush promised to do to America's economy what he did to Texas', so why should things be any different with the environment?
I note that Jack is thinking along similar lines as well.
The former mayor of Sugar Land is suing a talk show host for some columns he wrote in which he called the mayor "Osama":
A lawsuit has been filed by former Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek against radio talk show host Jon Matthews in connection with several newspaper columns he wrote referring to Hrbacek as "Mayor Osama."Matthews wrote the columns in the weekly Fort Bend/Southwest Star in the weeks prior to the May election. Hrbacek was defeated in the hotly contested race by City Council member David Wallace.
The suit alleges Hrbacek's reputation was damaged by Matthews, who made false, malicious and defamatory statements against the mayor.
Now, Jon Matthews is a vile and vicious whackjob wingnut, one of many such voices that make AM radio in Houston a cesspool. I'd like nothing more than to see him disgraced and put out of a job. Unfortunately, I don't think Hrbacek has a leg to stand on. Matthews' protection under the First Amendment seems pretty clear to me. Hrbacek has every right to feel wronged, but I seriously doubt he'll get any relief from the courts.
The man himself, Captain Mark Aguirre, testified for four hours before the grand jury that's apparently looking into charges against him for the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup. Unfortunately, as grand jury proceedings are secret, there's not much meat to this story. What we do get is a little Line In The Sand drawing from Aguirre's mouthpiece:
[Aguirre's] lawyer said if an official oppression indictment is handed down, the captain will plead not guilty and request a trial."There won't be any plea bargain," attorney Terry Yates said. "He is not guilty of any police misconduct, procedurally, or any illegal conduct, criminally."
I so hope that happens. I'd consider taking time off from work to watch that trial. Please, please, please let there be a trial.
We also get a little trash talking between Aguirre's attorney and Chief C.O. "BAMF" Bradford's attorney:
Yates repeated allegations Friday that Aguirre, a 23-year-veteran, was targeted for punishment because of an earlier run-in with Police Chief C.O. Bradford."Instead of saying, `Hey this may not be a popular effort but it's needed for the safety of the public,' ... (Bradford) did just the opposite," Yates said. "He did that just to get back at Aguirre regarding that prior incident on aggravated perjury."
Aguirre accused Bradford of perjury in May after Bradford's testimony in a disciplinary hearing over whether Aguirre used profane and threatening language toward subordinates in 2001. Bradford has been indicted on the perjury charge, and his trial is scheduled for Jan. 21.
Bradford's attorney, Rusty Hardin, said Bradford, who is suspended pending the outcome of his trial, had nothing to do with the investigation into the raid.
"What Terry Yates said outside the grand jury is silly, self-serving tripe," Hardin said. "Chief Bradford has never made any allegation against Aguirre and is not even at the Police Department right now.
"The allegations against Aguirre were made by police officers who found him to be an oppressive wild man and secondly by citizens who felt they were wrongly treated. ... I can assure you that the district attorney's office is not carrying water for Chief Bradford in this investigation."
By the way, do you ever wonder where people like Terry Yates and Rusty Hardin learned their battle skills? Well, wonder no more.
Greg Morrow finds a new trick for an old dog: the self-fisking. I think this is why the French invented reflexive verbs.
I missed it earlier this week, but November 20 was the 20th anniversary of The Play, California's amazing game-winning kick return against Stanford that culminated with a trombone player getting flattened in the end zone.
Kevin Moen, the player who scored the touchdown, and Gary Tyrrell, the flattened trombone player, fondly recall their place in history. Both have also capitalized on it - for example, Tyrrell is an amateur brewer whose homebrew is called Trombone Guy Pale Ale.
Here's a story about Joe Sharkey, the radio announcer who made the historic play-by-play call. In the Right-Place-Right-Time Department, Sharkey made the key decision to actually pay attention to the kickoff, even as many of his colleagues were leaving the stadium:
“Normally in TV and radio,” Starkey says, “when you know it’s the last play of the game, you don’t call it as it occurs. You wait until it’s played out, then give a recap. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to stick with it.”Many reporters covering the game that day didn’t even see The Play, he says. Thinking Stanford’s field goal had ended the game, they went to the locker room or left the stadium to beat the traffic.
“One colleague of mine was in his car at a red light when he heard me calling out Cal’s last play,” says Starkey. “When the light turned green, he didn’t move, and neither did any of the other cars at the intersection. It was obvious everyone was listening to the same thing; he said the light changed twice before anyone moved.”
Another friend driving home during The Play, Starkey remembers, tried to pull over to listen to the broadcast, but was so distracted by what was transpiring that he ended up in a nearby ditch.
A fuller description of The Play and the events that led up to it are here. For a slightly different view of The Play, check out this parody edition of The Daily Californian put out by some disgruntled Stanford fans a few days after the game. You can hear a recording of the play-by-play here. My buddy Dan Wallach has a trascript of the play-by-play on his home page. Finally, here's a link to a page that has Real Player clips for download of the The Play, and the Stanford drive that preceded The Play.
From today's Chron:
The Bush administration today eased clean air rules to allow utilities, refineries and manufacturers to avoid having to install expensive new anti-pollution equipment when they modernize their plants.The long-awaited regulation issued by the Environmental Protection Agency was immediately attacked by environmentalists, state air quality regulators and attorneys general in several Northeast state who promised a lawsuit to try to reverse the action.
But EPA Administrator Christie Whitman rejected critics' claims that the changes would produce dirtier air. She said at a news conference that the changes will "encourage emission reductions" by providing utilities and refinery operators new flexibility when considering operational changes and expansion.
Bah. They'll do whatever is cheapest. If that happens to align with reduced emissions, fine. If not, that's the way it goes.
The changes were sought by the utility, coal and oil industries, and were the subject of months of review at the White House. The electric utility and coal industries were both major donors to Republicans for the 2002 and 2000 elections.Electric companies and their employees contributed at least $11 million to the GOP in the 2001-02 election cycle, more than twice as much as they gave Democrats, according to figures compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign finance.
Coal companies and their employees made at least $1.9 million in political contributions in that period, with more than $8 of every $10 going to Republicans, the center found.
Bush's 2000 presidential campaign was also a major beneficiary of the industries' largess. Several energy executives raised at least $100,000 each for Bush's campaign, and the energy industry, including electric and mining companies, gave more than $2.8 million.
Many of the fund-raisers and donors were members of Bush's transition team, weighing in on energy and environmental policy as the president set up his administration.
If any of this comes as a surprise to you, you haven't been paying attention.
The retrial of Calvin Burdine continues to be a total pooch-screw, as two attorneys that Judge Joan Huffman has assigned to assist his court-appointed counsel have been rejected by both Burdine and his lawyer.
State District Judge Joan Huffman appointed Anthony Osso and Dick Wheelan to Burdine's defense team earlier this week, even though Burdine already has his own attorney and did not ask for the court-ordered assistance.Danalynn Recer, Burdine's attorney, said during a hearing Thursday that the judge had "overreached" her authority.
Recer, who took the case for free after Huffman refused to appoint Burdine's longtime appellate attorney Robert McGlasson of Georgia, opposed the addition of Osso and Wheelan during a hearing Tuesday.
Recer asked Huffman her legal basis and motive for the appointments during another hearing Thursday, but the judge declined to answer. The judge would only say that her intention is to ensure that Burdine has an effective legal defense team.
Huffman said it's up to Recer whether she will seek the attorneys' help in the case.
"You can use them, don't use them -- they can sit at trial and not say a word," Huffman said of Osso and Wheelan. "But, they are here to assist you."
Recer submitted an affidavit to Huffman during Thursday's hearing in which Burdine complained about the appointments and stated that he considers Recer and McGlasson to be his attorneys.
Let's run this one down from the top:
- Calvin Burdine's conviction for the 1983 slaying of his roommate/lover W.T. Wise is overthrown on appeal because his court-appointed attorney slept through much of the trial.
- Judge Huffman refuses to allow Robert McGlasson, the attorney who handled all of Burdine's appeals, to be his counsel for the retrial. The reason for Huffman's refusal is that McGlasson had the balls to want to be paid for his representation. Burdine is indigent, so the state of Texas would be picking up McGlasson's tab. Instead, Huffman appoints Danalyn Recer, who had agreed to work pro bono. The ACLU appealed and a federal judge agreed to review Huffman's decision, but ultimately allowed her ruling to stand. An appeal is pending.
- Huffman had originally set an October date for the retrial, which would have given Recer very little time to prepare. After much hue and cry and a rebuke from the editorial page of the Chron, Huffman moves the trial date back.
- As this is a death penalty case, the law apparently requires two lawyers for an indigent defendant. Burdine wanted McGlasson, who is helping with the case anyway. Huffman picked two other attorneys for reasons unclear. Both attorneys will make between $400 and $700 per day or up to $30,000 for the case, with Huffman giving final approval to their bill.
Does this make any sense to you? It sure doesn't to me.
One of the secret problems of Texas criminal justice is the lack of a public defenders office in most counties. Judges appoint defense attorneys for defendants who need them. This often leads to a major conflict of interest. Judges are elected, so they don't want a reputation for cutting criminals loose. Attorneys who get these appointments have an incentive to please the judge. As a result, the accused often get a defnse that is indifferent, even nonexistant (as was the case with Burdine).
Unfortunately, there's no remedy for this that doesn't include money and the public will to do something about it. Neither of those is likely any time soon, so we get the spectacles like this one.
UBS Warburg, which bought out Enron Online for a share of future profits, is closing down its Houston office and letting go of most of the 380 people employed there. This closes out another chapter in Enron's history.
Charles Barkley is a man of his word, and Kenny Smith managed to keep his dignity intact. Best damn pregame show ever, with the added bonus that I got to mute Jesse Ventura.
The silliest part of the whole thing was during the first half when TNT showed the quote that led to all this. After hearing the word "ass" about a hundred times during pregame, some overly sensitive assistant producer substituted "posterior" in the quote. Naturally, when Barkley and company came back on for the halftime show, it was "ass" this and "ass" that. Maybe TNT figures that the truly refined fans don't tune in to the pregame and halftime shows.
Kevin has been kind enough to note that I've beaten the Houston Press's Richard Connelly to the draw several times, so I'm happy to note that he's done the same here. And I second the notion that Connelly should get a blog. I've enjoyed his writing ever since he did The Sports Heretic for the late, lamented Public News (an alternate weekly in the true sense of the word). C'mon, Press, turn Connelly loose!
I knew if I brought up tort reform as I did in the previous post that someone would mention Liebeck v. McDonald's, the infamous case in which a woman was awarded a multimillion dollar amount for spilling coffee on herself. As Owen does, so do I consider this case a seminal one for the American tort system. Unlike Owen, I consider it a case in which the system did exactly what it's supposed to.
Here are a few links to some relevant facts about this case. A summary with some links is here, which makes the following points:
But the damage to the plaintiff in Liebeck was by no means insignificant. The woman, who was 79 years-old at the time of the accident, received third-degree burns requiring skin grafts on much of her inner thighs, buttocks, and genitals. Is this what people ordinarily expect from spilled coffee?Nor was the defendant unfairly penalized. McDonald's kept its coffee much hotter, about 40 degrees hotter, than the coffee you drink at home. The higher heat improves the aroma and avoids customer complaints of lukewarm coffee. But McDonald's had already received nearly 700 complaints about the danger of the hot coffee prior to the Liebeck accident. And coffee at that temperature, around 185 degrees Fahrenheit, is unfit for human consumption until it cools down. McDonald's needed to be curbed.
Moreover, the court system in Liebeck operated fairly to McDonald's. The judge in the case reduced the punitive damages awarded by the jury, down to three times the actual damages, and in fact reduced the plaintiff's actual damage award as an offset for her own contributory negligence in spilling the coffee. In fact, the plaintiff later settled with McDonald's for an amount below what the judge awarded her.
So what's all the fuss? McDonald's was truly blameworthy, Ms. Liebeck was harmed beyond the level of reasonable expectation, and the court prevented an emotional situation from leaving the plaintiff with an excessive award. You might still worry about the punitive damages, and argue that Ms. Liebeck, herself, should not benefit financially from the attempt to punish McDonald's. But unless courts in America are to become something besides a forum to resolve individual disputes, punitive damages will remain the most effective way to curb reckless corporate behavior.
This link has more details, including the fact that McDonald's coffee was extra hot on the assumption that most people who buy it at a drive-though wait until they reach their destination before drinking it, even though their own research showed that most people actually drink it immediately.
The bottom line is simply this: The injury that Ms. Liebeck suffered was way out of line with her expectation of risk. We've all spilled hot beverages on ourselves. For our clumsiness, we get red skin and a day's worth of discomfort. Would you be willing to assume the risk of eight days in the hospital, skin grafting and debridement, and $20,000 in medical bills for a cup of joe? I sure wouldn't. McDonald's knew the risks but Stella Liebeck and the 700 other people who suffered nasty burns before her didn't. That's why we have tort laws, and that's why "tort reform" is nothing but a fig leaf.
Oh, and if you think that there are plenty of other cases that show abuse of the system even if this one isn't so bad, think again:
Huge punitive damage awards, for example, have become everyday events, right? Actually, a study of courts in the nation's 75 largest counties conducted by the National Center for State Courts found that only 364 of 762,000 cases ended in punitive damages, or 0.047 percent.OK, but isn't it true that more and more liability claims are filed every year? Actually, a study of 16 states by the same center showed that the number of liability suits has declined by 9 percent since 1986.
As with many things, the facts often belie the hype. Don't you believe it.
Two Republican state Senators have prefiled legislation to deal with the insurance crisis in Texas.
Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, and Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, prefiled a package of bills that would bring all insurers under rate regulation. Currently, 95 percent of homeowners insurance is written by unregulated county mutuals.Fraser said the legislation is designed to address the insurance crisis that figured prominently in this fall's election.
"The overriding goal of the package will be to lower homeowners rates for consumers and restore the competition to the market," said Fraser.
The centerpiece of the package of eight bills would require all insurers to justify the rates they charge for home and auto coverage. Other measures would bar companies from cherry-picking profitable lines of insurance while abandoning other lines and would prevent companies from denying coverage because of a previous water-damage claim.
All worthy goals, though there are other things, such as a ban on credit scoring and greater accountability (as cited by a spokesman for Texas Watch later in the article) that I'd like to see as well. But it's a good start.
So how do these guys feel about being reformers?
Fraser acknowledged that the insurance industry hasn't lost many battles in the past."They are worthy opponents. But the fact that you have two pretty conservative Republicans that are starting this process should be a signal that we're worthy opponents also," said Fraser.
Gee, why do you think the insurance industry has such a winning record? Maybe because those conservative Republicans have always rolled over for them. I'll bet one way or another there will be some hurt feelings in Austin this year.
Part of the reason why progressives eye reforms advocated by conservatives with suspicion is because we think the conservatives want to target things that aren't part of the problem as we see it. To wit:
"The mold issue to a very large degree is a manufactured crisis driven by unlicensed and unregulated public adjusters and mold remediators coupled with a healthy dose of lawsuit abuse by plaintiffs' attorneys," said Fraser, who plans to file tort-reform legislation in the coming months.
"Tort reform" is to my ears much like "health care reform" is to conservatives' ears: a warning that ideological motives are at play and are threatening to wreak havoc on something that we think works just fine as is. I don't dispute that there are abuses in the tort system, just as there are abuses by insurance adjusters. I say the amount of attention that is paid to "lawsuit abuse" is way out of proportion to the number and scope of abuses, and that the proposed remedies do little more than cripple what is sometimes the only weapon that ordinary consumers have against corporate power. The fact that plaintiff's attorneys are mostly Democrats and among the biggest donors to the Democratic Party is just icing on the cake.
I'll keep an open mind on this. If the reforms that get passed address most of the problem without making anything worse, I'll give credit where it's due. We shall see.
Captian Mark Aguirre and an unnamed sergeant are the apparent targets of the grand jury investigation of the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup.
"After reviewing all the evidence, my impression is that Aguirre and one other sergeant who is his right-hand man are the targets of this probe," said Clint Greenwood, who is representing Lt. Frank Jackson. Greenwood would not identify the sergeant.
Frank Jackson was the architect of the raid, which was put together at Aguirre's request. If his lawyer is to be believed, he did not envision what happened:
The manner in which the sweep occurred was drastically different from Jackson's plan, Greenwood said. For example, Jackson's plan only called for four passenger vans to transport those arrested, which never would have held the 270 people."My client is probably the person with the best overview of what happened from beginning to end," Greenwood said. "He was there from May, when Aguirre hatched the idea, until they took down the crime scene tape in the parking lot."
Jackson has willingly cooperated with the district attorney's office and the police Internal Affairs Division because he has no criminal liability for the incident, Greenwood said. The night of the raid Jackson distributed ticket books and pens and did not make any arrests.
"My client drew up the plan that was approved all the way up to the top," Greenwood said. "Other than that, he did what Aguirre told him to do."
Very interesting. How did all those people wind up getting arrested if the plan only called for four transport vans? Why was Lt. Jackson not making arrests? Was he disobeying orders or were the other officers disobeying them? Or were the orders not clearly communicated to all officers present? I want to know more.
Jay Zilber has a great rant about the state of health insurance and how it affects a self-employed person such as himself.
[I]nstead of reflexively trotting out the old, weatherbeaten scare-arguments -- which have been stripped down to PowerPoint bullet-point summaries and repeated so often that they've lost all meaning -- I wish some critics of Hillarycare (perhaps now to be rechristened AlCare -- "I'll Care" -- get it?) would explain why I'm so much better off paying the equivalent of a stiff tax straight into the United Healthcare Slushfund Lockbox every month, while simultaneously enduring the bureaucratic nightmare required to get a legitimate claim reimbursed under StatusQuoCare, and worrying if that noise I just heard was the Repo Man hauling away my Honda Civic.
Check it out.
Get ready, America - Charles Barkley is paying off his bet to kiss Kenny Smith's ass tonight, though apparently it will be on the new TNT talk show Listen Up! instead of the TNT NBA pregame show as originally indicated. Barkley, naturally, is the host of the Listen Up! show - if he's gotta do the crime, he may as well get the ratings for his ownself out of it.
Before November 5, there was speculation that if the Republicans gained a 50-49-1 majority in the Senate that Lincoln Chafee would switch parties to leave the Senate in Democratic control. Switch talk is still alive, only now there are more names being tossed about. The lefty site Working for Change is trying to lobby Senators Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter along with Chafee, a move that I consider a bit quixotic (not that I object, mind you).
A more interesting scenario, predicated on Mary Landrieu retaining her seat in the Louisiana runoff, is this one, which not only suggests John McCain as an ace in the hole, but that there could be a bigger picture involved:
Prediction: There is a 50-50 chance that McCain and Chaffee will switch parties and a similar chance that McCain will become the Democratic standard bearer in 2004. The odds of a Landrieu victory in Louisiana are much higher.
Via the newly Movable Typed Tom Tomorrow.
I'm still a bit shell shocked from November 5 to have given this much thought, but it strikes me as a bit farfetched. I think I'll stay skeptical, which at least gives me the chance to be pleasantly surprised.
Jesus says "Don't drive SUVs". Well, a coalition of environmentally-conscious religious leaders say that Jesus says not to drive SUVs. I swear, even on issues I agree with, it gets harder every day to distinguish the news from The Onion.
UPDATE: Scott knows the real answer:
I can safely say that Jesus would not drive an SUV. They are impractical for the Real Man, what with all the foofy electrical seat warmers, auto-opening doors and 6-disc CD changers. SUVs are great for women and posers, but the Real Man eschews them.Jesus was a carpenter, and he was a Real Man, and he worked in a rural area. Therefore, Jesus would drive an F-150 pickup truck. Probably with 4WD and the trailer package in case he had to haul a lot of lumber to a remote construction site that Home Depot couldn't deliver to.
Now, he might have an old Ford Bronco with the Real Man 351 and vinyl replacement seat covers and lockable hubs for down-time fun.
Testify, brother!
From today's Chron:
GALVESTON -- The desperate pursuit of love from a man who demanded expensive gifts, lavish lifestyle and lots of money led a woman to embezzle hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Gulf Greyhound Park dog track, the woman's attorney said Tuesday.Among many other things, Maria Christina "Christine" Barros bought her boyfriend a new Lexus automobile, an expensive wardrobe and an array of equipment he said he needed to become a private investigator in Las Vegas, defense attorney Chris Samuelson told a jury of nine women and three men.
The jury will decide whether Barros receives probation or goes to prison for embezzling.
Hasn't her lawyer figured out that all she needs to do is blame Bill Clinton for the loss of her moral compass? I thought that was a generally accepted affirmative defense by now.
A plan has been proposed to divert some water from the Guadeloupe River into the San Antonio Water System and two other water entities to meet its growing needs. This will put them in direct competition with the San Marcos River Foundation, which has already requested water from the Guadeloupe to ensure a minimum amount of fresh water flow into the San Antonio Bay, which houses a variety of species used for commercial and recreational purposes as well as being the winter home of the endangered whooping crane.
This is likely to be an ugly battle, and I'm not sure whose side I'm on just yet, but what caught my eye was this bit:
The $600 million project would bring SAWS 94,500-acre feet — about a third of what it currently uses — from below the confluence of the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers via a 130-mile pipeline starting in 2011.An acre-foot is equal to about 326,000 gallons and is considered enough water to meet the needs of two families of four for a year.
326,000 gallons of water a year for eight people. Wow. I had no idea.
Keep your eye on this. As population continues to boom in the dry Southwest, you'll be seeing more and more stories like it.
It's Perfectly Normal and It's So Amazing, two books that had been temporarily removed from the shelves of the public libraries in Montgomery County have been returned after a newly expanded panel that reviews children's books which have been challenged decided that they were not a threat to turn the innocent youth of Conroe into slobbering sex maniacs.
Terry Domino, a citizen member of the panel, called the decision a "strong consensus."The decision was approved by library director Jerilynn Williams, who has the authority to return the books to the shelves.
"I accept the recommendation and will forward the recommendation to Commissioners Court and the Library Board," Williams said. "I certainly appreciate the work of the citizens added to this committee as well as the library staff members."
The books were pulled from the shelves in August and September when the Republican Leadership Council, a conservative Christian group, asked Montgomery County Commissioners Court to remove the titles because it said they were pro-homosexual and sexually explicit.
"I accept their decision. That's all I can really say," said Montgomery County Judge Alan Sadler. "We set up a process, and we need to follow it, whether we agree or not."
Thanks for playing, Judge. Now maybe you can focus on important things, like maintaining roads and bridges, caring for indigent citizens, and other things that a county judge is supposed to do.
I'm at a loss for words after reading this interview with James Kopp, the man who shot and killed Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home in 1998:
"The truth is not that I regret shooting Dr. (Barnett) Slepian. I regret that he died," Kopp told [the Buffalo News] in an interview published today. "I aimed at his shoulder. The bullet took a crazy ricochet, and that's what killed him. One of my goals was to keep Dr. Slepian alive, and I failed at that goal."[...]
"To pick up a gun and aim it at another human being and to fire, it's not a human thing to do," Kopp said. "It's not nice. It's not pleasant. It's gory, it's bloody. It overcomes every human instinct.
"The only thing that would be worse, to me, would be to do nothing, and to allow abortions to continue."
[...]
"I didn't intend to kill Dr. Slepian," Kopp said. "Why do you think I used force against Dr. Slepian when he was within 10 hours of taking the lives of 25 babies? The question answers itself."
Bastard. May you rot in hell.
UPDATE: The Buffalo News story is available here. For some odd reason, they were still displaying yesterday's edition when I wrote this entry at 8 AM CST. I note with some annoyance that the web filter in my classroom cuts the article off at the "Pro-Life Stance" subhead.
A grand jury has been impaneled to investigate whether any police officers involved in the raid broke the law when conducting the mass arrest. As yet, no officers have been charged for their role. We'll see how this plays out.
Now that he's done his best to give a helping hand to pharmaceutical companies in the name of Homeland Security, what's next for Dick Armey? Why, consulting for the ACLU, of course.
It's not as big a leap as it may appear. In the past, Armey has worked with the ACLU to protest what he considered government invasions of privacy. He also opposed Attorney General John Ashcroft's Operation TIPS -- Terrorism Information and Prevention System -- that would have encouraged Americans to look out for suspicious activity and report anything unusual."He is as passionate about privacy as we are," said Laura W. Murphy, ACLU Washington office director.
I suppose that's true, though after his little rope-a-dope over invading Iraq, I have even less reason to trust in his goodwill. There is one thing about this that may work out to be an unequivocal good, though, and that's if his presence helps blunt conservative attacks on the ACLU. I really do believe that a big fight over civil rights is on the horizon. I want to see the Democrats lead this fight and get the credit for the win, but the end result matters more than who can crow about it afterwards. If Dick Armey can be a force for good, then I'll link arms with him and be happy about it.
That doesn't mean I'll be able to suppress my gag reflex when I read passages like these, though:
Armey entered Congress as a foe of Big Government, the minimum wage and the Internal Revenue Service. But his last big legislative achievement was helping pass a measure to create the vast Homeland Security Department, the anti-terrorism agency that will merge dozens of agencies and some 170,000 employees. Armey has said the department consolidates several agencies so it keeps with his philosophy of shrinking government."Armey culturally, definitely represented the sagebrush rebellion with cowboy boots, a deep tan, his deep smoker's laugh," said Kenneth R. Weinstein, director of the Washington office of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. "He's very much someone who embodied in some ways the leave-it-alone coalition -- guns, cutting budgets, making government smaller."
Weinstein must have missed the memo about victors and spoils. Too bad it clashes with the rugged Marlboro Man individualist riding into the sunset with his guns image.
In what's sure to be the first of many "victories" for the President, the Homeland Security bill has passed, with an amendment to strip a few odious favors to GOP benefactors being defeated on a mostly party-line vote, 52-47.
Three moderate Republicans - Snowe, Collins, and Chafee - voted for the bill after getting a promise from Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert that three of the provisions would be taken out next year, including one that would have protected pharmaceutical companies that have been sued over vaccines that have allegedly caused health problems. One of the issues concerns a vaccine for hepatitis B that contained a preservative called thimerosal, which is 50% by weight ethyl mercury. Studies have shown a link between such high levels of mercury and autism in children, though it has not been conclusively proven to be a cause. A couple of bloggers with autistic children have already written about this here, here, here, here, and here.
I understand that there are great costs in bringing a vaccine to the market. Indeed, the ratio of high cost of development and production to low return is why we're seeing a shortage of many vaccines such as flu vaccines. I understand that especially in times when fear of biological weapons is running high that we need to cut pharma companies a little slack. I certainly understand risk/reward ratios - I actually read every word of the disclaimer that I sign every year before I get my flu shot. And I have little regard for people who eschew vaccines because they don't or won't understand those ratios.
The issue here is not whether or not eeeevil corporations are profiting while children suffer. The issue is whether or not we insist on giving consumers full information and letting them make an informed decision. Dwight Meredith puts it best:
Regardless of the ultimate resolution of the issue of whether or not thimerosal causes autism, one aspect of this controversy is not subject to dispute. Our public health system gave mercury to 30,000,000 children in amounts that exceed EPA guidelines. It did so without calculating the amount of mercury being given. It did so without knowing the medical effects of giving that quantity of mercury. A public health system that behaves in that manner is broken. It needs to be fixed.
It is to Dick Armey's eternal shame that he stuck this amendment in a totally unrelated bill. If Senators Snowe, Collins, and Chafee fail to hold Trent Lott and Dennis Hastert to their word, or if Lott and Hastert screw them, it's to their eternal shame as well.
Before the Rockets-Lakers game on Sunday, Charles Barkley announced that if Yao Ming were to score as many as 19 points in any game this year, he'd kiss Kenny Smith's ass on national TV. Well, it's time to pay up, as Yao scored 20 against the Shaqless Lakers. Kenny Smith is planning on holding Barkley to the terms of the agreement:
"I make people pay their debts," Smith said. "Charles will pay his debt to society, no question about it. He will pay his debt, and it will be on camera."Charles goes to Las Vegas a lot. In Vegas, you can't leave the table until you pay your debts."
Smith also hinted he has further humiliation in mind for Barkley but would not elaborate.
"Charles even called me today, but I'm not answering his calls until Thursday," Smith said. "I'm not giving him any way to get any kind of hint about what I have planned for him."
This could be the most exciting thing to happen on an NBA pregame show since the year that Bob Costas and Pat Riley had a free-throw shooting contest, with the loser (Costas) being required to wear his hair in the style of the winner. I'll be sure to tune in.
Walter in Denver, a Libertarian Party member, has some thoughts on the recent election:
So, why do I, a partisan Libertarian, see a positive in Republican victory? After all, gridlock is the next best thing to libertarian government. It's because the minarchists in the Republican Party have nowhere to hide. They'll have to put up or shut up.I'll make a few easy predictions; under Republican rule, the federal government will continue to grow, probably at a faster pace than ever. Government intrusions on a personal level will become more egregious. Small government advocates will have no place in the Republican Party.
Coming elections will provide fertile ground for libertarians of both the large and small 'L' varieties.
Like I said, this is an opportunity for the Democrats. The stars are perfectly aligned: the Christian Coalition will be presenting a bill for its services to the GOP any day now, John Ashcroft is making waste paper out of the Constitution, a movement to regain civil rights is surely in our near future, and the Dems can blame the Republicans for everything that goes wrong.
Walter also disputes the notion that Libertarian voters siphon votes from the GOP (a notion Mac agrees with, at least as far as Alabama goes). Apparently, his wife is Miss December in the Ladies of Liberty pinup calendar, which makes him all right in my book.
Link via Talk Left.
Kevin offers his opinion of Heather Hurlburt's article about the Democrats' lack of strength on foreign policy as well as his personal experience:
When I was working on a masters degree in defense and strategic studies, I can't recall any students who were open Democrats in the program. There was one Spanish foreign exchange student who was a bit of a liberal, and plenty of professed conservatives or Republicans. But not one Dem that I can recall. It's kind of odd, too, since the head of the program had been influenced heavily by Senator Scoop Jackson, who was a true Dem expert on national security (and also influenced people like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who didn't find later Dems all that hospitable to their thinking either). That's anecdotal evidence, of course, but then again, my blog is anecdotal as well. So there ya go.
Out of curiosity, I asked Tiffany about the political split in her classes when she was an undergrad at Georgetown in the School of Foreign Service. According to her, the split was roughly 50-50. She was in the class of 1992, so you figure some of these people must be coming of age in DC, though of course whether or not their bosses are is another matter entirely. Anyway, Kevin's post inspired me to ask, so there you have it.
I'm in a class this week, learning Visual Basic for Microsoft's .NET platform. Unlike some other classrooms I've been in, the computers in this one are connected to the outside world. Usually, training facilities leave classroom computers on an isolated network, as the temptation to surf the web during a lecture that one finds a tad dry is pretty overwhelming. They provide some common-area PCs for folks who need a quick fix or access to their web mail.
Anyway, these PCs are connected. During the intro to the class, the instructor asked that we refrain our surfing to breaks and lunchtime. He then noted that we can surf where we want during those times, though we should "use our judgment" as to places we visit.
Turns out they don't fully trust our judgment. During the first break I clicked on The People's Republic of Seabrook and got the following message:
Access DeniedThe requested document, http://intellectualize.org/, will not be shown.
Reason: DDR score = 396. This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.
You're a naughty boy, Jack. Amazingly, even Larry didn't set off the bad word filter. What are the odds of that happening?
Jim Henley has some sharp words for libertarians regarding the Homeland Security Act and the Information Awareness Office.
If you imagine yourselves as part of some coalition, ask yourself what you're getting for your trouble. You lost HSD. You lost USA-PATRIOT. You get IAO. An independent 9/11 commission? Gone. A lot of you favor liberal rules on therapeutic cloning. Think you'll get that from this Congress? Is there anything whatsoever that neolibertarians favor that the rest of the Republican coalition does not where you have gotten or expect to get your way? Any case where the Administration said "We've got to give the libertarians this?" Or where you can imagine them saying it? Remember, the war doesn't count. The neocons want it and the Christian Coalition wants it. They matter. Ditto for the tax cut. I'm talking about something that neolibertarians hold dear that neocons and/or the Christian Right oppose, where the will of the neolibertarians prevails.I'm here every day. You can get back to me.
A proposition: Neolibertarians are to the Republican Party what African-Americans are to the Democratic Party - taken for granted because they have nowhere else to go.
I'd argue that African-Americans get a lot more out of the Democrats than neolibs get out of the GOP - if nothing else, there's a lot more black Democratic officeholders than there are neolib Republican officeholders (my personal count of the latter starts and ends with Ron Paul) - but that's a quibble. My purpose here is to suggest that it's high time the Democrats offered a legitimate alternative to the Republicans for people like Jim.
We can start right here with Homeland Security and the IAO. I believe there's going to eventually be a backlash against the curtailment of civil rights that has gone part and parcel with the War of Terror. Sooner or later, people are going to start to ask if the security they've supposedly gained in trade for their freedoms is really worth it. If there's one thing I want the Democrats to learn from Election 2002, it's that if you want credibility on an issue you have to get out in front of that issue. You know, lead. Let's start by calling HSD and the IAO the abominations that they are.
(What's that you say? The Democrats originally proposed HSD over Team Bush's objections? So what? The hallmark of George W. Bush's political career has been to initially oppose something, then take credit for it when it happens anyway. He got the credit for HSD. Go ahead and hand him the bill for it. He's earned it.)
Once the Dems have started bashing HSD, there are other issues on which they can not only be on the side of the angels but also on the side of the libertarians. Take stem-cell research, which can easily be cast in terms of heroic doctors battling deadly diseases. Or take digital rights management and the CBDTPA. Surely a party that claims to represent "the people" should be able to oppose a law that would allow large corporations to rummage around your personal computer.
The beauty of this approach is that it gives the Dems some appeal to a group that has all but abandoned them - white males - without lurching towards the right. Combine this with an increased focus on the looming budget deficit, and I think you just might have a winner.
The long running granddaddy-of-them-all technology show Comdex is on the skids after a couple of bad years:
But at the 23rd annual show, which starts Monday, the crowds will be smaller, the exhibit area more compact and the mood subdued. Comdex, like the rest of the high-tech industry, is sputtering."Comdex is not bigger than the industry it serves," said Fredric Rosen, chief executive of Key3Media Group, Comdex's organizer. "We didn't make the economy. We only reflect it."
Rosen expects visitors this year to stay steady with the 125,000 who attended in 2001 -- an abysmal year because of the terrorist attacks, anthrax scare and sinking economy.
But the amount of exhibit space this year is expected to shrink, after dropping from 1.2 million square feet in 2000 to 805,706 square feet sold in 2001. Only 1,000 or so exhibitors are expected this year, down from 1,685 in 2001 and 2,337 in 2000.
Reports of Comdex's demise are nearly as predictable as falling leaves in autumn. During the high-tech boom, pundits said the show was too big and unfocused to maintain its clout.
Now, however, Key3Media is itself struggling with layoffs, losses and a stock price hovering around 2 cents per share. Several of its regional shows have been canceled.
In its third-quarter financial results released Thursday, the company said there is "substantial risk" it would be unable to make interest payments due Dec. 16 and may have to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
A decision will be made after the fall show, the company said.
I attended Comdex in 1991, back when I was employed at a small software shop. We really had no business being there, since we were in a niche market and couldn't come close to justifying the cost of travel and booth rental, but I'm glad I had the chance to go. Comdex really does take over Las Vegas for a week. You need the full week just to walk past all the booths.
Probably the most interesting experience I had at Comdex was a cab ride in which the cabbie complained that he wasn't making good money at Comdex any more because no one wanted to go to the brothels. Prostitution is not legal in Clark County - the closest legal brothels are about an hour's drive away. All of them offer package deals with Las Vegas cabbies - for a fixed fee, you get a roundtrip cab ride and a session with one of the working girls. My driver (who was taking me to the airport, in case you're wondering) lamented that since the advent of AIDS, none of the conventioneers were taking those excursions. The moral of this story is that at any given point in the lifecycle of an institution, you can always find someone who thinks that it isn't what it used to be.
The prognosis for Comdex isn't good. Even when the economy recovers, it faces tough competition from smaller shows that focus on specific technologies. I don't expect Condex to die in the near future, but I'll predict that if Key3Media goes under it will morph into something else under whoever buys up the corpse.
Thanks in part to more favorable weather, Houston finished third in the Smoggiest City sweepstakes behind Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley. Take that, LA!
Does this mean the air is cleaner?Don't hold your breath, the experts say.
The low number of monitors in the Houston area -- 22 in all -- accounts for the underestimation of days when the ozone creeps above the federal health standard, said Bryan Lambeth, senior meteorologist for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
This year the seven monitors that recorded the most days when ozone levels were broken -- five -- were concentrated along the Houston Ship Channel and Loop 610. Last year, Bayland Park in southwest Houston registered 10.
"There are probably more days when ozone exceedances occurred, but we don't know about them. If we added 20 more monitors we'd probably add 20 more days," Lambeth said. "This is one of the quietest years on record, but it's always tough to judge whether the air is cleaner."
The real reason Houston had a more smog-free year was the weather, he said. Sunlight and stagnant air are needed for the air pollutants that create ground-level ozone to react.
The weather in Texas was more rainy and windy than normal in 2002, discouraging ozone formation despite the nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds released by Houston's plentiful industry and traffic and its busy port.
Last year, similar weather knocked Houston out of the top spot it had held for two years, a title that heated up the 2000 presidential race and brought criticism on Mayor Lee Brown from some Houstonians who felt that he should have taken a stronger stance against Democrats who lampooned the city's air quality.
[...]
Meanwhile, in California, weather patterns and a wildfire season that ranked as one of the worst in history increased smog formation, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
The Los Angeles area recorded 49 days when smog reached levels that can irritate respiratory ailments and make breathing difficult, giving it the smog title for the second straight year, said district spokesman Sam Atwood. The district has 32 monitors measuring air quality around the city.
Atwood downplayed L.A.'s winning record.
"When you guys have a bad year we have a good year, and vice versa," he said. "The typical sunny, Southern California weather is the same pattern that makes for good smog formation."
OK, OK, so we won't get smug about it. Not too smug, anyway. Better luck next year, guys.
Sherron Watkins, the Enron vice president who wrote the infamous memo to Ken Lay in August of 2001 warning of her fear that the company was about to "collapse in a wave of accounting scandals", has resigned her position with the company. I have to say, not only did I not realize that she was still employed there, I sometimes forget that there is still an entity called Enron doing business. Enron had been paying the legal bills for employees who were being asked to participate in the various government investigations. Watkins will be on her own in that department now, so that probably means she's not expecting to testify much any more.
She plans to continue speaking and giving lectures, and will explore the idea of consulting on corporate governance.Watkins, 43, is also collaborating with Texas Monthly writer Mimi Swartz on Power Failure, a book scheduled to come out this spring. The two are sharing an advance of about $500,000.
I look forward to the reviews of her book.
Matt Yglesias writes about Tom Daschle's criticism of George Bush in light of revelations that Osama bin Laden is likely still alive. First of all, I agree with Matt that they key to beating Bush is in making the case that someone else could be doing a better job of making America safe. Polls show that Americans trust Bush regarding Iraq and the War on Terror. In Texas, this trust is so great that they overwhelmingly support an invasion of Iraq even though they consider Osama and Al Quaeda a bigger threat. You've got to make people question that trust if they're going to pull the lever for someone else in 2004.
At the same time, I agree with John Cole in the comments. Failing to capture or kill OBL does not make the War on Terror a failure. The thing is, however, that OBL is a proxy for the greater war. As people like Jim Henley and his readers say, we outsourced the invasion of Afghanistan and defined our victory conditions very loosely. Once we acheived our easily-attained results, we pretty much lost interest even though we had dealt our enemy a merely temporary setback. Now we're so wrapped up in the at most ambiguous threat of Iraq that we've lost sight of our original intent, which was to destroy the terrorists' network and punish those who harbor them (*cough* *cough* Pakistan *cough* *cough*). If reminding people that OBL is still alive enables them to question our success in the real war, the one against an enemy that actually attacked us and killed our citizens, then I'll overlook the fact that it's basically shorthand.
I think there's a lot of room to criticize the President on the War on Terror. It's well past time for someone to do it.
Kevin Drum asks the real question about Martha Burk and the Augusta National golf club:
Martha Burk is waging a war of ideas and words, not a legal battle, and her idea is simple: Augusta National is not the Girl Scouts. It's a big, rich, influential social club that hosts a nationally televised golf tournament, and there's no reason that a golf club should discriminate based on gender, even if the law allows them to.So forget the Junior League and the YWCA. Forget Augusta National's legal right to exclude women. Forget Martha Burk's scare-inducing "radical feminist agenda." The real issue is simple: Why? Why do they feel that admitting women would ruin their club?
But that's a hard question to answer without sounding like a neanderthal, so instead [certain] conservatives lie and twist and tar. It's pathetic.
I look forward to reading the answer, if one is ever forthcoming.
Last week I wrote about the demise of KIKK, which suddenly switched from its longstanding country music format to a "smooth jazz" playlist. That entry drew several comments from locals, so I thought I'd do a followup.
First, to answer the question about KHJZ's web page: They don't have one yet. In fact, their corporate parent Infinity Broadcasting still lists 95.7 FM as Young Country KIKK. My search for a KHJZ web page answered my own question as to where all these readers came from: that November 5 entry is the first English language result of a Google search for "KHJZ".
I think this ties in to the answer to the question about why there are no DJs as yet. When 106.9 FM became KHPT, the all-80s station The Point, they went a long time - I mean several months - before they had any DJs. I actually kinda liked it, because there were fewer interruptions. I think this is a combination of cost savings and the suddenness of the change - Infinity hasn't had time to find any DJs yet. I also suspect that a fair number of people don't miss DJ chatter all that much, so this may help build their audience.
It also wasn't until KHPT had some DJs in place that they announced their station web page. I suspect fans of the new KHJZ will have a similar wait.
Finally, regarding the station's new format, I have to agree with those who question whether Michael McDonald and Christopher Cross qualify as "jazz" under any reasonable definition. To me, this is an Easy Listening station, which means they've gone from one tough market to another, since Sunny 99 is the king of that format. Not that it matters much to me - I'll stay within my own demographic niche of Classic Rock and All 80s, as if that's something to be proud of.
Tim Dunlop has gone Movable Typing at a new address, so update your blogrolls and pay him a visit. Looking good, Tim.
TalkLeft points me to this piece by Jay Caruso about the most recent episode of The Sopranos. I'm going to put this post under the More link, since it's got a major spoiler if you haven't seen the show yet (I just finished watching the tape from Sunday). Don't go to Jay's link if you haven't seen the show yet, either.
Jay writes about Tony killing Ralphie:
It's a risk to kill off such a central figure in the middle of the season. It's even more ironic that it happened not long after Tony admonished Paulie for wanting to kill Ralph for playing that practical joke on Paulies Mom. "This is a business!", Tony said. So what does he do? He goes and kills Ralph over a horse.It also gave us insight into Ralph's mind. Here his son is in the hospital with an injury that may keep him in a vegative state for the rest of his life, yet he's vindictive enough to go and kill a horse because Tony was banging Ralph's ex-girlfriend.
I disagree that Ralphie killed the horse out of spite because Tony took up with Valentina. It seemed pretty clear to me that he did it for the insurance money. The horse had health problems and its upkeep was costing Ralphie a lot of money, which he needed to pay for his kid's medical care.
Given that, I found Ralphie's action to be coldly logical. However beautiful the horse was, who wouldn't put their kid's welfare first? Not that his arson was justified - even if no other horses had been hurt, he should have sold her instead of killing her. Ralphie sees his action as logical, too - "It was a fucking animal!" he yells at Tony, reminding Tony that he's not exactly a vegetarian.
What I find fascinating about this show is how the characters make moral distinctions. There are accepted rules for when you can and cannot kill a business associate, and you'd better not break them, as Johnny Sack nearly found out.
In season 2, in the episode where Christopher is in the hospital after being shot and he has a vision of hell, Tony is asked by Dr. Melfi about whether or not he thinks he's going to hell:
Tony tells Melfi how Christopher thinks he had a near-death experience. He says that it was some bullshit dream from the morphine, but now Christopher thinks he’s going to Hell. Melfi asks if he thinks Christopher will go to Hell. Tony says that Christopher doesn’t deserve Hell. Melfi asks who does. "The worst people," Tony says. "The twisted and demented psychos who kill people for pleasure." Child molesters. "The Hitlers." Not his nephew.Melfi asks Tony if he thinks he’s going to hell. "You been listening to me?" Tony asks. "No. For the same reasons. We’re soldiers. Soldiers don’t go to hell. It’s war. Soldiers, they kill other soldiers. We’re in a situation where everybody involved knows the stakes. And if you’re gonna accept those stakes, you’ve got to do certain things. It’s business. Soldiers. We follow codes. Orders."
Melfi asks if that justifies everything he does. Tony says that Americans didn’t let the Italians in to help them. They needed subways built and worker bees to help the economy. He says that some of them weren’t happy just being workers; they wanted to stay Italian and keep things that were sacred to them, like honor and family. Tony’s leaning forward, squinting and sweating, carefully choosing his words. "And some of us wanted a piece of the action. We weren’t educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take what we wanted. And those other fucks, those other, the, the, the, the JP Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the business, right? The American Way."
If there's one bit of consistency in the way these men act, and the way they react, it's that you're not supposed to kill someone who's innocent. (Not intentionally, anyway; things do happen, after all.) You don't go after a man's family unless you warn him about it first, so that way it becomes his fault if they end up suffering. Ralphie made the mistake of killing an innocent, and he paid for it.
It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out. Just as Paulie had no cause for killing Ralphie, neither did Tony. Killing him will be judged harshly, not only because of the lack of justification but because Ralphie was a big earner (another reason why Johnny Sack was ordered to leave him alone). You definitely don't mess with these guys' livelihoods.
I'd been a bit ambivalent about the season so far, but the story arcs are really cooking now - will Furio be dumb enough to make a pass at Carmela? - and I think we'll be at full speed for the climax. Stay tuned.
Headline in today's Chron: Miss Cleo must make $500 million in customer bills vanish. Wait for it...
The operators of Miss Cleo's psychic hot line agreed today to cancel $500 million in customer bills to settle federal charges that the service fleeced callers while promising mystical insights into love and money.The settlement requires Access Resource Services Inc. and Psychic Readers Network Inc. to stop using pay-per-call numbers to sell their soothsaying services, the Federal Trade Commission said. The two Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based companies, which promoted a national network of "psychic readers" on television and the Internet, also must pay the FTC a $5 million fine.
Here it comes...
"I'm no psychic but I can foresee this: If you make deceptive claims, there is an FTC action in your future," said Howard Beales, director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau.
He'll be here all week, ladies and gentlemen. Be sure to tip your servers and drive carefully.
Tim Fleck has a pretty damning article about the haplessness of the Harris County Democratic Party, which is basically 0 for the last three elections. It's pretty ugly.
I'm up to my ass in alligators right now, but rest assured I will have plenty of things to say shortly.
Avedon Carol is celebrating the first birthday of The Sideshow. She's pithy and engaging, and she's been on my regular read list for some time now. Take a bow, Avedon! I'd buy you a pint if we were on the same side of the pond.
Kevin points me to this Instapundit piece about a rave bust in Racine, WI, where the police ticketed nearly 450 attendees and busted 3 others for drugs. He compares it to the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup in terms of the ratio of police effort expended to results acheived.
I have to say, Glenn's grasp of the facts of the Houston case was a bit shaky. He first mentioned that he "[seemed] to recall that the Houston police chief wound up losing his job over this" but wasn't sure. Later, he mentions that Chief C.O. "BAMF" Bradford stepped down over a perjury charge, but didn't mention that this was actually unrelated to the K-Mart incident.
Glenn, Glenn, Glenn...If only you'd done a Google search on +houston +k-mart +"drag racing", you'd have found a veritable treasure trove of information. Better luck next time, bubbe.
Houston Mayor Lee Brown has often been called "Out Of Town Brown" because of his penchant for taking trips hither and yon for various, sometimes unfathomable, purposes. Now it appears that this habit is shared by Orlando Sanchez, who nearly defeated Brown in the 2001 mayoral race and is considered a likely top contender in 2003 when Brown can't run due to term limits.
"Out Of Town Orlando" doesn't seem too broken up by the fact that his excursions are all on the taxpayers' dime, either:
Sanchez used taxpayer money to go to Washington, D.C., four times since 2000, costing taxpayers more than $6,000 for those trips.The first of the four trips was in August 2000, costing $1,200. Why did he go? The only reason listed on the required paperwork -- city business.
News2Houston Investigator Robert Arnold asked Sanchez about the trips.
"Can you remember what you did on that trip?" Arnold asked.
"I can hardly remember what I had for dinner last week," Sanchez said.
In May 2001, Sanchez took two more overnight trips to Washington and this time listing no reason for his travel. Yet, the trips cost taxpayers more than $4,400.
Sanchez took a couple of taxpayer-funded trips to Washington, DC during 2001, including one to a Christmas party in December, after the election and during his lame duck time in the City Council.
"Why did the taxpayers have to send you to a Christmas party?" Arnold asked."You'd have to ask the White House why they thought it important to invite people," Sanchez said.
"I'm not asking why you were invited, I'm asking why the taxpayers had to pay to send you there?" Arnold asked.
"The taxpayers paid for the trip, again, because I'm an elected official representing almost 2 million people in the city of Houston," Sanchez said.
Sanchez again insisted that he was talking with congressional leaders about Houston's needs, such as housing and infrastructure.
But, since he got so much backing from the Bush administration and family during his mayoral race, Arnold asked if there was a connection.
"So you didn't discuss your political campaign at all?" Arnold asked.
"Absolutely not," Sanchez replied.
"Never at any time with anyone?" Arnold asked.
"Never at any time with anyone in any of those trips," Sanchez said.
I'm so sure.
What is it about Houston politicians and a penchant for free travel? And I swear, I'll smack anyone who suggests it's a natural desire to spend as little time in Houston as possible.
This AP article says Hispanics generally voted Democratic in 2002, but the GOP got a decent share of the votes in New York, Florida, and possibly Colorado. It's also a reminder that Hispanic voters are not monolithic - those of Mexican ancestry voted heavily for the Democrats, while Cuban-Americans and Puerto Ricans went more for the GOP.
The question of how Governor Goodhair did with Hispanics is still being argued:
In Texas, the Velasquez study showed Democratic candidate for governor Tony Sanchez with 87 percent of the Hispanic vote and Republican Gov. Rick Perry with 10 percent. Perry won the election by a 58-40 margin overall and Republicans say his share of the Hispanic vote was probably closer to a third, based on his performance in heavily Hispanic regions of the state.
Given how poorly Tony Sanchez did with Anglo voters and how disappointing Hispanic turnout was in the end, I'd tend towards the 87% number. I think if Perry had gotten one-third of the Hispanic votes he'd have won by a 2-1 margin instead of 3-2.
Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur is now in the running to be House Minority Leader. I'll say it again: Whoever can best upgrade him or herself to be Majority Leader in 2004 is the one I want.
If you didn't already know that the Republicans had won control of the state legislature, you could get a clue from some of the bills that have been pre-filed:
A long-time priority of social conservatives -- a bill banning recognition of same-sex marriages or civil unions in Texas -- was among dozens of bills prefiled Tuesday at the Capitol.Other bills introduced on the first day of prefiling would require one minute of silence during each school day, limit damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and require informed consent before a woman could have an abortion
I'm actually surprised that a formal ban on same-sex marriages hadn't already been enacted here. It was just a matter of time anyway - though the same bill was filed but never brought up for consideration last year, it would've had plenty of supporters had it come to a vote.
The reality is that most of the bills filed will never become law. In 2001, when the Legislature last met, only 1,621 of 5,712 bills and proposed constitutional amendments passed.But Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, said he believes his bill to recognize only heterosexual unions as legal marriages will be passed by the House early in the session.
He said the bill would prevent Texas from having to grant rights under state law to same-sex couples who were married in another state. Vermont is the only state that recognizes such unions.
"I intend to get a significant number of co-sponsors and move the bill forward," said Chisum.
I suppose it won't make much difference, since we're not exactly being overwhelmed by gay Vermont expatriates looking for a warmer climate. And it's not like the Lege has more pressing issues, such as a bigass budget shortfall to give priority to, after all.
Yes, I know, they're perfectly capable of doing both, just as I'm sure the US is capable of invading Iraq and exterminating al Quaeda simultaneously. All I'm saying is that the Lege meets for a limited period of time, and in each case one issue would seem to be more pressing than the other. If I knew that they would work nonstop on the budget before considering other lesser matters, then I wouldn't complain. As it is, I expect many of these bills to suck up time that should be spent taking care of finances, and I have a problem with that.
That new baseball labor deal is causing some odd things to happen. The Yankees and Braves are looking to cut payroll, while the Phillies, normally considered a small market team despite playing in a large metro area, are making a big-money pitch to three high profile free agents (Jim Thome, Tom Glavine, and David Bell). If they succeed in getting all three to grab the money they're throwing at them, it will be interesting to see if people suddenly start referring to the Phils as a large-market team, as they did to the Rangers after Tom Hicks signed A-Rod. Not that it much matters any more, with labor strife out of the way for now and the Payroll Isn't Destiny playoffs showing us all a different way. I'll still be on the lookout, just in case.
So A-Rod got shafted again by the MVP voters, who went with A's shortstop Miguel Tejada instead. Tejada isn't a goofy choice, unlike Ichiro last year, but in both cases the voters overlooked the fact that Rodriguez had the best season and went with a player on a winning team.
It's all a function of what you believe Most Valuable means. Most years it seems that the majority of MVP voters subscribe to the theory that a player is only truly valuable if he's on a winning team, to wit:
''The person who helps you win the most games should be the MVP,'' said Ken Macha, promoted from Oakland's bench coach to manager. ''The idea is to win games, not just put numbers up.
Another way of putting it is "we could have finished in last place without you".
I believe that the MVP should go to the player who had the best season. It's not A-Rod's fault that his teammates aren't as good as Tejada's were this year or Ichiro's were last year. By any generally used statistical measure, A-Rod helped his team win quite a few games, more than Tejada did. The difference, and this is why people subscribe to the first theory, is that the games Tejada helped the A's win meant something. Had they gotten the contribution of a lesser player, they might not have won enough of those games to make the playoffs.
You can certainly make a case that Tejada had the best season, or that he was close enough to A-Rod that the meaningfulness of his contributions pushes him over the top. I don't agree, but arguing about that sort of thing is what helps us get through the off-season. All I'm saying is that it would be interesting to see how the MVP vote would go in any year if everyone agreed on what the criteria were.
A couple of interesting stories in the NYT about wildlife proliferation. First, this story about how an explosion in the white tailed deer population is wreaking havoc on ecosystems in the East and Midwest. Humans are pretty much the main predator of deer these days, and we're not doing the job we once did:
Expanded hunting, considered by many experts to be the best hope of controlling numbers, has its limits as well. For example, most hunters, and most states' hunting regulations, still favor shooting bucks, even though the best way to control populations is to kill females.Some states are changing regulations in ways that could cut deer numbers, but hunters are resisting. Others are expanding seasons and the number of deer a hunter can kill, but federal wildlife officials note that hunters are a graying population, with fewer each year to make a dent. In any case, controlled hunts staged in suburbs often run up against strident opposition from animal welfare groups.
Is that really true about hunters being a "graying population"? I had no idea. Any hunters care to comment on that?
The other article, about a boom in the mountain lion population, is more about how ever-expanding development, mostly out west, into wilder areas is not only bringing humans into increasing contact with the big cats, it's removing their natural fear of us. Good for them, since we're a tasty and readily available treat. Not so good for us.
When Greg McCoy found Oreo, his daughter's house cat, in the jaws of a mountain lion early this year, he grabbed the big cat by the tail with both hands, dragged it onto his front lawn and jumped on top of it.With his left arm, he tried to hold the writhing lion in a headlock. With his right hand, he attempted to yank Oreo from the lion's mouth.
As Mr. McCoy, 37, and 215 pounds, tugged on the bloodied house cat, the lion — an adult female weighing perhaps 100 pounds — struggled out of his headlock. Before it ran off to eat Oreo, it swatted Mr. McCoy across the face with a rear paw.
"It felt like a fist with four nails in it and it brought me to my senses and I decided I better let go," said Mr. McCoy, a founder of a small company that offers wireless broadband Internet access to people who live, as he does, in the mountains on the outskirts of Boulder. "I had read about how to deal with a mountain lion, but none of that entered my head when I saw one with my daughter's cat. I was plain mad stupid."
He was also lucky. The lion left four scratches on his right cheek, which have since healed without leaving scars. Wildlife experts say that swat could easily have torn off much of his face.
Man. And they say that people who imitate what they see on Jackass are examples of Darwin in action.
Anyway, the good news is that the mountain lions also like eating deer. There's not enough of them yet to make a real impact on the deer population, but give it time. Meanwhile, I'll stay right here in the city, thankyouverymuch. I'll take my chances with the panhandlers and SUV drivers.
Ruy Teixera has a Prospect article that covers the familiar ground of why Election Day was carried by the GOP this year. He spends a few paragraphs on turnout, which should sound familiar:
Looking inside some of the Senate states the Democrats lost, preliminary analysis suggests that a couple of things were going on. First, while turnout across the United States was up from 1998 -- from 37.6 percent to 39.3 percent of the voting-age population, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate -- it appears to be the case that in strongly Democratic large cities the increase in turnout was less than in strongly Republican areas in cities' outer suburbs or in rural areas. For example, in Missouri, the increase in votes cast from 1998 to 2002 was less in strongly Democratic St. Louis than in the strongly Republican suburb of St. Charles County or, especially, in rural and fervently Republican Cape Girardeau County. The same pattern can be seen in Minnesota where many of the more rural counties cast almost as many votes in 2002 as in 2000, while the more urban counties lagged behind.But the other, and perhaps more important, part of the story was the reduction of Democratic support in Democratic-leaning suburban or mixed suburban-urban counties, where Republican success in picking off swing voters was likely to manifest itself. For example, in St. Louis County in Missouri, Jean Carnahan's margin over Jim Talent was only 3 points, down from the 8 points her late husband carried the county by in 2000. And in Hennepin and Ramsay counties in Minnesota, Walter Mondale's margins over Norm Coleman were substantially less than Mark Dayton's over Rod Grams in 2000 (11 and 10 points less, respectively). But in completely urban St. Louis city in Missouri, the Democratic margin was much the same as in 2000.
So it seems likely that a failure of core Democratic areas to match turnout increases in heavily Republican areas -- plus a shift away from the Democrats in Democratic-leaning suburbs -- were the factors responsible for many of the Democrats' key losses. Taken together, these trends meant that Democrats could not prevent highly-mobilized Republican areas from dominating these electoral contests.
The differences are greater in Texas, but the idea is the same.
The Chron has a wire story today about an interview with David Graham, who at the behest of his fiancee Diane Zamora brutally murdered Adrianne Jones, with whom he had had a brief fling. Graham and Zamora, who went on to be cadets at the Air Force Academy and Naval Academy respectively after the killing, were caught as a result of their own inability to keep quiet about it.
Anyway, Graham says in the interview that he did it to prove his "ultimate devotion" to Zamora. Not quite sure this is news, as the Cadet Killers case was nationally known and all of this came out during the trials, but there it is. Texas Monthly did what is probably the best and most comprehensive story on this sad case, but unfortunately it's not freely available online. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has coverage of Zamora's trial here and Graham's trial here, and the Crime Library has an overview here.
Brian Linse's blog turned one year old on Sunday. A round of applause for a fine blogger and a cool dude, please. Way to go, Brian!
I have to tell you, I really thought turnout was going to carry at least some of the statewide Democratic ticket to victory this year. I just knew it.
I made several bad assumptions. One, I believed my own hype. Two, I extrapolated from limited data, namely my experiences calling voters before the election. And three, I assumed that the 40% turnout predicted would not only materialize (we actually got 36% in the Governor's race, slightly less in the others) but be driven by long-lost Democratic voters coming back to the polls because they finally had something worth voting for.
Reality's a bitch, ain't it?
Still, though, in looking at the county by county results for the Senate race between John Cornyn and Ron Kirk, I'm struck by the comparatively poor turnout in some of the bigger counties that Kirk carried. For example:
County Cornyn Kirk Voters Turnout
EL PASO 28,642 69,490 355,201 28.08%
CAMERON 14,834 28,902 154,193 28.80%
JEFFERSON 23,216 31,272 164,006 33.22%
NUECES 29,313 38,183 200,322 34.10%
TRAVIS 90,814 121,102 555,065 39.30%
Now, I'm not going to make up the 500,000 votes that separate Kirk from Cornyn by playing the turnout game, but you can't be competitive, let alone win, if only one of your best counties is better than average in tournout. Let's see how this compares to the large counties that Cornyn won handily:
County Cornyn Kirk Voters Turnout
MONTGOMERY 56,068 16,748 196,250 37.65%
COLLIN 88,136 36,750 319,236 39.51%
SMITH 32,537 13,984 107,976 43.49%
LUBBOCK 38,217 16,245 152,442 36.24%
DENTON 70,681 32,930 306,174 34.26%
BRAZORIA 33,644 18,329 152,721 34.62%
WILLIAMSON 47,303 26,306 177,935 42.22%
BELL 25,642 16,939 144,805 29.77%
TARRANT 198,504 141,505 876,576 39.18%
FORT BEND 49,456 37,319 224,551 39.01%
All but three above average, with only Bell County having truly poor turnout. These are mainly wealthy counties (Montgomery, Collin, Denton, Williamson and Fort Bend are all suburbs) while only Travis on Kirk's side is well-to-do, but still, one side got their supporters to the polls and the other side didn't. Step Number One, therefore, is to concentrate more on those counties that actually vote Democratic. Boosting El Paso and Cameron Counties into the 40% range would have cut Kirk's deficit by about 25,000 votes. (Note: I'm assuming the extra turnout would have voted in the same manner as the rest of their counties. Obviously, a more targeted turnout effort would do more.)
Like I said, this alone is nowhere near enough to make it a true race. But another thing that leaps out at me is how many counties Cornyn carried with over 60% of the vote. Many of those are suburban, as noted. Step Two has to be to not give up on these places for the simple reason that getting stomped in them adds enormously to your deficit. Montgomery County is a bit more than one-third the size of Travis, and yet if you counted just those two counties' votes Cornyn would have won.
Not giving up on the suburbs means three things: One, encourage any grassroots effort, no matter how small, by progressives in the suburbs. It's gotta be lonely and depressing to be a Democrat in Montgomery County, but those folks' votes matter just as much as they do Montrose. Two, whatever Hispanic future Texas may have, white voters are very much the majority now and will be so for some time to come. The next Dream Team has to have some appeal to white voters or they'll get creamed in the suburbs again. Three, the suburbs aren't as white as they once were. Fort Bend county is Tom DeLay's turf and solidly Republican overall, but Kirk did surprisingly well there:
While the county has a diverse ethnic population, party lines are drawn heavily on the Republican side, with the GOP holding a sizable edge in voting."Republicans make up about 54 percent of the voters, Democrats 35 percent, with the remaining 11 percent being ticket splitters," [Fort Bend Republican Party Chairman Eric] Thode said.
The Republican advantage makes is almost impossible for a Democrat to garner enough votes to win a countywide position, Thode said.
But the Precinct 2 portion of the eastern edge of the county has a large African-American population that delivers a Democratic vote and the single-member district offices of constable, justice of the peace and county commissioner are held by Democrats.
The split in Fort bend was 56.5% for Cornyn and 42.6% for Kirk. If the breakdown really is 54-35-11, then Kirk got all of the Democratic vote and almost all of the independents. That's encouraging.
Finally, there's the big urban areas. Here's one more chart:
County Cornyn Kirk Voters Turnout
HARRIS 329,383 291,177 1,902,561 33.05%
DALLAS 217,902 224,695 1,208,201 37.01%
BEXAR 138,887 128,556 884,103 30.73%
TARRANT 198,504 141,505 876,576 39.18%
TRAVIS 90,814 121,102 555,065 39.30%
EL PASO 28,642 69,490 355,201 28.08%
Democrats do pretty well here, though not nearly well enough to overcome the suburban disadvantage. Targeted turnout here is the key again.
I should note that turnout is really important in Harris County, where the local GOP machine is very well organized and funded, resulting in dominance in countywide races. The thing is, while Harris County has been solidly Republican lately, the city of Houston is still Democratic; Lee Brown couldn't have beaten off two heavily backed Republican challengers in his three terms otherwise. Harris County (and Bexar County as well) contains several small cities within the larger city (Bellaire, West U., Hedwig Village, Spring Valley, etc) that are GOP strongholds and that do a lot of voting. Houston itself has a lot of potential Democrats, but until they get to the polls at the same rate as the rest of the county, the future will be much like the present.
All county data in the Senate race comes from here. I created a spreadsheet to do the percentages and sorting, which can be found here. Font problems prevented me from showing vote percentages for each candidate, but you can see it in the spreadsheet.
Kos has a new toy on his site, an Electoral Votes Calculator. Depending on your outlook, 2004 is looking like a close race (insert standard disclaimers here). Anyway, check it out.
General Sam Houston's knife, the one he carried into battle at San Jacinto, which was being put up for auction, will remain in Texas thanks to an anonymous buyer from Dallas.
A Dallas man paid $270,000 for the historic knife at a California auction Sunday, sparing it from an uncertain future.The knife had been a revered artifact in Texas, displayed at the San Jacinto Museum in La Porte for more than 60 years and at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum in Austin.
Auctioneer John Gangel said the buyer was a collector of guns, knives, paintings and other Texas memorabilia who wished to remain anonymous.
The buyer said Houston's knife "will never leave Texas while I'm alive and it better not leave after I'm dead," Gangel said.
Gangel said the buyer has relationships with several Texas museums and lends his personal collection for display. Gangel said he is confident that Sam Houston's knife will be back in a Texas museum soon.
An anonymous benefactor from Dallas, eh? Hey, Scott, how do we know this wasn't you?
As I alluded to yesterday, the state GOP realizes that it is taking control at a tough time:
After years of good times and budget surpluses, the now GOP-controlled House, Senate and Governor's Mansion will be forced to tackle multiple major crises, any one of which could cause a backlash."It's kind of like the dog chasing the pickup. What happens if the dog catches the pickup?" quipped Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock. "Does he get run over?"
The road promises a bumpy ride, anyway:
· Homeowners have either lost their insurance or feel they are being robbed by policy premium hikes.
· The budget shortfall could hit $12 billion, but new taxes are taboo.
· The "Robin Hood" school finance system is stressing out more school districts and property taxpayers alike, but lawmakers never seem to agree on the solution.
"Yes, we're nervous, and rightly so. It's a very difficult time to take over," said Rep. Beverly Woolley, R-Houston. "Some things you aren't given the choice on. You just bite the bullet and do the best you can."
While I do believe that it will be important for Democrats to hold the Republicans responsible for the inevitable pain of next year's session, I don't expect there to be all that much fallout (though of course I'll be hoping). The Republicans have two big things in their favor: One is the nature of Texas' legislature, which meets every other year. Whatever rending of garments and gnashing of teeth results from the budget, it will all happen in 2003. A full year will pass before the next election, which will give people time to get used to it. They may resent and they may want revenge, but more likely they won't remember the details.
Second, of course, is the redistricting itself, which helped give the GOP such a wide advantage in each chamber. Debra Danburg may have been a sore loser (scroll down to the bottom), but she really did get screwed, going from a district in which she won reelection in 2000 with 67% of the vote to one that was majority Republican.
I'm sure there'll be opportunities for the Dems to bounce back in 2004. I can't say for sure where the most tempting targets will be yet, but it's too early for that. Get the message ready first. Everything else will follow.
In addition to all of the federal indictment-chasing, the West Coast states are also pursuing legal action against Enron and its evildoers. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is especially gung-ho:
The effort by the office of state Attorney General Bill Lockyer is probably the largest. The Energy Task Force has filed at least 70 legal actions before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and state and federal courts in an attempt to recover billions of dollars it alleges was bilked from California ratepayers by energy companies.The largest action asks the FERC to refund $8.9 billion to California ratepayers.
Lockyer made it clear long before evidence turned up implicating Enron that he wanted to prosecute Ken Lay, then the company chairman.
"I would love to personally escort Lay to an 8-by-10 cell that he could share with a tattooed dude who says, `Hi, my name is Spike, honey,' " Lockyer told the Wall Street Journal.
Okay, much as I want to see Kenny Boy doing the perp walk, even I think that's tasteless. Besides, we all know that he'd be doing time in a Club Fed anyway.
Oregon and Washington are also in the act. The various state actions are somewhat of a headache for FERC:
The investigations are complicated by a strain between the FERC and the California agencies, who have accused the federal agency of being slow to act."We have to give everybody due process," FERC spokesman Bryan Lee said in response.
Spokesmen for the energy industry praise the FERC, but call the state investigations useless and a damper on the state's business climate.
"I would say 99 percent of it right now is driven by politicians," said Jan Smutny-Jones, executive director of the Independent Energy Producers.
Actually, I just quoted that bit because I think "Smutny-Jones" is an excellent name.
Speaking of Kenny Boy, he provided a bit of unintentional comedy at a lunch honoring businessman Jack Blanton (scroll down). At each of the tables was a booklet on corporate governance. One of the chapters in the booklet was entitled "What should a CEO expect from the board of directors?", and its author was none other than Ken Lay:
"The responsibility of our board -- a responsibility which I expect them to fulfill -- is to ensure legal and ethical conduct by the company and by everyone in the company," Lay wrote. "That requirement does not exist by happenstance. It is the most important thing we expect from board members."The 80-page booklet was given to all at the lunch where Blanton received the "Ethical Leadership in Action" award from the University of St. Thomas' Center for Business Ethics.
Those might have seemed like reasonable words coming from Lay when he wrote them -- in 1999 -- but now?
"I look at it as kind of providing a historic document," said event organizer H. Ken DeDominicis, a St. Thomas vice president. The booklet contained lectures from a business ethics conference at the school.
So, was Lay practicing what he preached as chairman of the board? In hindsight, it appears not.
Indeed. I'll bet those booklets become quite the collector's item, too. If any of them turn up on e-Bay, please let me know.
O-Dub has his doubts about Nancy Pelosi, the new House Minority Leader. He thinks she won't be as effective as Martin Frost or Harold Ford would have been because she's sufficiently in touch with American opinion.
That may be, but I don't think it matters. Whoever the lead Democrat in the House is, he or she is going to have to deliver a message to the public for all of them. It's not going to be about what Nancy Pelosi stands for, it's going to be about what Democrats stand for. It will have to be big picture stuff, aimed at a large audience.
The point of most Democrats' anger isn't that the message in 2002 was too far left or too far right. It's that there was no coherent message. You can't fight something with nothing, and you can't get elected simply by saying "I'm not my opponent" (just ask Doug Forrester).
Nancy Pelosi is not going to go off into a room by herself and come out with the Official Message Of The Democratic Party. Martin Frost and Harold Ford aren't going anywhere - in fact, I expect Frost to be Minority Whip and Ford to be the Caucus Chair. I guarantee their thumbprints will be all over whatever mantra Nancy Pelosi chants.
I can see Oliver's point, and I've no doubt that the right-wing attack machine is licking its chops over Nancy Pelosi. But let's face it: They'd be doing the same thing to Frost or Ford. Rush and Hannity and Coulter don't care about the subtle distinctions between them. They've already got their scripts written, with blanks to be filled in with the appropriate name.
In the item below, I note that any message has a better chance of being received if the messenger is the right person. The reverse is also true: A really compelling message can be successfully delivered by just about anyone. For the national Democrats, what's being said is going to be more important than who's saying it.
Texas is a conservative state. That was the case when the Democrats ruled the land, and it's the case now that the GOP is in control.
That doesn't mean that a progressive candidate can't be successful at the state level. People like Ann Richards and Jim Hightower have been elected in still-recent memory, after all.
It helped, of course, that Richards and Hightower are Texan through and through. They look, sound, and act like natives who hold their home state in high esteem, which is exactly what they are. The first rule of statewide politics is simple: Whatever your message is, it has a much better chance of getting through if most people think you're one of us.
Still, many issues near and dear to liberal hearts are big fat losers on a statewide level. Gay rights, affirmative action, reproductive choice - in most cases if it plays well in New York and California, it won't play well here. Unless you're in a super-safe district like Sheila Jackson Lee, don't even think about the death penalty or gun control.
We're not going to elect any champions of these causes, but if we play it carefully we can at least elect people who won't be enemies of them. What I have in mind is to emphasize an area where I believe the Republicans will be vulnerable. This will help provide cover for candidates whose views on social issues would might otherwise be a liability for them.
The key to success lies in bread and butter issues. Pretty much all of it flows from the budget and the multibillion dollar deficit that looms for next year's legislative session. Progressives need to make the case that the Republicans have been anything but conservative on financial matters. New ideas and forward thinking are needed to get us out of this mess.
The Republicans have all of the statewide offices, and thanks to their redistricting efforts, control of both state houses, including the Speaker of the State House. They will have little wriggle room, as the state constitution requires a balanced budget.
In short, any fallout resulting from the upcoming budget battle must be made to fall on their shoulders. Remind everyone that when times were good, Governor Bush pushed through a large tax cut instead of making any allowances for lean times in the future. Governor Perry has done nothing to change this.
Of course, as we know, it's not enough to point out the other guy's shortcomings. You need to have a positive plan to go along with the criticism. With one exception (more on that in a minute), the Texas budget is already bare bones. There's hardly anyplace to cut, certainly no place that won't be extremely painful and even dangerous. Someone needs to bite the bullet and call for at least a partial repeal of the tax cuts that Bush made in 1997 and 1999.
That may sound suicidal, but outgoing Republican Lt. Governor Bill Ratliff (who is returning to his Senate post) has already warned about the possible need to raise taxes. It's on the table, despite its pointed absence from the governor's race. If the Democrats are smart, they will spin this as an inevitable consequence of irresponsible fiscal behavior on the part of the GOP.
There is one place where Texas spends more money than the average state, and it gives rise to a different opportunity for progressives. Here's a chart that was in a Chron article (now archived) from October 14:
State budget experts warn that it's difficult to scrub a bare-bones budget. Slashing the Texas budget could produce dramatic cuts in services. Texas' national ranking in 10 categories:Category .. Rank
Overall spending per capita .. 50
Mental health .. 47
Cash welfare .. 48
Corrections .. 17
Highways .. 42
Public health .. 45
Parks and Recreation .. 48
State employee wages .. 50
Education .. 37
Public welfare and Medicaid .. 46
Only in corrections is Texas above average in spending. I would strongly push for reform of sentencing laws for nonviolent and drug offenders. I would push treatment and counseling as a cheaper and more effective option. I would even advocate the release of many such inmates on the grounds that it would enable cuts in the corrections budget without endangering employees who also have to deal with the violent offenders.
The key here is to make this a financial argument. We can deal with drug users in a less expensive and more efficient way by not incarcerating most of them. This in turn will help us avoid cuts in services we really need. This case has to be made on fiscal grounds or else you will be tarred as soft on crime.
For future Congressional candidates, the message about finances and the budget should be paramount. Make the charge that the Republicans have abandoned any claim to being the party of fiscal responsibility. Make the point that President Bush's vaunted tax cut won't make any difference to most people, and thus repealing most or all of it in order to help balance the budget again won't hurt them. The budget deficit is likely to be an Achilles heel to Republicans around here. Remember Ross Perot and the crazy aunt that no one talks about? Two more years of deficits will make this a hot issue again.
Clay Robison talks a little about this today. The only comment I can make about his backhanded slap at Bill Clinton in the last paragraph is that it's consistent with the Chron's editorial policy of never saying anything unequivocally positive about the man.
In summary, the message is getting our finances in order. We must ensure an appropriate level of revenue to pay for the government's obligations. We must spend the money that we are obligated to spend wisely. We believe that people with a progressive and forward-thinking outlook are best suited to do this.
This is the first of several articles that will talk about how the Democrats can fight their way back to relevance in Texas. Though this is intended as being tailored for Texas, quite a bit of it will have relevance for the rest of the country.
In writing these articles, I'm making several assumptions:
1. That things will not get appreciably better by the time the next election rolls around. The reason for this is simple: If I thought things were going to improve under Republican control, I'd have voted for the Republicans. I don't believe that they will, and I want to be able to take advantage of that.
2. That the voters will be responsive to a message that resonates with them. Texas is a Republican-dominated state, but they're not a majority. A significant number of voters still identify as independent, enough to ensure that plurality is the best either party can do. Texas is an open primary state, so you can't count party registrations.
3. That this whole exercise isn't hopeless. 'Nuff said.
The first article will talk about what kind of progressive message could work with voters in this mostly conservative state. The second will talk about turnount. The third will talk about some specific targets to aim for.
Mike McDaniel, one of the TV writers for the Chron, has been a big fan of Joss Whedon and his series for awhile now. Today he gives us a nice feature story about Whedon and TV children. There are some tiny spoilers at the end.
Hakeem Olajuwon got a stylish goodbye from the Rockets last night. The team presented him with the two championship banners that have hung in the Compaq Center since 1995, among other things.
Something that has gotten overlooked in all of the nostalgia is how close all of this came to not happening. Hakeem missed 35 games in 1990-91 due to injury. The Rockets managed to play well in his absence - they won 52 games and Don Cheney was named Coach of the Year. The Rockets struggled in 1991-92 and missed the playoffs amidst turmoil and Cheney's firing. In the middle of all this, Olajuwon had a public spat with then-owner Charlie Thomas. It got so bad that he demanded a trade. Fortunately, everything got patched up before that came to pass. Hakeem bounced back from a subpar (for him) season and embarked on a run of dominance, and the Rockets rode him to the two NBA titles.
Making the sendoff even better, the Rockets won the game to go 3-2 on the season.
Nancy Pelosi appears to be the new House minority leader as Martin Frost has dropped out and announced his support for her. Harold Ford is still in the race, but Pelosi claims to have more than half the votes already.
I don't really care who becomes the minority leader. I want a cohesive message, no more appeasement of the President, and an upgrade to majority leader in 2004. I'll be watching you, Nancy Pelosi. Don't screw it up.
The knife that Gen. Sam Houston carried into the Battle of San Jacinto is being auctioned because the owners don't know what to do with it.
Sam Houston gave it to Solomon Fisher, the 10-year-old son of his neighbor. The knife was passed from generation to generation of the Fisher family.In 1940, the Fisher family lent the knife to the San Jacinto Museum of History in La Porte, where it stayed until it went on display at the Bob Bullock Museum when it opened last year.
Today, there are four descendants of Solomon Fisher, some in the Houston area, some elsewhere.
A descendent who asked not to be identified because "a lot of people are upset about (the knife) being taken from Texas" said the family put it up for sale because they didn't know what to do with it.
The heirs knew they owned some items on display at the San Jacinto Museum, but they never thought much about them until they were contacted by curators two years ago.
The museum was cataloguing its collection and wanted to clarify the agreements it had with artifact owners, said museum President George Donnelly.
"We asked them, `What's your pleasure? Do you want to donate it to us? Do you want to keep it on loan? Do you want us to return it?' " Donnelly said.
The Fisher family couldn't decide.
"I think it was just too many of us to decide what to do with it," the woman said.
So they chose to sell it and let someone else worry about where it should go.
For what it's worth, the Fisher family member said she hopes "it comes back to Texas."
I can just imagine the uproar if some slicker from New York or California outbids everyone for a piece of Texas history. Good thing we didn't know about this before the election. Someone would have made a campaign issue out of it.
The Houston Rockets will honor Hakeem Olajuwon by retiring his number tonight. There'll be a lot of emotion at the Compaq Center tonight.
Happy trails, Hakeem.
Andrew Northrup has a long list of questions for Democrats to ask themselves. Matt Yglesias has a similar list. Both are worth looking at and thinking about.
I'm working on my own pieces, concentrating more on Texas. How can Democrats succeed in this conservative state? I've got two posts in mind, one that will talk about what kind of progressive message could be successful, and one that will talk about tactics. With luck, I can knock them out over the weekend.
They finally finished counting the votes in Bexar County, a mere 30 hours after polls closed. Looks like the local elections administrator there can say sayonara to his job as a result. I'm just mad that the delay caused me to get my hopes up about Henry Cuellar.
Ah, well. At least they didn't misplace any ballots - that we know of...
If you buy your gas at a Texaco station, better do it quick: Most Texaco stations will be going away:
Shell Oil Co. plans to transform about 370 Houston-area Texaco stations into Shells by the middle of next year. The process started this week.Although the number of Texaco stations will be greatly reduced -- going from the brand in Houston with the most stations to one of the least -- a handful that don't fit Shell's criteria will be allowed to sell under the Texaco brand.
[...]
Origins of the switch go back to when Shell acquired the exclusive rights to the Texaco brand in the United States as the result of a Federal Trade Commission decision requiring divestiture as a condition to letting the October 2001 merger between Chevron and Texaco proceed. The merger had been announced a year earlier.
By last February, Shell had decided that a two-brand strategy wouldn't work. The changeover will cost it about $530 million nationwide, with the cost per station running $40,000 to $80,000.
Ultimately, Shell expects to convert the bulk of its 13,000 Texaco stations nationwide.
The Texaco brand won't go away completely. Shell's ownership of the brand name expires in 2006, and ChevronTexaco plans on retaining it. However, I expect that you'll only see Texaco stations in some parts of the country, and not in others.
Kevin Drum has a modest proposal for the minimum wage. I'd vote for it.
In the what-took-it-so-long department: Steven Bochco is developing a new series for HBO:
Bochco's new series, Marriage, will be a look inside the lives of a couple, married for between five and six years. The entire show will unfold in the couple's bedroom, bathroom and changing closet.
You might expect that a TV show produced by Bochco, whose notable accomplishments include bringing Dennis Franz's big white ass into America's living room, would be a license to include cussin' and nekkidness. You would be correct:
Bochco said Marriage was developed three years ago and he knew then that HBO was the only place it could air. He has not offered the show elsewhere."The conceit of this series, it plays out in its entirety of the bedroom, bathroom and changing room, the most intimate, private places where a couple interacts with each other," he said. "I don't think you can do that without seeing the way people comport themselves."
The show will launch in January, 2004. Get those VCRs and TiVos ready.
Two interesting developments in baseball: First, San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker will not sign a new contract and thus will not return to the Giants. The rift between Baker and Giants owner Peter Magowan could not be repaired, so Baker becomes the first manager since Dick Williams in 1973 to leave a team he has just led to the World Series.
Boy howdy is this a move that could backfire on Magowan. Baker may or may not be a tactical genius, but there's no questioning his results. If they sputter next year, or if the Barry Bonds-Jeff Kent relationship melts down, the fans are not going to be happy. It's always ugly when a team owner tries to be a bigger story than the team and its employees. Ask any Cowboys fan.
The other interesting move is the Red Sox's decision to hire Bill James, the legendary baseball researcher and number cruncher (the preferred term of the cognoscenti is "sabermetrician", derived from the acronym SABR, which is the Society for American Baseball Research) as a special assistant/consultant/smart person.
This really should be a great move for the Sox, who have had some issues in evaluating talent recently. It all depends on what they do with him - as the article notes, James worked for the Royals in the 1990s, but had little impact because no one else there was smart enough to listen to him.
Well, at least now with the election over we can get back to what's really important, which is watching former Enron bigwigs do the perp walk while former employees of other Enron-like companies get nekkid. Towards that end, Andy Fastow has pleaded not guilty to all 78 counts of fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice for which he has been indicted.
Unlike his predecessors in the courthouse, Fastow appears to be headed for trial instead of a plea bargain:
Fastow has filed a motion with U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, who will be the trial judge, asking for a continuance rather than an immediate trial date.A defendant has a right to go to trial within 70 days, but federal rules allow a judge to grant a continuance in complex cases. Fastow is next due in Hoyt's court Jan. 13 for a status conference.
[...]
So far, attorneys on both sides indicate that Fastow is not cooperating with the government.
Legal experts have said Fastow's biggest incentive to do so would be in return for a promise that prosecutors would not charge his wife, Lea, who received some of the funds prosecutors have said are proceeds of criminal acts.
I guess we'll know what the feds' strategy is soon enough. If they really want to take down Skilling and Lay but don't have the goods, they'll arrest Lea Fastow in order to squeeze Andy. Or maybe they'll try to make an example of Fastow by going for a trial and conviction, in hopes it encourages Skilling and Lay to seek a plea when their time comes. Or maybe they have enough to nail all of them and are just taking it one scuzzball at a time.
In any event, it promises to be more fun than most other things in the news right now.
Well, damn. Not only was there no Fort Worth miracle for John Sharp, the late ballots in San Antonio wound up pushing Henry Bonilla over the top in the 23rd CD. Can't even get a consolation prize around here.
What next? I'm certainly disappointed with the results. I was excited about the Democratic slate of candidates, I was encouraged by the effort that I saw, and in the end I got nothing for it. It's pretty painful.
I hate to admit it, but it probably won't get better soon. There is reason for optimism, but it's farther off than I wanted to believe.
I believe the "Dream Team" ticket was the right idea, and I believe it's a step in the right direction. The candidates were solid, though in the end Tony Sanchez had too much baggage. One of the objectives of the Dream Team was to help broaden the Democratic Party's base. That objective wasn't fully met - Hispanic turnout wasn't as good as hoped. Both sides are claiming they got more of the Hispanic vote than they were expected to. I'll need to see some objective polling first.
The path forward, as they say, is to continue to build on the base without alienating the existing base. Sylvia Garcia's historic election to the County Commissioner's Court is a good start on the former. The latter is problematic. The Republicans thoroughly dominated the Anglo vote, getting over 70% of it. That's way too much. Some of that can be attributed to the first-minority-candidate factor, but there's a lot of work to be done here.
I'm going to take a short break from all this political stuff so I don't burn myself out on blogging. I plan on participating in Kos' Political State Report when it begins, and I've already got a couple of ideas to explore for it. So please stay tuned.
The first head rolls: Dick Gephardt will not run for minority leader of the House again. (Via Atrios.)
Gephardt, 61, has long signaled his interest in running for president in 2004, but it was not clear whether he would address that race when he announces his plans Thursday.The Missouri Democrat was majority leader when the 1994 landslide swept the GOP into power in the House. He was elected minority leader in the weeks that followed and spent the next eight years attempting unsuccessfully to return his party to power.
In that time, he served as his party's chief legislative strategist in the House, often struggling to hold a diverse caucus together on issues ranging from tax policy to international trade legislation.
I've never been much of a Gephardt fan, so I join my fellow lefty bloggers in shedding no tears over this decision. And may I add in my two cents' worth in favor of Nancy Pelosi to replace him.
Wasn't sure that I wanted to start talking about this so soon, but I like Rob's prescription for the most part. I definitely disagree with #9 - until proven otherwise, Gore is still the best candidate the Dems have, and I see no reason to silence the Big Dog, even if there were a way to do so - I'm not sure about #10, and I'm undecided about Tom Daschle. But it's a good start.
And I really like TCMits' comment:
A PledgeIf, two years from now:
Unemployment is down
The Markets are up
Poverty and homelessness are down
The number of people without health insurance is down
The environment has improved
The energy crisis has abated
We are at peace
Corporate Crime is down
Street Crime is down
There is little or no inflation
Interest rates are down
Personal income rates and buying power for the middle and lower classes are up
MY taxes are down and the budget is balancedI will foreswear my Liberal ways and vote a straight Republican ticket in 2004.
Are there any Conservatives out there who will make the opposite pledge?
I'm not going to hold my breath on any opposite numbers taking up his challenge, but I'll second his pledge. Anyone else?
Still trying to take my mind off politics...
It was nice to see that Clark Gillies, the mostly unheralded linemate of Mike Bossy and Bryan Trottier for the New York Islanders get inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Islanders won four consecutive Stanley Cups from 1980-1983 led by that line, buttressed by defenseman Denis Potvin and goalie Billy Smith. They were a dominant team that was finally shoved off center stage when a fellow named Gretzky made the scene for the Edmonton Oilers.
Here's an overview of the rise of the Islanders. Fans of the Rangers may want to skip it.
Pretty much a GOP sweep here, though the problems in Fort Worth and San Antonio may still swing the Lt. Governor race to John Sharp. The results can be found here.
Democrat Chris Bell won the 25th CD, and Henry Cueller is still leading incumbent GOP Rep. Henry Bonilla in the 23rd, though not by as much as he was when I first reported it.
Minority turnout was strong and favored the Democrats as expected.
Exit polling conducted for the Houston Chronicle by the Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston showed Laredo businessman Tony Sanchez's gubernatorial bid successfully energized Latino voters.In Harris County, Hispanics polled accounted for 14 percent of the local electorate, well over the usual 9 to 10 percent who typically vote. Statewide, UH pollster Richard Murray expected Latino turnout to jump from a 12 percent share to possibly 20 percent.
But in Harris, one of the state's minority centers, more than 54 percent of voters cast ballots for GOP Gov. Rick Perry, with 82 percent of the vote counted. Nearly 52 percent had chosen Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Cornyn over Democratic candidate Ron Kirk.
Of the state's four top races, the only Democrat holding his own in Harris County was former state Comptroller John Sharp. But as returns rolled in, even Sharp slipped increasingly behind Republican David Dewhurst in the close race for lieutenant governor.
The state GOP was busy getting out the vote as well. The party here has usually done well in that regard, and this year they did even better.
Where the Dems failed was with the Anglo vote.
U.S. Senate candidate Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas and an African-American, and gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez, a Mexican-American businessman from Laredo, dominated their GOP opponents among black and Hispanic voters Tuesday.But exit polls in Harris County and early vote returns statewide showed Kirk and Sanchez fell far short of the 35 percent of the Anglo vote that Democratic candidates usually get. Former Gov. Ann Richards won in 1990 with 37 percent of the Anglo vote.
Kirk received about 30 percent of the white vote in Harris County, according to an exit poll conducted for the Houston Chronicle by the University of Houston Center for Public Policy. Sanchez reaped 27 percent.
The two men led their Republican opponents only in predominantly Hispanic South Texas as they lost statewide to Republican Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Senate nominee John Cornyn.
John Sharp did marginally better among white voters, which is presumably why he's still in contention as we await results from Tarrant and Bexar counties.
I suppose I shouldn't get too discouraged. This was the first race with nonwhite candidates for Governor and Senate. Race wasn't much of an issue, but let's face it: The first nonstandard candidate has a bigger hurdle to overcome. That's just the way the world is.
The Bush factor didn't help, either. Cornyn remoraed himself to Bush and was swept to victory. Overcoming Bush's incumbency and popularity may have been too much to ask.
I'll give it some more thought later. It's too depressing right now.
Well, at least I don't have any on-the-record predictions to eat. I thought the Democrats would retain control of the Senate. All I can say is "ugh".
I suppose the bright side to being the minority party is that it's harder to be creditably blamed when things go wrong. Bush asked for control of Congress. He got it. You'd think that if things aren't looking better in two years that people might hold him responsible for it.
Another possible benefit for Democrats is that an all-GOP government might finally remove some of the shine that libertarians see on them. This presumes that the Republicans will push various civil liberties restrictions (due to the War On Terror) and that the Democrats actually align themselves against such things. Taking a stand against corporate-friendly copyright extensions, RIAA-inspired fair use usurpations, and stem cell research restrictions would also help.
I'm just trying to stay positive. It's not going to be easy.
From the election returns on the Secretary of State web page:
U. S. Representative District 23Candidate Total Pct Early Pct
Henry Bonilla* REP 13,586 29.3% 11,163 26.2%
Henry Cuellar DEM 32,426 69.9% 31,053 73.0%
Jeffrey Blunt LIB 279 0.6% 225 0.5%
Ed Scharf GRN 128 0.3% 104 0.2%
----------------------------
Vote Total 46,419 42,545
Precincts Reporting 45 of 339 Precincts 13.3%
This would be a Democratic pickup if it holds. Some other races with Dem incumbents are close early on, so this one would be nice to have.
Straight party ballots in Tarrant County (Fort Worth) did not register a vote for any candidate, an apparent programming glitch with their electronic voting machines. No results are expected until Wednesday morning.
Fox26 in Houston (which, amazingly, doesn't seem to have a real web page) is reporting delays in counting the early ballots in Bexar County (San Antonio). The Express-News has nothing on that right now.
All GOP statewide candidates seem to have early leads. John Sharp is closest (according to the Fox26 ticket), trailing 52-46.
Rob Humenik likes eSlate with a couple of reservations. He also has a boatload of links about turnout and some advice on who to vote for.
Larry finds an interesting analogy for voting. He also thinks that the eSlate machines are poorly designed.
Karin is a voter of few words.
Jack Cluth closes out his campaign for Governor by promising to name his dog the Official State Mascot.
Ted is still AWOL. One suspects he voted for a few Democrats either today or during early voting.
Alex is on hiatus as well, but before he left he gave us some thoughts about the Governor's race and the Hatfields and McCoys of Pasadena.
Scott was unable to vote due to an out of date registration.
Kevin was an early bird today and will reward himself with various distractions for the rest of the day.
Emilie recalls Election Days past.
Greg is celebrating his birthday today by voting straight Democrat, among other planned festivities. He also gives the wherefores of voting.
Binkley has a whole lot of election stuff. Start at the top and scroll down.
HWRNMNBSOL has all the news you'll need.
Greg Wythe encountered some sleepy poll workers and a paper ballot for a State Senate race. He also has some interesting numbers up, so start at the top and scroll down.
Angie Schultz corrects the Corner's weather report.
Owen is voting Republican. No surprise there. He also has his predictions up.
I plan on watching Buffy and 24. Such are the benefits of voting early.
From Ananova:
Voters in a US town are being asked to decide whether nude bathing should be banned.The local council in Wilmington, Vermont, voted to bar naked bathers after some locals complained about lewd behaviour at a popular skinny-dipping spot.
Voters narrowly upheld the ruling at a special town meeting in August.
But supporters of nude bathing drew up a petition in a bid to reverse the decision.
This means voters are being balloted again on whether the ban should stand.
The fans of the all-over tan say the nudists are polite and bring needed tourists dollars to town.
But opponents say the nude beach is littered with used condoms.
Jeez, it's in Vermont for Pete's sake. How long is the skinny-dipping season up there, two weeks?
Thanks to Mikey for the link.
As cold and wet and nasty as yesterday was, you couldn't ask for a nicer day today - bright and sunny, clear blue skies, high around 70, no wind. If people can't be bothered to vote, it won't be because of inclement weather.
Early indicators are long lines and some confusion with the eSlate machines, but no major problems as yet. Turnout is still forecast as being in the 5 million range, which is about 40%.
I stopped by my neighborhood polling place while walking my dog and chatted with a couple of leafletters. As of 4:30 PM they were reporting that things were kinda slow, but most people weren't home from work yet.
A little less than two hours till polls close.
Here's a list of vote suppression tactics going on around the country, including this one in Hidalgo County. The Secretary of State has a toll-free number (1-800-252-8683) for those who wish to complain.
The 55 MPH speed limit is officially dead, to the point where even Miracle Max couldn't revive it. If you'll excuse me, I need to go and put the lead weights back in my shoes. Woo hoo!
Longtime Houston country radio station KIKK has changed format to "smooth jazz".
The station was rechristened KHJZ "Smooth Jazz 95.7 The Wave" at noon Monday. Sade's Smooth Operator was the first song played.The new station will feature Anita Baker, David Koz, Kenny G and Luther Vandross, along with classic jazz by Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Herbie Hancock and Dave Brubeck.
"It's all about the mood. It's sophisticated, contemporary and very metropolitan (music)," said Laura Morris, vice president and general manager of Infinity Radio's four Houston stations. "Houston is a sophisticated, metropolitan city that deserves this kind of a mix."
Infinity has been successful with smooth-jazz formats in Los Angeles and Dallas. Morris said Houston was one of only two of the top 10 radio markets in the nation without a smooth jazz station.
While I certainly won't argue against a station that plays Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, I personally will not run the risk of encountering a Kenny G. song on my radio. You have to draw the line somewhere.
I think the biggest effect of this change will be all the pickup trucks that have KIKK bumper stickers on them that say things like "KIKKup truck" and "Proud to be a KIKKer". I can't imagine any of them good ol' boys humming along to Sade, but in some cases the sticker may be the only thing affixing the bumper to the chassis. Something will have to give, and it ain't gonna be pretty.
I'm moderately surprised to see that the Evil Empire (aka Clear Channel) was not involved in any way. That's not to say that the general evil of ownership consolidation wasn't involved:
KIKK began operation in 1959 and was a country powerhouse for years. It regularly ranked as the top station in Houston. As recently as 1993, it ranked No. 2 among all Houston radio stations, just behind KILT.But its fortunes changed when Westinghouse Broadcasting, owner of KILT, acquired KIKK in 1993. New management fired many longtime KIKK DJs and ratings plummeted.
KILT and the former KIKK are now both owned by Infinity. Though the purchase that started KIKK's troubles predates the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996, it's still a casualty of consolidated corporate ownership. Can any free-market libertarian explain to me why it's a Good Thing that a handful of companies can own all of the dozens of radio stations in a given market? I'm just not seeing it.
Alex points out what can happen when a politician doesn't register his preferred domain name in time. Anyone that slow on the ball in 2002 deserves to lose, and I'm not just saying that because the candidate in question is David Dewhurst.
(Best of luck with your novel, Alex.)
This is my last post on the election until the results are in. At this point, I'll be as glad as anyone to see it in my rear-view mirror.
The weather should not be a factor in Harris County. That's good news.
Over 418,000 people voted early, a 70% increase from 1998.
Both sides are expressing optimism about today. Lots of folks are making predictions. I generally avoid making predictions because I hate being wrong and I'm just superstitious enough to worry about putting a hex on things.
Finally, to the Libertarian candidate for a local office in Austin who spammed me over the weekend: There's a reason why targeted campaigning is more effective than scattershooting. Welcome to our corporate killfile. Enjoy your stay.
I spent another two hours at Tony Sanchez's Houston headquarters last night calling voters. As before, the people I spoke to were planning on voting or had already voted. No one expressed no interest in the election.
No one seemed daunted by recent polls showing Governor Goodhair in the lead. In fact, a couple of the people there spoke of a Zogby poll (presumably based on early voting) that showed Sanchez with a six-point lead in Harris County. A quick Google search didn't turn up any links to such a beast, and even if I could find one it's a small slice of a small slice of the vote. Still, as I said to one of them last night, better six up than six down.
Last night I was wondering about coattails in this race. Republican US Rep. Henry Bonilla over in the 23rd Congressional District is worried about the potential effect that Sanchez may have on his race. I've been wondering if some competitive local races such as Sylvia Garcia's effort to become the first woman elected and the first Hispanic to serve as County Commissioner and Debra Danburg's battle against Martha Wong in the redrawn 134th State House District will provide coattails for Sanchez. I feel confident that success for Sanchez will correlate with Democratic success at the top of the ticket as well as in races like these. I just can't decide how much will be cause and how much will be effect with the regional races.
Headline in today's Yahoo News: Gay Sheep May Help Explain Biology of Homosexuals:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Gay sheep that mate only with other rams have different brain structures from "straight" sheep, a finding that may shed light on human sexuality, U.S. researchers said on Monday.The differences are similar to those seen in some homosexual humans, but probably only go a small way to explaining the causes of different sexual preferences, the team at Oregon Health & Science University said.
"We are not trying to explain human sexuality by this study," Charles Roselli, a professor of physiology and pharmacology who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "Whether this is a big component of what contributes in humans, that's still debatable."
OK, how many of you, like me, were unable to get past the headline without thinking "I didn't know there were gay sheep"?
The story's actually pretty interesting regardless of its obvious appeal to morning radio show personalities. Some things are just too hard to resist, though:
First the scientists watched the sheep to be sure of their behavior -- something that cannot be done with humans. Then they took apart their brains.
One supposes that last part can't be done with humans, either.
A good article in the Houston Press about the state Democrats' Dream Team ticket that echoes a couple of themes that you've seen here before:
Recent media reports seized on the relatively low number of newly registered Texas voters with Spanish surnames -- they were up only 170,000 over last year. That was viewed as a sign that both the Sanchez campaign and a registration drive spearheaded by former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros were sputtering.[...]
Democratic strategists say the attention accorded the relatively low new voter figures misses the point of the Democratic game plan: to maximize the turnout of previously registered Hispanics and other party constituencies.
"True enough, there haven't been a hell of a lot of Hispanic registrants," admits Dan McClung of Campaign Strategies. "But we decided early on that we had about a million Hispanic registered voters who had never cast a ballot, and that we were a lot better off spending our money trying to get them to vote rather than going and finding people who were not registered but were citizens."
According to McClung, "There's plenty of target. I don't think we're going to turn the world upside down, but I think we're in the range to win some elections. And it's going to be largely because we got a better turnout in the Hispanic world.
Which I've said multiple times, such as here and here.
If Democrats have nothing to show for all that effort and organization on Tuesday night, it's going to be awfully difficult to find future candidates who'll throw away their treasure running under the party banner. Even if Sharp wins his race, there's likely to be the suspicion among minorities that they got used by an Anglo who really ran as Republican Lite.Democratic consultant and lobbyist George Strong opines that the Dream Team will go down in history as a success if the party maintains its control of the state House speakership, Sharp becomes lieutenant governor and some down-ballot races go to the Democrats. He agrees even those results might leave a residue of bitterness among Hispanic and black organizers.
"They'll say, 'Hey, we did our part, what happened to the yellow dogs?' " says Strong, using a term referring to the blue-collar Anglo wing of the party.
Yep, I saw that one coming, too. Sure hope I don't get a chance to find out if I'm right, too.
Anyway, there's much of interest here. Check it out.
The latest poll from the Chron gives Governor Goodhair a 49-37 lead over Tony Sanchez. John Sharp is shown with a three-point lead over David Dewhurst for Lt. Governor, John Cornyn is leading Ron Kirk 45-39 in the Senate race, and Greg Abbott leads Kirk Watson 41-33 for Attorney General. Typically, the Chron notes that Sharp's lead is withing the margin of error (given as 3.9%), but fails to note that the same is true for the Senate race, since margin of error is for each candidates' total and not for the difference.
I'll be back at Sanchez headquarters tonight calling voters again. I'll report back on the mood and the response tomorrow.
I'm back from Florida, where I attended a friend's wedding. Wish I could have brought Tampa's warm and sunny weather with me - it's cold and rainy here in Houston.
Of course, I'm talking cold for Houston - it's 57 degrees right now, though the humidity makes it feel colder. Some of the other wedding attendees came from Chicago and differing parts of Pennsylvania. I'll take Houston cold over their version of cold any old day.
I'm off to Florida for a wedding. Back Monday. Have a great weekend!
Today is Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday which celebrates and remembers the dead. Here's a nice overview of the holiday and its traditions. Go to the first URL above and follow some links there for lots of pictures.
I present to you an accounting of Jack Welch's monthly income and expenses. Life sure is sweet, isn't it?
What does the world's most famous retired CEO spend in an average month for food and beverages, including wine?Answer: $8,982.
Clothes? $1,903. Gifts? $52,486.
These and other intimate details of the personal finances of Jack Welch, former chairman and chief executive of General Electric Co., spilled out this week in the latest episode of his divorce proceedings. In an eight-page financial affidavit filed in a Connecticut court, Welch offered a rare look into the lifestyle of a highly compensated executive.
Welch, who headed GE for 20 years before his retirement in September 2001, outwardly avoided an ostentatious public image and insisted that he didn't revel in his wealth. The affidavit totted up his personal assets at $456.2 million and revealed that his current total monthly income -- as a self-employed retiree -- is $1.41 million, after taxes. It placed his total monthly living expenses at $366,114.
The one that kills me is that Welch gets $1000 per month in Social Security payments, a total which exceeds his monthly charitable donations by about $400. Anyone else in favor of a cap on annual income for eligibility to receive Social Security payments?