Stories like this really piss me off.
On some days, Darrell Echols feels more like a trash collector than the research scientist he is.Although his job is to monitor the 380 species of birds that frequent Padre Island National Seashore and to inspect the oil and gas companies drilling there, Echols -- like everyone else employed at the park -- spends part of his day picking up garbage.
"When you are on the beach, you are tasked to collect one bag of trash per day," said Echols, chief of Padre Island's science and resources management division.
The reason: Padre Island National Seashore, according to a nationwide survey completed in 1993 by the National Parks Service, receives more trash than any other national park along the U.S coast.
Every two days, the 68-mile-long beach yields an average of 16 bags of garbage. And that's not counting the buoys the size of three pick-up trucks, or the 150 to 200 empty drums and buckets that wash ashore every two weeks and require pickup by the only hazardous materials crew in the national park system.
The beach receives so much trash that, during a study of eight national parks on the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts that sampled stretches of beach four times a year, there was too much garbage for Padre officials to pick up.
"Padre was so far off the scale, it made others look like they had no issue," Echols said of the five-year study, the first comprehensive analysis of marine debris on the nation's sea shores. "We could not get one kilometer done in a week."
From March 1994 to March 1998, researchers collected trash daily from Padre's beaches and catalogued it into 43 separate categories. The items ranged in size from egg cartons or rubber gloves to 55-gallon drums.Of the more than 104,000 items collected during that period, the most common were rubber gloves used by shrimpers to protect their hands while separating catches. One-gallon milk jugs, likely from ship galleys, came in second, the researchers found.
The majority of the waste -- or 80 percent -- matched what was found on shrimp trawlers, a number that Texas shrimpers say is inflated.
"We view the report as singling out the shrimping industry," said Wilma Anderson, executive director of the Texas Shrimp Association in Aransas Pass, who admitted that in high seas some trash -- including rubber gloves -- gets washed off the deck.
But "every entity using the beach and water contributes," she said.
Make no mistake, the only way anything will change here is for the cited industries to take voluntary action. The state of Texas is not going to propose new regulations, since it's apparently better to spend money cleaning up a mess than it is to spend money preventing the mess in the first place. If the shrimpers tell the state to cram it, the problem will remain the Parks Service's to deal with. Tragedy of the commons? Never heard of it.
You know, nobody really appreciates how hard it is to govern when one party controls every branch of the government.
As Republican lawmakers wrapped up the first year in a half-century in which they controlled the Senate, House and White House, they discovered, as Democrats had before them, how hard it is to govern even with possession of the White House and slim majorities in Congress.Congress left town last week with one major Republican-driven accomplishment -- a Medicare prescription drug bill -- and one big disappointment for GOP leaders, dead energy legislation. Lawmakers also delivered a long-promised ban on certain types of abortion procedures and further cut taxes.
But they were unable to finish work on an array of other priorities, including seven spending bills, a rewrite of the Head Start program, an Internet tax moratorium, a class-action lawsuit overhaul, a corporate tax measure and medical malpractice reform. Other tax, trade and pension items also remain unfinished.
GOP leaders failed to accomplish those things despite shutting out Democrats from much of the legislative process. Their narrow majorities -- 51-48 in the Senate and 229-205 in the House, with one Democratic-leaning independent in each chamber -- still presented challenges.
The Republicans blamed what they called the obstructionism of the Democratic minority. "We could have been more successful if we'd had bipartisan cooperation," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
Henry:
Would you be slighted if I didn’t speak for hours?Pickering:
Of course not.Henry:
Would you be livid if I had a drink or two?Pickering:
Nonsense.Henry:
Would you be wounded if I never sent you flowers?Pickering:
Never.Henry:
Why can’t a woman be like you?
Joan Jett, celebrated far and wide for her trip to Afghanistan to support the troops, is now supporting a candidate for President: Howard Dean.
A slate of convention delegate candidates from New York made public by the Dean presidential campaign includes Joan Jett, whose 1981 song with the Blackhearts "I Love Rock-n-Roll" has become a rock anthem."This whole process intrigues me," Jett said. "I'm stepping into new territory. It's very exciting."
If she is elected during New York's March 2 presidential primary, Jett would go to the Democratic National Convention next summer as a Dean delegate.
Not sure why this story is just getting printed today, but it's about another no-name casualty of redistricting out in West Texas.
SONORA -- To folks in this hamlet on the western edge of the Texas Hill Country, redistricting seemed an issue for cities such as Houston, Dallas or San Antonio.That was until state lawmakers divided Sutton County between two U.S. congressmen, splitting a place where natural gas fuels the economy and where hunters fill the main drag each autumn.
"It's an absolute absurdity," said John Tedford, the Republican party chairman for Sutton County. "With just 3,000 people here, it's just absurd."
The Sutton County split was a last-minute move during a series of marathon map-drawing sessions as Republicans sought a compromise over the shape of a West Texas district.State Sen. Todd Staples, R-Palestine, a lead map-drawer, said dividing Sonora was an unavoidable consequence of the requirement that the congressional district contain exactly 651,619 residents, with no deviation. Districts are federally required to be evenly divided according to census figures.
"Realistically, it could have been one of a hundred different towns where the boundary eventually stopped," Staples said. "In this instance, it just happened to be in Sutton County."
Staples said the split was probably drawn "in the wee hours of the morning, as we analyzed the map." He said Sutton County was not a political target.
What are the practical effects to the residents in Sonora?
Sutton County must pay to bring all four precincts in line with the new congressional districts before the March primary, a job that will cost the county an estimated $1,500, said Sutton County Clerk Veronica "Betty" Hernandez."If it was up to me, I wish it would remain the same. But we have to change according to the new lines now," Hernandez said.
Sutton and other counties with new boundaries must scramble to meet an array of election filing and ballot deadlines. Counties need time to print ballots, mail new voter registration cards and alert voters of new polling places.
"Once you add in everything, we're looking at at least $5,000," said Sutton County Judge Carla Garner, a Democrat. "That's a considerable amount we didn't budget for."
They'll likely use money earmarked from a local improvement project, Garner said.
Speaking of the courts, in addition to a ruling by the US District Court in Marshall about the DeLay/Barton subpoena, the Colorado Supreme Court will rule on the legality of that state's unprecedented re-redistricting effort on Monday. Next week ought to be very interesting.
UPDATE: Beldar thinks that DeLay will be compelled to testify, and that it will be more of an opportunity than a threat for the GOP. This is really a response to an earlier post, but I'm putting it here so it won't get overlooked.
If you're going to plan that road trip through Texas, beware of suburban counties near large cities, for they are the speeding ticket capitals of the state.
Of the 10 counties that got the most of the 2.2 million tickets handed out during the three-year period, Montgomery County, northwest of Houston, tops the list with more than 36,600.Parker County near Fort Worth was a close second, followed by other suburban havens -- Hunt, northeast of Dallas, fourth; Collin, home to the affluent Dallas suburb of Plano, fifth; and Bell, between Austin and Waco, ninth.
The 10 counties with the fewest tickets were San Saba in Central Texas and McMullen in South Texas, each between major interstates; Borden, Cochran, Stonewall, Kent, Foard and Lipscomb in or near the Panhandle, far from interstates; and Terrell and Loving in far West Texas.
Montgomery County earns its speedy reputation thanks to Interstate 45 on the west side and U.S. Highway 59 on the east, said Scott Markowitz, a Houston attorney specializing in traffic offenses in Houston and surrounding counties. In addition, speed limits of 55 mph in construction zones for U.S. 59 expansion projects have been strictly enforced.
[...]
Roy Crooks, who runs a defensive driving course in Fort Worth, said Tarrant County speeders keep him busy, though he gets a steady flow of students from No. 2 Parker County.
"That part of I-20 in Parker County is one of the growing areas between Fort Worth and Weatherford," Crooks said. "It's a nice, great big six-lane highway, and people just keep the speed up a bit on a lot of hills. Troopers patrol that area pretty heavily."
The same goes for Pecos and Sutton counties, the only two remote areas to make it into the top 20. Capt. Ron Joy Jr., whose area includes Pecos and the state's largest county, Brewster, said his staff has fewer roadways to patrol out in the Big Empty.
"People probably get bored and they're trying to get through as fast as they can," Joy said.
Not that I condone such things, but if you want to know where the speed traps are in our great state, there's an online resource for you. All I can add to this is to avoid the city of Selma, just north of San Antonio, like the plague.
Who needs to endorse a candidate when you can get both of them to agree to a set of ideals as Sylvester Turner did?
Standing with U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Rep. Al Edwards at the Four Seasons Hotel, Turner had [Orlando Sanchez and Bill White] sign the 15-point covenant he said represents issues he campaigned for.Sanchez and White are battling for African-American voters, who gave about 80 percent of their support to Turner when he finished third in the Nov. 4 voting.
Jackson Lee said it is important for the two candidates to sign the covenant because this is the first strongly contested mayoral election since 1989 without a black finalist.
White said during the covenant signing that Sanchez has not always supported some of its elements. Afterward, the White campaign distributed a copy of a Harris County Republican Party questionnaire to support his claim.In the GOP questionnaire, Sanchez said he would support "a policy of nondiscrimination in which everyone is equally treated as opposed to affirmative action policies that create special classes of citizens who are entitled to special treatment."
In the "Community Covenant," Sanchez agrees to "put forth a good-faith effort to see that diversity is reflected in city contracting and city affairs with an emphasis on those minority businesses which are locally owned and operated and are new and emerging businesses."
This article talks about how various cities have cut back or cut out holiday celebrations like tree-lighting ceremonies in recent years due to budget crunches. Houston, despite its own fiscal woes, hasn't done any such thing, but what I've noticed is the near death of the corporate holiday party. Back in the good old days of the late 90s, Tiffany and I would get to attend a couple of lavish parties, one thrown by each of our employers, usually at a local museum (the Natural Science Museum was the best, but the Museum of Fine Arts was good, too). They'd have live music, open bars, extensive buffets, and the chance to see your coworkers and their spouses all dressed up. I'd occasionally hear people complain about attending them, since they took up space on an already busy December calendar, but I always loved them.
Needless to say, this sort of thing cost a ton, and was one of the first things to go when the economy headed south. Does anyone still work for a company that throws a real holiday party, or are they as extinct as the dodo? I'm usually an optimist on things, but I fear that when we're back in a bull market this tradition will not get revived. Damn shame if you ask me.
(Side note: I'll bet the death of parties like these has also been a big hardship on museums' budgets, since the rental fees had to have been huge.)
My dad and I just got back from buying a Christmas tree. We had an artificial tree when I was growing up, and in my secret heart of hearts I still think that's the way to go. It's cheaper - that one tree lasted us at least 20 years - it's environmentally friendlier, it's less messy, and it's predictable. You know what kind of tree you're getting year in and year out. Tiffany, however, won't hear of any such thing, so every year we get a real tree. I console myself with the knowledge that in January we'll cut it up and put it in our compost heap, as we've done with its predecessors.
By the way, as a data point in the SUV debate, I'll note that as we've done every year, we brough this six-to-seven foot Fraser fir home in my Mazda sedan. All we had to do was fold down the back seats and it fit just fine. The SUV driver who bought a slightly larger tree just before us was tying it to the roof of his vehicle as we pulled out. Must be nice to have all that cargo space!
Just one news item for today: The winner of the what-to-do-with-the-Astrodome sweepstakes is an outfit that wants to turn it into a space museum.
The empty confines of the Reliant Astrodome could someday offer a glimpse at the vastness of outer space.And, maybe, a roller coaster.
That is the vision of the Astrodome Redevelopment Co., a consortium of engineering and entertainment companies pursuing the idea of putting a "space theme park" in the Dome.
"It's really more entertainment-oriented than education-oriented," said Scott Hanson, a vice president of Bryan-based Trajen Aerospace, which is part of the consortium. "But our concept right now will have components of both. How they mesh together is part of the details to be worked out."
Hanson said the preliminary concept involves dividing the interior of the Dome into quadrants, with each area sporting rides and attractions designed to let visitors experience some of the sights and sensations of space travel, such as a rocket launch or a journey through deep space.
"Being indoors, the Astrodome is really perfect for that kind of environment, where you control what the attendee is experiencing," Hanson said.
The seating levels surrounding what is now the playing field would be converted into hotel, restaurant and retail space that would allow patrons to view the space world while eating or shopping.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! My parents are in town and dinner is at our house, so I'll be focusing on Real Life for today.
It occurred to me last night that this is the first time in 20 years that I've had Thanksgiving dinner with my parents. When I was in college in San Antonio, I'd drive with my cousins to my aunt and uncle's house in Wichita Falls for T-Day. After coming to Houston, I did Thanksgiving with friends here until I met Tiffany, after which it's been Thanksgiving with her family. I flew home for Christmas every year for as long as my parents lived in New York (through Christmas of 1998), and flying during one holiday was enough. This year, my folks agreed to come down here to celebrate Turkey Day. All of us, myself included, were a bit shocked when I said 1983 was the last time we'd been together on this day.
No matter, we're together now. Have a great day, everyone!
In 1900, the great mathematician David Hilbert listed 23 outstanding problems in mathematics and challenged his colleagues to solve them. Three of those problems remain unsolved today, but according to this report, one of them may have been conquered.
Elin Oxenhielm, a 22-year-old mathematics student at Stockholm University, may have solved part of one of the science's great problems. Next week an article will be published revealing her solution for part of Hilbert's 16th problem, Swedish news agency TT reports.The set of 23 problems was put forward by Prussian mathematician David Hilbert in 1900 as challenges for the 20th century. Three remain unsolved, numbers 6,8 and 16.
Oxenhielm's solution pertains to a special version of the second part of problem 16, the 'boundary cycles for polynomial differential equations'.
The mathematical journal Nonlinear Analysis, published by Elsevier, has examined and endorsed Oxenhielm's solution and will publish it in their next issue.
Oxenhielm believes her method can be used to unlock the mystery of the entire 16th problem, newspaper Expressen reports.
More interestingly, Problem 16 has a connection to the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture, which was used by Andrew Wiles to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Stephen Smale, who proved part of the famous Poincare Conjecture, also made some advances on this problem.
I imagine that we'll be hearing more about this shortly. Via Slashdot.
Reps. Tom DeLay and Joe Barton are contesting the subpoena that they were issued to testify about their roles in redistricting.
Attorneys for DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis, filed a motion in U.S. district court in Marshall, urging a three-judge federal panel to quash subpoenas for the congressmen's depositions. The panel is to begin a combined trial of several anti-redistricting suits in Austin on Dec. 11.[...]
In their motion to quash, attorneys Bobby R. Burchfield of Washington and Jonathan D. Pauerstein of San Antonio said no court had ever compelled a member of Congress to submit to a deposition in a redistricting case.
"The opportunity to place members under oath and question them regarding their political strategy and that of their political party would provide a fertile field for abuse," they said.
Democratic lawyer Gerald Hebert said DeLay's "deposition is clearly legally significant to this case because, unlike any member of Congress in any prior redistricting process, he unquestionably played the central role in Texas redistricting in 2003."He continued: "Without Tom DeLay, Texas redistricting would never have happened in 2003, and this specific map would never have been enacted into law."
Here's an entertaining interview with Don Novello, whom you may know as Father Guido Sarducci but whom I will always think of as Lazlo Toth, American. He talks about the history of the Lazlo Letters, the challenge of keeping the idea fresh 30 years later, and why certain other comedians never acknowledged his work in this regard. Check it out. Via Mark Evanier.
Attorney General Greg Abbott has announced that the state is suing fifteen businesses for violating the state's no-call law.
The Texas attorney general's office filed suit against 15 telemarketing businesses Tuesday, claiming they violated the state's no-call law.The state alleges the companies, including four in the Houston area, called consumers repeatedly with high-pressure sales pitches.
"Businesses in the state of Texas must respect the law," Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said. "When they don't, there will be consequences."
The suits, which seek temporary and permanent injunctions to stop the calls, are the first to be filed against telemarketers since the law took effect in January 2002.
The defendants are subject to fines of up to $1,000 for each phone call made in violation of the law and up to $3,000 per call if the company knowingly violated it.
Richard Connelly gives us an amusing look at the "worst flock-ups of 2003", though given his gleeful trashing of Tom DeLay and John Culberson, it's admittedly more amusing if you're not a Republican. Just one minor point here, Rich: DeLay is a Congressman, not a Senator. Hard to tell with him, perhaps, but there you go.
Some 300 teachers protested outside Tom DeLay's office in Sugar Land yesterday after he refused to bring a bill that would benefit them to a floor vote.
About 300 public school employees from Houston, Fort Bend, Brazosport and other school districts rallied at DeLay's Stafford office, blaming the House majority leader for not bringing to a floor vote House Resolution Bill 594, the Social Security Fairness Act.The Act, which has enough votes to pass in the House, would allow teachers and other government employees who have had other jobs to receive full Social Security benefits. DeLay has said the bill could bankrupt Social Security.
Teachers such as Randy Elms, who carried signs like "DeLay denies Teachers," say the current policy is unfair to Texas educators.
"If I would die today, he would get no Social Security benefits," said the 50-year-old middle school teacher, nodding toward his 10-year-old son, Ryan. Both were bundled in their coats as they stood outside DeLay's office in the cold weather.
Teachers who pay into the Teacher Retirement System receive that pension fund upon retirement but do not receive full Social Security benefits even if they paid into it and are vested, Texas Federation of Teachers secretary-treasurer John O'Sullivan said at the rally. Spouses and children of teachers do not receive full Social Security benefits either, he said.
HR 594 would allow teachers and their families to receive full Social Security benefits upon retirement or disability in addition to the teacher pension.
The bill has 277 co-sponsors in the U.S. House, including 23 from Texas, with a majority needed to pass. DeLay has the power to prevent a vote, said John Cole, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers. Texas is one of 12 states that considers teachers public servants and requires them to live off their teacher pensions, even if they had other careers before or afterward, he said.
DeLay's office released a statement that said HR 594 would add more than $50 billion over the next 10 years to the Social Security program. He was not at the rally.
To be honest, I have no idea if this bill is a good idea or not. Fifty billion over ten years isn't going to break the federal budget, but no matter how dishonest DeLay is on the subject, adding to the current record deficits really should give us pause. And just because a bill is popular doesn't mean it's good policy (see, for example, every anti-flag burning bill that's ever reared its ugly head).
But still. Two hundred seventy-seven sponsors, and no vote? Maybe if they added in a corporate tax cut, that might do the trick. One must remember one's priorities, after all.
UPDATE: The following comment from Diogenes gives a good reason why this bill should be passed.
My mother is approaching retirement age, and taught in Texas public schools for almost 20 years. As such, she contributed to the Texas Teacher Retirement System (TRS). But she came to teaching later in life; she worked a number of jobs before teaching, during which she contributed to Social Security for long enough to be eligible for benefits (normally) when she retires.The only problem is this: unlike most people, who get both Social Security and pension or other retirement benefits, teachers aren't allowed to collect Social Security.
The unspoken assumption of the system is that teachers do nothing but teach for their entire career, and so couldn't possibly contribute enough to Social Security to be eligible for benefits. That's just false. There's also consequences for spousal and disability benefits. In effect, the system is set up as an unfair tax on teachers and their families.
The odd thing is that it can depend on what job one retires from. There are some teaching jobs in the state that contribute to both TRS and SS. If you retire from one of those jobs, you're entitled to receive both benefits.
Teachers in the know search out these jobs when approaching retirement. Some of them will even let you work there for a day or two and then retire, just so that you can get the benefits to which you should be entitled. Fortunately, my mother has found one of those jobs. But many aren't so lucky.
Recently, a Dell spokesman announced that in response to customer complaints, they would stop routing corporate support calls to India.
Tech support for Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook computers will be handled from call centers in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee, Dell spokesman Jon Weisblatt told The Associated Press Monday."Customers weren't satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we're moving some calls around to make sure they don't feel that way anymore," Weisblatt said.
"We did not send back any calls to the U.S.," the Dell International Services' spokeswoman in the high-tech hub of Bangalore, said on Tuesday. The spokeswoman said she did not want to be quoted by name."Customers weren't satisfied with the level of support they were receiving, so we're moving some calls around to make sure they don't feel that way anymore," Weisblatt said.
"Now, I don't know why Jon said that," the Dell spokeswoman in Bangalore said. "We are committed to India and we are growing."
Though I've seen firsthand the effects of offshoring, I'm not as worked up about call center jobs in India as Byron is. As it happens, I've just spent time on the phone with Dell's support techs thanks to a dead sound card in our new PC. Took awhile to get through, but they'll be sending a tech out to replace the (thankfully under warranty) motherboard, and I didn't have any problems communicating with the people on the other end. Of course, it also helps that I know my way around a computer, so I could anticipate what they were telling me.
I did tech support work in one form or another for ten years, and I'll say this: The quality of the support you get is directly proportional to how much the company is willing to spend on it. In good economic times (remember those?), people are willing to pay a premium for better service, and companies act accordingly. A reputation for excellent service is a strong competitive advantage, but in leaner times it's all about cost. You may eventually see some jobs like these come back in the next boom, but the long term trend is clear: tech support workers are the steelworkers of the 21st Century.
Hell, long term a lot of these jobs won't be going to India any more, either. Some countries in Africa are already the next big thing for offshoring.
One thing about the original story really amused me.
Among Dell customers dissatisfied with the company's use of overseas labor is Ronald Kronk, a Presbyterian minister in Rochester, Pa., who has spent the last four months trying to resolve a miscommunication that has resulted in his being billed for two computers.The problem, he says, is that the Dell call center is in India.
"They're extremely polite, but I call it sponge listening — they just soak it in and say 'I can understand why you're angry' but nothing happens," Kronk said.
The special examiner who's been doing a postmortem on the Enron collapse has released his final report, in which he lays blame at the feet of Kenny Boy Lay and Jeff Skilling.
Atlanta-based examiner Neal Batson also suggests that the Houston law firms Vinson & Elkins and Andrews Kurth may have committed legal "malpractice" and aided and abetted the financing hijinks by Enron officials.In the fourth and final report of his $100 million, 18-month investigation, Batson says Lay, Skilling, former members of Enron's board of directors, and lawyers inside and outside the company failed to respond to "red flags" raised by Enron's accounting practices.
The 137-page report filed Monday, with 1,000 pages of appendices, and Batson's three earlier reports were written to guide creditors through the special purpose financing entities that caused Enron's collapse.
[...]
Batson says that Lay and Skilling, in particular, were negligent in their failure of oversight.
"The evidence shows that, as a result of their day-to-day involvement at the company, Lay and Skilling knew or should have known their subordinate officers misused the SPE transactions in a manner that resulted in the dissemination of materially misleading financial information," Batson wrote.
"I am highly encouraged," said Lay's Houston-based attorney, Mike Ramsey. "There is no allegation of crime, no claim of intentional wrongdoing, and no assertion of fraud on the part of Ken Lay. After a nearly $100 million investigation, the bankruptcy examiner suggests only negligence, which we strongly deny."
I know, I know, he's talking about negligence as a legal concept, a nontrivial matter given that Enron's creditors have asked the federal bankruptcy judge for permission to sue them to smithereens.
The legal action against Houston-based Vinson & Elkins and Andrews Kurth mirrors information contained in a fourth and final report by bankruptcy examiner Neal Batson made public Monday. Batson alleges the law firms may have committed malpractice and violated their duty to Enron Corp.The request by creditors also named Kirkland & Ellis, which is not mentioned in the Batson report. Judge Arthur Gonzalez has approved all similar requests by creditors to initiate litigation in the past. A hearing is scheduled for next Monday.
[...]
Separately, the creditors also would like to sue more than three dozen former executives, including [former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew] Fastow, former Chairman Ken Lay and former Chief Executive Jeff Skilling.
It's a total tuque-a-rama in Quebec!
MONTREAL (CP) - The Heritage Classic has made a simple Montreal Canadiens' hat into the hottest product in Quebec.Demand has been "overwhelming" for the red, white and blue tuque with the Canadiens logo that Jose Theodore wore over his goaltender's mask during the NHL's first ever outdoor game in Edmonton, Ray Lalonde, vice-president of sales and marketing for the NHL club, said Monday.
The hats were also worn by the Canadiens oldtimers to keep out the minus-20 freeze in the Megastars game that preceded the historic NHL match at Commonwealth Stadium on Saturday.
"We're shocked, the demand has been phenomenal," Lalonde said. "We could not have anticipated this level of demand and now we have to deal with it."
Via Eric McErlain, who has more on the Heritage Classic here and here.
Warren Spahn, probably the greatest lefthanded pitcher ever and the winningest pitcher since the 1930s, died yesterday at the age of 82. David Pinto and Rob Neyer have some good profiles on him. Rest in peace, Warren Spahn.
You've seen this question a million times already: “If next year’s election for President was held today, do you think you would vote for George W. Bush, or some other candidate?” Suppose I told you that in a recent poll, the numbers broke down as follows:
George W. Bush 46.4%
Other Candidate 42.4%
Undecided 11.2%
Not very unusual, right? Bush has been running no better than even against an unnamed Democrat for some time now in national polls. He's actually doing a little better here than in some of those surveys.
Now suppose I told you that this was a poll taken in Montana (scroll down to "Vote Intention in 2004"), a state which Bush carried in 2000 by a 58-34 margin over Al Gore (Nader got 6%). Some "statistically significant relationships" from this MSU-Billings poll:
A majority (52.6%) of males planned on voting for Bush, a majority of females (59.4%) favored some other candidate.A majority (76.8%) of Republicans said they would vote for Bush. A majority of Democrats (78.6%) and Independents (48.1%) supported some other candidate.
Majorities of respondents with 1-11 years (55.6%) and 13-15 (some college) years of education (59%) said they would vote for Bush. A plurality of college graduates (46.9%) and majority of individuals with a post-graduate education (57.4%) said they backed some other candidate.
Now, of course, there are tons of caveats: The margin of error is 5%. Other candidates combined for 42% in 2000, so while Bush has lost ground, the Democrats haven't necessarily gained any. A generic candidate often does better than a specific one. Some 20% of Democrats still seem to support Bush.
But still. The Mountain Time Zone was very friendly to Bush in 2000, with every state except New Mexico a red state. If his support slips there (and I've said before that Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada are all within reach for the Democrats), he's got trouble. The solid South can only take you so far.
Via Not Geniuses.
Nevada's governor recall drive terminated
CARSON CITY, Nev. -- An anti-tax group trying to oust Gov. Kenny Guinn gave up Monday after failing to gather enough signatures to get the recall on the ballot.The recent recall of former California Gov. Gray Davis "really crucified us," said Chris Hansen of The Committee to Recall Gov. Guinn. "That was such a circus, such a show, with a stripper, a porn star, Gary Coleman as candidates."
"People thought it would probably be the same here, while in truth, it would have been an election to keep or not keep Guinn as governor," Hansen said.
[...]
Hansen said more than 51,000 signatures were gathered -- far short of the 128,109 needed to force a vote next year. But recall leaders listed only three names on their petition Monday. The deadline for signatures was Nov. 18.
DALLAS -- Opponents of Mayor Laura Miller apparently have come up short in their attempt to force a recall election, but leaders of the effort have indicated they will keep trying.The recall movement, led by a group of black ministers, failed to produce petitions with the required number of signatures by Monday's deadline.
Shortly before closing his office Monday, city elections director Brooks Love said "nothing has been received by my office."
I finally got around to adding MT-Search, a nice consequence of upgrading to Movable Type version 2.64 and converting my database to MySQL. It's over there on the sidebar, between Archives and Categories. Seems to work nicely, but please do let me know if something funky happens when you try it.
I also added a couple of plugins to eliminate duplicate comments and trackback pings, both of which I found via Michael Croft. Each integrates directly into Jay Allen's MT Blacklist plugin, which is intuitive and neat. I tested the duplicate comment part and it seemed to work as advertised, but again, if you encounter any weirdness, please let me know.
Now I just need to ask Croft to share some of that MySQL Fu he mentioned so I can clean up my own existing comment/trackback dupes...
In case you're wondering about those phony-award campaign contributions that Tom DeLay solicited from foreign nationals (see here, here, and here for the background), the answer is Yes, someone did notice that such things are illegal. Here's the story, sent to me by AJ Garcia from Roll Call.
NRCC Takes Barred FundsNovember 24, 2003
By Amy Keller, Roll Call StaffOfficials at the National Republican Congressional Committee said they plan to immediately refund an illegal foreign contribution received through a fundraising telemarketing program featuring House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
Robin Raina, a 37-year-old native of India who moved to Georgia in 1997, recently contributed $300 to the NRCC after receiving a telephone call inviting him to join the NRCC’s Business Advisory Council. As part of the fundraising push, potential donors are also told they have been selected by DeLay to receive a National Leadership Award — an honor that Raina, president and CEO of a U.S.-based company ebix, felt inclined to share with numerous news outlets in his native country in a company press release.
“Yet another Indian has made a mark in the U.S. with his appointment as honorary chairman of the Business Advisory Council in recognition of his contribution to the Republican party,” MSN India reported on Nov. 19. “A long-time supporter of Republican ideals, Raina will be a key member of the council.”
Apparently lost on Raina was the fact that it is unlawful for a foreign national to make a contribution, and also for a person to solicit, accept or receive a contribution from a foreign national.
For violations that aren’t “knowing and willful,” the statute provides for a civil penalty which does not exceed the greater of $5,000 or an amount equal to any contribution or expenditure involved in such violation if the FEC and the respondent can’t agree on a conciliation agreement.
NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said the committee had every intention of returning the money. “He did give $300 via credit card and obviously now that we’re aware of the problem the money will be refunded,” Forti said Friday afternoon in response to an inquiry about the contribution.
Raina isn’t the only Indian citizen residing in the United States who has been hit up for money lately by the NRCC. Amit Pradhan said he has been besieged with “lots of requests for contributions for different funds” but chose not to give a donation when he was offered the same award that Raina received.“The award wasn’t connected to making a contribution,” Pradhan said. “It was an option. They do use it as a vehicle for fundraising and I’m sure that there are a lot of people who get the award and do contribute ... I don’t believe it’s compulsory and I didn’t contribute.”
But Pradhan, the founder and president of Iopsis Software Inc., was equally eager to share his good fortune with the folks back in India. Last Wednesday, the Times of India published an article explaining that Pradhan will be assisted by his elder brother Rajeesh “in leading a 10-member team in the U.S.” that will interact with U.S. Congressmen and “play a crucial role in the committee’s efforts to involve top business people in the process of government reform.”
“What is most surprising about Amit’s selection is, that neither he, nor his brother, is a green card holder or an American citizen,” the story stated. “While Amit has been in the US for the last three years on an L1 visa ... his brother is on a regular H1 visa.”
The NRCC’s National Leadership Award fundraising scheme has received considerable attention from the press, with NBC’s Lisa Myers recently noting that awardees “have included a convicted sex offender and a maker of drug paraphernalia, both later rescinded.” But Forti said the committee is satisfied with the program. “The bottom line is that there are thousands of happy members of the Business Advisory Council and the small fraction of people we’ve had to give refunds to doesn’t mean the program’s not a success. In reality, I can only think of between five and 10 instances when this has been a problem.”
I do a lot of bashing of Beelzebud Selig and his cronies for their relentless avarice and stupidity, so I owe it to them to point out when they've done something farsighted and intelligent.
Sunday, MLB and its fledgling counterpart, the China Baseball Association, announced they would formally team up to promote baseball in every corner of the communist nation ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It's a decision both romantic and lucrative."Baseball was born in America. Now it belongs to the world," [Jim Small, Major League Baseball's vice president of international market development] said. "But if baseball is truly to be considered a global sport, it needs to be played in some key countries -- and China is at the top of that list."
Now, professional and college coaches will stream into China to work with young prospects. Top Chinese coaches will travel to America for stints with major-league clubs. Chinese umpires will receive training. Youth development programs -- including possibly the famed Pitch, Hit and Run that so many American youngsters have competed in -- will flourish.
Most significantly, MLB will start scouting in China, finding the country's top players and grooming them for big-league play. No details were given.
One thing I will look forward to is to see how youth and Little League coaches develop training regimens. As I recall from the 70s and 80s, when Japanese Little League teams were dominant, they had some methods that were considered unorthodox but effective, such as using an orange baseball so players could see it better. Who knows what kind of innovation a few million new minds could bring to the table?
Speaking of Little Leagues, here's a ticklish question: Given that their teams have also had a fair bit of success in championship competition, will MLB be pursuing opportunities in Taiwan as well? The sport has a pretty long history there. I'm sure the answer is No, which is just too bad. There are some things even the love of baseball can't overcome.
I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the 40-year retrospectives about the Kennedy assassination. It's just a subject that doesn't interest me much. I did, however, take the time to read this touching article about Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, who was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald as he attempted to escape after the shooting, and the wife and three children he left behind.
On the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, Mrs. Tippit made breakfast for her husband, who routinely left the house no later than 6:15 a.m. She, too, had a hectic schedule. To make extra money, she was baby-sitting a boy during the day and other children during the evening.Later that morning, she received a call from the nurse at Allan's school, telling her he was vomiting and needed to come home. So he was there when his dad came home for lunch one last time.
"I made J.D. a sandwich, and he had some fried potatoes with it," she says. Officer Tippit left to return to duty, while his wife and oldest son turned on the television in hopes of hearing details about the visit of the president, for whom both the Tippits had voted.
What they heard instead was the news of his death.
"When I heard about the president, it just blows your mind," she says. "You think, 'This cannot be happening.' "
Within an hour, the news got worse. Officer Tippit's sister, Christine Christopher, called to ask, "Have you heard from J.D.? Do you know if he's all right?"
"Why?" his wife asked, her startled tone followed by Ms. Christopher's admission that she had heard a news report about an Officer Tippit being shot in Oak Cliff, possibly by the same man who murdered the president.
"So I called the station," says Mrs. Flinner. "There was so much confusion going on. But they told me he was dead. I just freaked out. I couldn't believe this was happening. 'Here the president and now my husband! You've got to be wrong!' It was total devastation."
Like a zombie from a low-budget George Romero knockoff, former district Judge John Devine is coming back.
Devine is the sixth Republican candidate to announce his candidacy for the [newly drawn 10th Congressional District] seat. Others are Pat Elliott of Brenham, Ben Streusand, John Kelley, Michael McCaul and Dave Phillips.
By the way, I can see why Devine gave an exclusive on his story to a paper in a small town seventy miles west of where he lives: They were obviously willing to print his press release as is:
[While serving as judge, Devine] received attention for his actions to hold local government accountable when he ruled that taxpayers had a right under the law to vote on a proposed light rail system.
Link via Rob.
October was a slower month than September, thanks in part to the end of the redistricting battle and the week off that I took to go to France. Still, some 27,000 hits were recorded, making it my second busiest month ever. I also had my 150,000th Sitemeter visit early on - number 200,000 should be stopping by this week.
Top referrers and search engine terms are under the More link. As always, thank you for reading.
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Looks like the secret to good economic health this holiday season is rich folks buying stuff.
"The stars are aligned for the wealthy," said Howard Davidowitz, president of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting firm in New York. "Who's gained most from capital gains tax cuts? The wealthy. Whose houses have gone up the most? The wealthy. The wealthy are a lot wealthier. Why not buy an $8,000 TV? No problem."And it's partly because of the strength of the luxury market that retail analysts predict a 4 percent to 5 percent increase in overall holiday spending. Even the average consumer is expected to spend a bit more per gift this year compared to last year.
Magaly Fuentes is certainly doing her part to bring up the holiday sales numbers.On Thursday, she picked up a few things at Zadok Jewelers: a $17,700 white gold and diamond Cartier watch and a diamond necklace, totaling 24.5 carats, which cost much more. She bought them "just for fun."
"I made too much money in the last months," explained Fuentes, whose family owns oil and real estate businesses in Mexico and the United States.
As promised, Opus has returned to the Sunday comics page. You'll have to find a dead-tree version of it to see for yourself, as I can't seem to locate one online, but I'm looking forward to future installments.
There's good news and bad news in the Chron story about Opus's reappearance.
We do know that the strip will be bigger. Physically.It will cover a half-page in the comics section, an unusual amount of space in a business where the trend has been to squeeze more comics into less space. To make room, the Chronicle will drop Sunday versions of Monty, Apartment 3G and La Cucaracha, although all three will continue to run Monday through Saturday.
On a side note, I'm moderately surprised that the only one other strip (Heart of the City) made mention of this momentous occasion. Maybe Opus really had been gone too long.
You'd think sharing a bathroom with a guy for two years would leave more of an indelible memory on one's brain, but apparently I'm farther down the path of total incoherence than I'd feared. It's the only explanation I can think of for how I managed to overlook one of my old college roomies when I said that Tom Spencer's blog retirement left me as the only Trinity person I knew in the amateur punditry trade. Sorry about that, David. Beer's on me next time we're together.
(And yes, you should post more often.)
No, not for his many sleazy fundraising activities, but for his role in redistricting.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, have been subpoenaed to testify in a legal challenge by Texas Democrats to a congressional redistricting plan enacted by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature.The subpoenas were served Wednesday and demanded that DeLay and Barton give depositions in the case next week. But the two Texas Republicans are planning to ask a federal district court in Washington to quash the subpoenas, according to a lawyer for the Democratic plaintiffs.
[...]
DeLay was widely regarded as the driving force behind a redistricting plan that would cement the GOP's House majority at least through this decade and increase the chances that he will eventually succeed Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., as speaker.
DeLay's aides were seen in Austin carrying maps of congressional districts and he spent three days in the Texas capital hammering out the final form of the plan.
Barton played a less prominent role in the process but is regarded by Texas Democrats as the GOP's "point man" on redistricting.
"Every time the process seemed to stall or the Texas legislature seemed to feel it didn't have the stomach to do this, Joe Barton and Tom DeLay came down and twisted arms," said J. Gerald Hebert, a lawyer for the Democrats issuing the subpoenas. "And they bragged about it. They brought the maps down and obviously played an active role in the redistricting process. We believe we are entitled to ask them about that role."
Meanwhile, Byron notes that the Illinois state legislature is preparing for the possibility of a little redistricting of its own. By the Texas GOP's stated logic, the Illinois delegation of 10 Republicans and 9 Democrats is out of whack in a state where Democrats hold the governorship and both houses. There is one Republican Senator, but he's not running for reelection and everyone expects the seat to revert back to the Dems in 2004. I agree with what Byron says - if the courts strike down Texas' map, then Illinois should drop this issue, but if not, I certainly won't condemn them for retaliating.
I found this article in last week's San Antonio Current to be pretty interesting. Hard to believe that there are four distinct rock stations in San Antone, not counting oldies and mix formats. This bit got me thinking:
Early response to K-ROCK, at least based on the station's message-board postings, has been mixed at best. One recent posting reads: "If K-ROCK had switched to an alternative/college format, then not only would they be getting listeners from KISS (hard rock), KZEP (classic rock), and KMFR (Mighty Fine Rock, whatever that means), they would also get listeners from Mix 96.1 and Magic (the oldies station). I think there are are more listeners looking for something completely different than there are looking for some of the same old repackaged music."Even a more optimistic listener urges station programmers to drop its flirtation with classic rock: "If you want to listen to '70s and '80s rock, go back to KZEP. Bring the format up to date."
I first heard the term "classic rock" in the late 1980s, when KXZL in San Antonio became KZEP. KZFX in Houston, which has since changed its format, was very similar. They focused on music from the 60s and 70s. Over time, the standard format has shifted somewhat - KZFX's successor in Houston, KKRW ("the Arrow") mostly touts the 70s and 80s now. Most of the 60s music that you used to hear on these stations, as well as many of the artists (CCR, Janis Joplin, Cream, Traffic) have slowly but surely migrated to the "oldies" stations, which in turn have gradually moved from playing 50s and 60s music to 60s and 70s music.
I believe this shift is due to the inevitable aging of the classic rock audience. Despite its pretentious name, classic rock is nothing but an oldies format. It came into being at the end of a decade where the prevailing style of rock music had morphed from artsy progressive rock into a more pop-influenced sound. Like the transition from the Mesozoic to Cenozoic eras, most of the dominant life forms disappeared from the landscape, leaving behind a lot of nostalgic yet loyal fans. Classic rock filled the void, giving these aficionados the comfort of familiar music without any of that Elvis-and-Motown stuff their parents were listening to.
The classic rock audience is bigger than that, though. There's a group of people like me who are at least ten years too young to have actually grown up with that music but who nonetheless got a healthy exposure to it as teenagers and college students, thanks in large part to 60s and 70s era rockers who broke through the stylistic transformation with hit records. Albums like Yes' 90125, Springsteen's Born to Run, the Police's Synchronicity, and ZZ Top's Eliminator, which got played incessantly on both contemporary rock and Top 40 stations, gave an entry point to an exploration of a sizable back catalog by people who were more inclined to like where these artists came from than what was hot at the time. I think this helps explain the format shifts on classic rock and oldies stations - both types of station are now catering to a newer crowd.
So what will happen in another ten years? I don't know. To a certain extent, I think the classic rock format can continue to creep forward and annex more recent music - indeed, some Guns 'n' Roses can be heard on KKRW these days, and I figure it's just a matter of time before they start playing Nirvana and the rest of the grungemeisters. I don't think there's any new audience being grown for this format, though. There's just not a whole lot of artists with 10- to 20-year careers getting airplay on the contemporary stations now like there were in the early to mid 80s, so the entry points aren't there any more.
Moreover, the classic rock stations aren't helping themselves, either. A lot of dinosaur rockers are still putting out new releases (off the top of my head, there's Springsteen, ZZ Top, Fleetwood Mac, and Van Halen in the recent past or near future), but you'll never hear any of that new stuff on the classic rock stations. Their playlists are pretty much preserved in amber, and I can't help but think that this portends an inevitable death for them, even as they suck in some more recent artists. There's only so many times you can hear "Start Me Up" or "La Grange" or (God help me) anything by Bad Company before you find yourself vowing to never ever listen to commercial radio again.
The new kid on the block of era-specific radio formats is the Eighties Station, such as Houston's KHPT ("the Point"). It's basically a mix format, with the music confined to a roughly ten-year span (they admit to playing stuff from the "late 70s and early 90s"). They take advantage of the same rock/pop crossover that led to the birth of classic rock stations - their playlist is a melange of dinosaur rockers who had at least one reasonably well-played album after 1980 and artists who were genuinely representative of that era, like Madonna, the Pet Shop Boys, and Depeche Mode. I don't know how they'll distinguish themselves from the rest of the "mix" stations over time, so I think this format is unlikely to last as long as the classic rockers have.
What I really don't know is whether anything as successful as the classic rock format will spring up to take advantage of nostalgia for the music that's been produced in the last ten years or so. For one thing, I have no idea if there will be any such nostalgia. I don't follow modern pop music, so I'm speaking out of deep ignorance here, but I don't get the impression that there are all that many long-lived acts these days who get consistent airplay. On the other hand, modern performers have a lot more opportunities for exposure on TV and in movies, so maybe in another few years there will be a demographically attractive group of people out there saying to themselves "You know, I really miss hearing Pink and the Backstreet Boys. If only there were a radio station that played the stuff I grew up with..."
This article about how it's OK to enjoy cheesy movies validates Pete's entire existence, though I'm quite sure that Pete would have listed a much better selection of admirably cheesy flicks.
There's a letter to the editor in the Chron today about Tom DeLay and giving to charity that merits reprinting here:
Politics of Tom DeLay's charity[Regarding the Chronicle's Nov. 14 article, Some doubt DeLay's sincerity with charity:] U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's use of charitable fund-raising tied to the Republican National Convention should be decried by charities and foundations around the nation. It looks and smells like circumvention of the intent of campaign finance regulation, cloaked under the guise of charity for children.
If a charity is used as a means of purchasing access to and influence with political leaders, that ultimately undermines the confidence and faith of donors and donees in the accountability of the nonprofit sector.
And it doesn't take more than a few bad apples in the world of charities and foundations to harm the best efforts of the vast majority trying to do good.
It is particularly regrettable that the Republican congressman from Sugar Land would test the boundaries of charitable accountability at a time when that very issue is under scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
In January, DeLay sent out a statement on the letterhead of the Majority Leader's office condemning nonprofit organizations as cheerleaders for big government and liberal advocacy.
In this case, he seems quite willing to use the mantle of nonprofit charitable status so long as the connection is the Republican Party and the outcome is one of attracting donors to Republican officials and lawmakers.
Rick Cohen,
executive director,
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy,
Washington, D.C.
Another venture of DeLay's has drawn the following comment from the Quorum Report.
DELAY RAISING ILLEGAL MONEY FROM FOREIGN NATIONALS?Sharp eyed reader caught this
Back on November 13, we ran an MSNBC story in our News Clips about Majority Leader Tom Delay using a telemarketing approach for fundraising.
"A pre-recorded message says, 'This is Congressman Tom DeLay. I’m asking you to serve as an honorary chairman on our business advisory council, and you will be recognized with our national leadership award.'
.... Then came the pitch from the telemarketer: 'We’re asking each chairman for a one-time gift of $300 or $500 for the ad. Can we count on your support?' "
Dubious perhaps, but not illegal.
(The latter link comes via AJ Garcia, who also sent me the India Times story, for which I forgot to give him credit when I posted it. Sorry, AJ!)
The Texas Democratic Party has jumped into the blog pool with a new effort called the Yellow Dog Blog. As noted by Byron, who along with his coauthers at Burnt Orange helped design and build the site, the YDB will feature posts from State Party chair Charles Soechting and other TDP officials, plus guest appearances by current officeholders. The BOR guys will also contribute, and I may wind up chipping in on occasion as well.
I was going to say that this is the first state party blog out there, but a little poking around led me to Show Me Issues, a blog by the Missouri Democratic Party. Even if we're not the first kids on the block to do this, we're still on the leading edge.
I've got a longish post in mind that I'm not quite up to writing this morning about what a blog like this can and should try to accomplish (executive summary: facilitate networking among people who don't currently know who and what else is out there), but for now I'll just exhort you to check it out and add it to your blogrolls. Good job, all!
I don't know if this counts as a trend, but I like it anyway.
Retired Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak, the former Air Force chief of staff who endorsed George W. Bush in 2000, has left the Republican fold and is backing Democrat Howard Dean in the 2004 race for president.McPeak, who lives in Lake Oswego, joins a small but growing list of top military veterans who have parted ways with the president at least partly because of the war in Iraq. McPeak's decision could be an important boost for Dean because critics have accused the former Vermont governor of lacking the experience and knowledge needed to be the nation's commander-in-chief.
[...]
McPeak, who headed the Air Force during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, criticized the Bush administration's policy toward Iraq before the invasion in March. He also said he has become disenchanted with the president's economic policies.
"I don't think the younger Bush has put a foot right since he entered the White House," said McPeak, who changed his registration from Republican to independent in April.
When it comes to Iraq, "we couldn't have sat around a kitchen table and designed a policy that was stupider," McPeak said. He argued that there was no evidence of a connection between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, "absolutely zero evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and the planning of the formation of the coalition (to support the war in Iraq) was very clumsily done."
[...]
Dick Klass, a retired Air Force colonel from Virginia who is working with Dean's campaign to attract former military officers, said endorsements from McPeak and other veterans could play an important role in the race.
"This is basically an exercise to let people know that Dean isn't a wild, lefty, antimilitary" person, said Klass, adding that he wouldn't be surprised to face such attacks from Republicans if Dean becomes the Democratic nominee.
McPeak said he spent several hours talking with Dean on his campaign airplane and in vans traveling to events. Although Dean did not have a "deep understanding" of national security issues, McPeak said, "his intuition is right, (and) his gut instincts are right."
In addition to McPeak, Dean has been endorsed by retired Marine Gen. Joseph Hoar, who once headed Central Command, which is in charge of all military operations in the Mideast. Klass said that retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who headed the CIA under President Carter, also supports Dean and that several other retired military officers are informal advisers and might endorse him.
David Dewhurst really really doesn't want to take his legislative fingers out of the state universities's tuition decisions.
"We've expected tuition increases by all of our universities and I appreciate the fact that the UT Board of Regents has held off on the effective date of the fall 2004-spring 2005 tuition increases until Jan. 23," Dewhurst said Thursday after speaking to a Houston leadership development group."This will give our joint oversight committee the opportunity to be able to review all the universities' tuition increases and, as the law directs, review accessibility, affordability and accountability," he said.
Other major systems, such as Texas Tech and Texas A&M universities, also have approved tuition increases.
"Let's not prejudge," Dewhurst said. "I'm optimistic we are going to see the justification and the rationale by the universities."
The oversight committee has no power to reverse tuition hikes but can use its influence to apply pressure to universities if hikes are deemed inappropriate.
"An oversight committee reviews on a continuing basis the information and the data and if -- and I'm not prejudging -- but if a mistake is made it's able to highlight it and help correct it," he said.
Dewhurst said he remains confident in the way the Legislature deregulated tuition.
It's official. He's departing on January 10. The Morning News answers a key question:
If Mr. Ratliff resigns early, it would trigger a special election to replace him. The Legislature is not scheduled to return in regular session until January 2005, but Mr. Perry has indicated plans to summon lawmakers back for a special session on school finance as early as next spring.Among those mentioned as possible replacements for the seat are Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview, and former Rep. Paul Sadler, a Democrat from Henderson. Former Tyler Mayor Kevin Eltife has also been mentioned among Republicans in the district as a possible candidate.
Radley Balko, in writing about baseball's legitimacy problem vis-a-vis steroid usage, falls victim to a common and annoying fallacy when discussing the effect of allegedly amped-up players on the sport's record books.
While I don't think steroids should be illegal, Major League Baseball certainly is within its rights to ban them. And I think it was right to, mainly because baseball has always been a game of numbers, of statistics, of records. And if those number are to retain their integrity, it's important that baseball minimize as many variables as possible from season to season. If baseball truly wants to keep it's stats books whole, it should go to great lengths to be sure it expands only once there's talent to sustain major league competition, it should strive to keep ballparks of similar dimension, and it should certainly frown on new chemicals that could give today's players an unfair advantage over the record setters of previous generations.That said, I think baseball has failed on virtually all these counts. The league has expanded far too quickly in the last twenty years, the presence of a ballpark in Denver is enough in itself to call hitting stats from the last decade into question, and even given advances in physical training, nutrition science, and conditioning, it's obviously clear that today's players didn't get this big this quickly without some help from chemicals.
Look. Baseball had 16 teams from 1901 when the American League was formed to 1962, when they expanded to 20. Since then, baseball expanded to 24 (1969), 26 (1977), 28 (1993), and finally 30 (1998). Adding six teams in the space of a quarter century doesn't seem breakneck to me, but I suppose we can agree to differ here.
What I want to point out, though, is that by 1962, baseball had way too few teams for the available talent. Let's look at some population data. In 1901, there were about 76 million people in the US. Of those, some 400 (16 teams, 25 players per team) were Major League ballplayers, or one out of every 190,000. By 1961, when there were still 16 teams, the population had more than doubled to about 180 million. There were still only 400 Major League players, so the ratio had grown to one out of every 450,000.
Today, the population stands at over 280 million. With 30 teams, there are 750 players, making the ratio about one in every 375,000. When you add in the fact that teams now feature black, Latino, and Asian players, something which was still relatively rare in 1960 (never mind 1900), and that many of these players were born outside the US, the picture should be clear: The growth in the available talent pool has more than kept pace with the number of roster spots.
Balko makes some decent observations in his piece, so do check it out, but don't be distracted by this trope. Bill James has said that MLB could expand to fifty teams tomorrow and within a few years you wouldn't notice any drop in quality. I think that's a lot more accurate than the notion that there isn't enough pitching to go around.
Balko link via Eric McErlain.
Look at the following clip from today's Chron and see if you can pass the pop quiz at the end:
A Metro light rail car and a [vehicle] collided downtown during the train's test run Wednesday night. Police said it was the first accident involving the city's new light rail system.The accident occurred about 8:30 p.m. when the driver of the [vehicle] turned in front of the train at Main and Gray, Metro police said.
"The lady in the [vehicle], she made an illegal left turn," Metro police Sgt. Antonio Ford said. "She cut right in front of the train."
The headline says it all: "SUV, light-rail car collide during train's test run". Of COURSE it was an SUV! And I'll bet the idiot driver was on a cell phone at the time!
Now then. If you want to draw any conclusions about the relative safety of light rail, you'll force me to look into statistics about highway accidents and fatalities here in Houston, especially during road construction. So let's not go there, shall we?
The Astros, for reasons that make sense only to themselves, have resigned 34-year-old Brad Ausmus to two a two-year contract, reported by Giff Nielson (who was so ecstatic I thought he was going to wet himself) as being $2 million per year.
Never mind that he had the worst OPS among National Leaguers who qualified for the batting title, never mind that by my count at least five pitchers hit better than he did (Hampton, Oliver, Suppan, Williams, and Ortiz), never mind that there are at least a dozen catchers in organized baseball who are younger, better hitters, and signable for the minimum salary, never mind that every penny wasted on flotsam like Ausmus is money that can't be thrown at a free agent who could actually help the Astros be a better team. Never mind all that. Ausmus is a "proven veteran" who is well liked in the clubhouse and who is thought to be a boon to the young pitching staff, even though there's never been a scintilla of evidence that a catcher can have a measurable effect on pitching performance.
What a joke. I thought Gerry Hunsicker knew better. I'll bet anyone a dollar that our sheeplike sportswriters will commend him for this, too, and then when Pettite signs with someone else they'll bemoan how a "small market" club like Houston can't compete. Sheesh.
UPDATE: From the full Chron story:
As Astros owner Drayton McLane and general manager Gerry Hunsicker met with Andy Pettitte and his agents on Tuesday, they went over every player in the starting lineup to show the free-agent lefthander the club's commitment to putting a championship team on the field next season.The Astros tentatively set the lineup Wednesday by re-signing catcher Brad Ausmus to a two-year, $4 million contract ($1 million in 2004, $3 million in 2005). McLane hopes the deal serves as a sign to Pettitte, the fans and the rest of baseball.
The Quorum Report notes a press release (Word doc) by Sen. Bill Ratliff in which he will announce his "future plans for public office" tomorrow. They obviously believe that he's about to hang up his spikes, because they wrote an obituary for him:
Speculation has swirled for months about Ratliff's disenchantment with the disintegration of civility and collegiality in the Senate during the redistricting wars.He opposed redistricting, fully aware of what it would do to the institution and his district. Though some of his Republican colleagues quietly opposed the process, he was the only one with the guts to stand with Democrats and use the 2/3s rule to stop the process -- until Lt. Governor David Dewhurst discarded the procedure as an inconvenient "management tool".
When most politicians say that the intention of redistricting is to honor communities of interest, they are either delusional or engaging in intentional misinformation. Ratliff was one of only two Republican senators to vote no on the plan. His fears were well founded. Now his rural area will probably be represented by a congressperson from Plano. In this brave new world, that passes for a community of interest.
He was one of the few voices courageous enough to oppose the majority party sanctioning the minority party when passions were their most inflamed. He thought the institution of the Senate transcended any petty, partisan advantage that might be gleaned from bending to Washington interests.
He is one of the few Republicans strong enough to remain unintimidated by the handful of big money contributors that dominate the agenda of the GOP. When first elected, he did something unprecedented -- he returned "late train" campaign contributions from lobbyists and trade associations.
He was the single individual fearless enough to rally his colleagues to speak out against the outrageous and patently false smear mailers put out by Richard Ford's Free Pac in the 2002 primary.
We are not privy to the specifics of his announcements tomorrow but suspect it will be a timetable for his departure from the scene. However, the wording of the release says, "Ratliff to Announce His Future Plans for Public Office."
Some background on the Free PAC controversy can be found here, here (this one shows what bloggers used to do before they had blogs), and here. Here's a nice quote from that last article:
The single largest contributor to FreePAC in the last 21 months is Dallasite James Lightner at $95,000. Lightner is also one of the largest single contributors to Louisiana's own David Duke, the KKK guy. Lightner contributed the federal maximum amount to Duke in his three races in 1990, 1996 and 2000. In fact in 2000, Lightner was only one of two people nationwide who gave more than the amount allowed by law, causing Duke to have to refund the overage. Tommy Merritt's primary opponent attacks for receiving the Sutton Award from the Black Legislative Caucus seems more significant in view of this connection. Smart money says that FreePAC ends up spending more money against Merritt than anybody else.
UPDATE: Here's what the Chronicle and the Statesman's Dave McNeely have to say. Note this:
[Ratliff] had gotten so frustrated at the rampant partisanship [in the Senate this session] that, after his fellow Republicans voted to impose fines on Democrats who had fled to block the redistricting, he went to the secretary of state's office to resign after 15 years. But Gwyn Shea, who held the job at that time, wasn't in, so he didn't.
Can you imagine how proud this guy's parents must be?
The United States National Republican Congressional Committee has selected Amit Pradhan, an ex-student of St Vincent’s School and Nowrosjee Wadia College, for its prestigious National Leadership award. Pradhan, who is founderpresident of the Californiabased Iopsis Software Inc. (a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Pune-based Iopsis Software), has also been appointed honorary chairman of the Business Advisory Council (BAC) of the US National Republican Congressional Committee.The young Pune lad, who is being assisted by his elder brother Rajesh (30) in leading a 10-member team in the US, will now interact with US Congressmen in recommending policies aimed at promoting small businesses in the US, thereby fuelling economic growth in that country.
As US Republican Congressman Tom DeLay said in a press release issued in the US: "Pradhan will serve the state of California and is expected to play a crucial role in the committee’s efforts to involve top business people in the process of government reform."
This next bit puzzles me.
What is most surprising about Amit’s selection is, that neither he, nor his brother, is a green card holder or an American citizen. While Amit has been in the US for the last three years on an L1 visa (business manager), his brother is on a regular H1 visa.
The real tragedy here, of course, is that the RNC's telemarketers could've saved themselves a few bucks by making a local call to Pradhan's family instead. Better luck next time, guys.
The "high tech industry" lost half a million jobs last year and will be down another 300,000 before things start to get better.
About 12 percent of the nation's high-tech jobs have evaporated during the past two years, but the meltdown appears to be in its final stages, according to an industry report to be released Wednesday.After wiping out 540,000 jobs in 2002, high-tech employers are on pace to lay off another 234,000 workers this year, based on figures compiled by the AeA, a trade group formerly known as the American Electronics Association.
Based on the AeA's estimates, the high-tech industry will end this year with about 5.73 million workers, down from 6.5 million employees at the end of 2001.
The 2002 contraction included 146,000 job losses in the software sector, the first time employment in that high-tech niche has fallen in the seven years that AeA has been compiling its state-of-the-industry report.
The AeA depicted this year's work force erosion as an encouraging sign, noting that the projected job losses represent a significant improvement from the 2002 purge.With the improving economy helping boost corporate spending on computer hardware and software, the high-tech industry should begin adding jobs during the spring, predicted William Archey, the AeA's president and chief executive officer.
"There isn't going to be a massive infusion of new jobs right away because companies have gotten used to operating leaner and meaner," Archey said during an interview.
Although they remain cautious, high-tech companies attending a recent AeA conference in San Diego were in a better mood than at any time since the industry's painful comedown began in late 2000, Archey said. "Companies have gone from being clinically depressed to rather upbeat."
More often than ever, the software development and management once handled by the internal IT departments of financial services companies, for example, are now contracted to another company, one with supervisors managing the work in the United States and other workers writing the code halfway around the world.This growing trend is reshaping the local economy, one just emerging from recession and still plagued with the highest unemployment in nearly a decade. A layer of once-abundant midlevel IT jobs is drying up, leaving workers to re-engineer their skills to secure a place in the next cycle of the Massachusetts economy, a cycle that has no clear direction yet.
As smart U.S. companies outsource standard high-tech work, they're simultaneously shifting their in-house IT employees to more innovative, higher value-added functions, such as invention, creation, integration, key R&D and basic architecture. These core creative activities are at the heart of these companies' competitive futures. They know they have to nourish them.The third and most basic reason why high-tech work won't shift abroad is that high technology isn't a sector like manufacturing or an industry like telecommunications. High-tech work entails innovation. It's about discovering and solving problems. There's no necessary limit to the number of high-tech jobs around the world because there's no finite limit to the ingenuity of the human mind. And there's no limit to human needs.
I don't have an answer to this. It's something I've been struggling with in my own professional life. I just have too many unemployed and nervously-employed friends to feel any optimism right now. If there is a next big thing coming, I sure hope it gets here soon.
Here's a little fuel for the free-trade fires.
As the North American Free Trade Agreement nears its 10th anniversary, a study from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concludes that the pact failed to generate substantial job growth in Mexico, hurt hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers there and had "minuscule" net effects on jobs in the United States.The Carnegie Endowment, an independent, Washington-based research institute, released its report on Tuesday to coincide with new trade negotiations aimed at the adoption of a NAFTA-like pact for the entire Western Hemisphere.
Trade ministers from 34 countries in the Americas are gathering now in Miami.
The report seeks to debunk both the fears of American labor that NAFTA would lure large numbers of jobs to low-wage Mexico, as well as the hopes of the trade deal's proponents that it would lead to rising wages, as well as declines in income inequality and illegal immigration.
Though sorting out the exact causes is complicated, real wages in Mexico are lower now than they were when the agreement was adopted. Despite higher productivity, income inequality is greater there, and immigration has continued to soar.
"On balance, NAFTA's been rough for rural Mexicans," said John Audley, who edited the report.
"For the country, it's probably a wash. It takes more than just trade liberalization to improve the quality of life for poor people around the world."
The Carnegie findings strike a much more pessimistic note than those of a World Bank team that concluded in a draft report this year that the trade accord "has brought significant economic and social benefits to the Mexican economy."
The NYT story highlights how other countries could learn from Mexico's experience.
Trade negotiators for Central and South American countries, [the report's authors] said, should bargain for more gradual tariff reductions on corn, rice and beans — the staples of subsistence farming — to give peasants time to adjust to tough competition from large, highly efficient and heavily subsidized American farmers.Carnegie's researchers also say developing countries should push international donors and rich countries to finance transitional assistance for the retraining of workers and farmers displaced by global competition.
Developing countries should also seek greater leeway to promote the use of domestic suppliers in manufacturing over imported components — a step that would increase job creation, the authors say.
Greg highlights another name to watch out for in 2006, Ag Commish Susan Combs, who has some crossover appeal as well as obvious ambition. I'll simply note that the various state Commissioner offices are pretty much the high minors for people with asperations here - Rick Perry was Combs' predecessor, David Dewhurst used to be Land Commissioner, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn is a former Railroad Commish. It's unusual, at least of late, for one of these folks to not have an eye on a higher rung.
Greg notes Combs' stance on abortion ("pro-choice with exceptions", which reasonably mirrors that of her former boss, KB Hutchison and which resembles mainstream opinion but will disgruntle activists on both sides) and wonders if she'd draw a primary challenger based on it. I'd put money on it, and what's more, I'd make her an underdog in any GOP primary as a result. Given that, and given her partnership with Sen. Eddie Lucio on the school vending machine issue, you could reasonably spin a party-switching fantasy involving her at least as easily as you could for Strayhorn. Realistic? Not really, but a few bruising interparty matchups plus the eventual demographic shakeup could make some things happen before the end of the decade. It's not like it costs anything to speculate.
Tom Spencer is hanging up his cleats, citing a need to spend more time on more important activities. Among other sad things, this reduces the number of Trinity bloggers that I know of to just me. Mazel tov and vaya con Dios, Tom.
The University of Texas says it still plans to exercise its newly given freedom to raise tuition, and the people that gave them that freedom still don't get it.
The legislative oversight committee will meet next month to assess how higher education institutions are using their newly won ability to set their own fees and tuition, said Sen. Florence Shapiro, co-chairman of the committee. [Lt. Gov. David] Dewhurst on Friday asked the committee to review current and future tuition increases and the universities' proposals for financial aid to students who can least afford tuition increases.Shapiro, R-Plano, said the committee will look at decreases in state funding as well as tuition hikes. In January, when increases go into effect at a number of institutions, the committee will survey the effects the hikes had on enrollments.
"We gave the power back to the local universities because we did not fund them the way they needed to be funded," said Shapiro. "But we want to make sure they don't abuse this new authority."
UPDATE: Check out this Daily Texan editorial and this handy Tuition Deregulation for Dummies graphic, both via Burnt Orange.
Does this guy do anything that doesn't smell funny?
AUSTIN -- On the eve of the federal trial that could enhance Republican congressional power, U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay plans to scoop up re-election cash at an Austin lobby fund-raiser.The Dec. 10 luncheon is scheduled the day before a three-judge panel begins a trial on the legality of a congressional redistricting map that DeLay, R-Sugar Land, pushed through the Texas Legislature earlier this year.
A dozen Austin lobbyists are hosting the event. Their clients include Verizon Wireless, Accenture management consultants, Waste Control Specialists, the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Association of Realtors.
Wayne Franke, one of the organizers, said it is pure coincidence that the fund-raiser is set for the day before the redistricting trial. And an aide for DeLay said the event's date was set before the trial was scheduled.
"We were going to have it a lot earlier, but the congressional agenda did not cooperate," Franke said.
Franke said Austin lobbyists have hosted a $1,000-per-person luncheon for DeLay each of the past six or seven years. He said the most people who attended was 30, and he believes there were 18 at last year's event.
"Some have business up in Washington, and they go up there quite a bit. And those are the ones who usually participate here," Franke said. "They handle state issues and they handle federal issues. That would be the reason."
Franke said some knew DeLay when he was a member of the Texas House. DeLay was elected to the U.S. House in 1984.
Suzy Woodford, executive director of Common Cause of Texas, said she believes DeLay's appearance in Austin is meant to pressure the federal judges hearing the redistricting case.
"He's not known as 'The Hammer' for no reason," Woodford said, referring to DeLay's nickname in Washington. "If you have an issue pending that you really care about, this is a good way of letting them (the judges) know he's watching."
Or maybe not. Paranoids do still have enemies, after all. Best not to take chances.
...it can take an hour and a half for what should be at most a 30-minute commute home. sigh. All things considered, though, I've got nothing to complain about. I just hope the predictions of more heavy rain tomorrow are inaccurate. Click on the "Chronicle staff photo gallery" link for the full effect.
I probably should have written about baseball's new steroid policy last week, but I punked out on it. Honestly, I see this as more of a PR thing than anything else. Thanks to the Ken Caminitis and Jose Cansecos of the world, we've become convinced that every other player in Major League Baseball is one pill away from turning green and attacking tanks. On that score, you can put me among the unsurprised that the total number of 'roid users was in the 5-7% range.
I suppose the current bit of roid rage is a natural outgrowth of the cocaine scandals of the 1980s. Again, it was a fairly small number of players involved, but the perception of the problem was that it was rampant and threatening the integrity of the game. But once the sportswriters and announcers started bleating about it, Something Had To Be Done in order to ensure that baseball did not appear to be condoning drug usage.
All sports leagues are well within their rights to test for whatever substances they want and to make it a condition of contest that using those substances will lead to penalties. I'm not surprised that most players are fine with this - if nothing else, it tends to confirm my belief that the perception of usage is much higher than the actual usage. I can't help but think that once you start to go down this road, you're going to get entangled in an ever more complex web of definitions, exceptions, borderline cases, and eventually lawsuits. What happens if a banned substance is later shown to be beneficial to players rehabbing from an injury, or players suffering from an unrelated problem, like asthma? Good luck writing rules for that which are fair and consistent.
I'm curious about one thing. Back in the day when media was less pervasive and sportswriters tended to keep players' secrets anyway, a lot of players abused alcohol, to the point where it affected their on-field performance. Read any of Mickey Mantle's biographies, such as Whitey and Mickey, for a feel of what I'm talking about - he once hit a pinch-homer while so hung over he could barely see. Would the game have been better served by a harsh anti-alcohol policy back then, one that involved random testing and suspensions for violations? It's not an exact analogy, since booze can't realistically be considered a performance enhancer, but the principle is simlar enough and both involve health risks. Would the threat of suspension have sobered up Mickey Mantle? Would he have found a way to skirt the rules and avoid detection? Would his superstar status have insulated him from sanction anyway? I don't know, but it's worth consideration.
What do SUVs have in common with the Paris Hilton videos? Ginger Stampley has the scoop.
I've just noticed that someone has hacked my blogroll. I actually have two accounts at Blogrolling.com, and both of them - what you normally see on my index page, and what you see on my Full Blogroll page - have been entirely replaced by links to some other blog, one link for each entry in my blogroll. I'm not sure how or why this happened, but I'm taking both down until I can figure it out. Which is damned annoying and inconvenient to me, but there's not much I can do about it right now.
Has this happened to anyone else? Does anyone have any info about this? There was no news at the Blogrolling home page. Thanks.
UPDATE: Blogrolling's new page now has an update, which wasn't there when I first looked, that explains that they had been hacked. They've restored from a backup, so everything is fine now. Thanks to Mike and Pete for the info.
UPDATE: It wasn't a hack, it was a one in a million bug and some bad luck for a couple of innocent bloggers. Thanks to Kyle for the tip.
Ezra Klein is moving from Not Geniuses over to Pandagon. A new Not Genius named Nico Pitney is moving in to take his place, and with the hiatus-taking of Joe Rospars, who has become an official cog in the Dean wheel, he'll probably be picking up quite a bit of the slack.
Congrats to all involved! And hey, no bookmark adjustments are needed.
Michael Tomasky has the first is-Dean-electable? article I've seen that makes some sense. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I have to say, I think the "conventional wisdom" about Dean is a lot of crap.
The reason I keep getting drawn to Dean is simple: He has, far and away, run the best campaign so far. He's innovated, he's gotten incredible bang for his bucks, he's recovered from every misstep he's made, he's learned from past mistakes, and he's built a huge and enthusiastic organization. So what if he's not the best candidate? I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of great candidates who run godawful campaigns. This is a big deal. I want someone who's playing to win, and that's Dean right now.
I know there are aspects of Dean's record that will make Karl Rove and the Bush 2004 machine salivate. So what? As Big Media Matt points out, no candidate will get a pass on anything from those guys. If you think Clark or Kerry or Lieberman won't get clubbed with the War on Terror stick, then you're going to have to explain to me how it is that Max Cleland got labelled as soft on defense last year by his draft-dodging opponent.
What mattered in that Georgia Senate race, and what will matter next year, is not so much who and what the candidate is but how the candidate responds when his opponent tries to define him. Cleland responded to Saxby Chambliss' slander at the time with quiet, beneath-my-dignity contempt, and a fat lot of good it did him. Any candidate who gets primarily defined by his or her opponent can wind up looking like a kleptomaniac Communist pedophile with a coke habit. Winning candidates fight back. Well, which Democrat is the most vigorous fighter so far?
I sometimes hear anti-Deanites talk about how the Bush machine will make enormous hay out of his signing a civil unions bill in Vermont. Well, suppose it's next June and the national GOP is running ads about civil unions. All Joe Trippi has to do is run an ad like this in response: Images of war, unemployment, Osama bin Laden, etc, while a narrator says "George Bush wants you to think the most important issue in America right now is a bill Governor Dean signed years ago. Aren't there other things we should be talking about? Howard Dean wants to talk about them. Why doesn't George Bush?" I have faith that the Dean camp will do something like that to turn the debate around. I can't say I have the same faith about any other candidate.
There are two posts at Daily Kos that take a closer look at all of the poll numbers, and arrive at the conclusion that all of the Democratic contenders are about even when matched up directly against Bush. It's a guessing game as to who would be the "best" candidate, but it says here that until the other candidates start to show the same skill as Dean and his people, he's the one to beat.
I know exactly one thing about the 2004 Presidential election, and that's that Democrats won't know until it's too late if the person they pick is the person they should have picked. If you want to convince me that this person should be someone other than Howard Dean, you're going to need to show me things that your candidate has done and will do, not things they could have done or should do. Until then, Dean looks like the one to me.
Tim Fleck has already covered the story of Hispanic voters abandoning Orlando Sanchez in favor of Bill White, and now today John Williams picks up the ball in a story entitled "Hispanic vote key to mayoral runoff victory".
Exit polling and other analysis of the Nov. 4 vote shows that White and Sanchez each got just under half the Hispanic votes. State Rep. Sylvester Turner, who finished third, got less than 4 percent.That is a stark contrast with 2001, when Sanchez got almost three of every four Hispanic voters in his narrow runoff loss to Mayor Lee Brown. That year, Sanchez benefited from excitement among Hispanics who thought Sanchez might be the city's first Latino mayor.
Two years later, the largest ethnic group in Houston, making up 37 percent of the city's population, is up for grabs.
[...]
Several phenomena contributed to the slump in Sanchez's Hispanic support since 2001.
First, term-limited Brown is not in the 2003 race. Two years ago, the city's first black mayor did little campaigning inside the Hispanic community. That left a huge void that Sanchez was able to fill.
White has been more aggressive.
"It's hard to keep up with White's money," said former City Councilman John Castillo, who does Hispanic outreach for Sanchez. "He has created an image that he is a great businessman who can solve the problems Lee Brown created. It's hard to keep up with that.
"I think what has happened is that Hispanic voting was depressed."
Sanchez also has had run-ins with Hispanic media on a couple of occasions.
In October, El Día, a Spanish-language daily newspaper, reported that Sanchez supported driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. He later told other media he was misquoted.
Last week, Sanchez clarified his comments in El Día, telling the newspaper the issue of driver's licenses for illegal immigrants needs special examination and that he is looking for alternatives.
His campaign also banned a reporter with Channel 45, a Spanish-language television station, for asking questions about an Election Day flier that invited illegal immigrants to work for the Sanchez campaign.
The campaign has denied soliciting illegal workers, and dismissed the matter as a political dirty trick intended to embarrass Sanchez.
"He's being treated a little bit more critically by Spanish-speaking media," [University of Houston professor Tatcho] Mindiola said. "It's not the same as two years ago."
Assumption: 270,000 voters in the runoff election on December, 6, 2003. 20% are African-American, 12% are Hispanics and of the 68% of the voters are Anglos, and a third of those Anglo voters are Democrats, Gays, Labor, etc.African Americans: With Sylvester Turner out of the Mayor's race, but with Ronald Green in a runoff for an At-Large seat we should see a good turnout but fewer African-Americans voting. At total of 54000 votes of which Bill White will get 90% of that vote or 48600 votes and Sanchez the remainder or 5400 votes
Hispanics: A Total of 32400 votes. I believe that Sanchez will get only about 40% of this vote 12960. Bill White would get 60% or 19440 votes
Anglos: A total of 183,600 votes. Bill White should about split this vote with Orlando Sanchez with each getting 50% of the Anglo vote or 91800 votes for White and 91800 votes for Sanchez.
In this scenario Bill White would win big time with 159,840 votes (59%) to Sanchez's 110,160 (41%) votes
I'm joking a little, but a search through the Chron archives shows that in the 2001 runoff, Sanchez got 72% of the Hispanic vote on a historically high 18% turnout. That almost carried him to victory, and it's the reason he was the anointed frontrunner in this race from the beginning. The fact that he's projected to not even get a majority of their votes in the runoff is a big deal, even if the practical effect winds up being nil.
Anyway, I think Sanchez needs to turn out Republican voters, which is presumably why his first public statement of the runoff campaign was basically "Read my lips: No new streams of revenues". I don't think he can get enough of them to make the difference, though.
Poor Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is dazed and confused.
Stunned by higher-education tuition increases, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Friday he wants state universities to justify the rate hikes to lawmakers.
A few new sites to check out:
The Houston Democratic Forum, a group that is "an organization of Houston-area Democrats committed to upholding the best traditions of the Democratic party in our city, state, and nation", has a brand-new blog. It's currently a news links-only page, but now that I'm a member (and if you're a Houston Democrat, you should consider joining as well) I hope to eventually talk them into adding some commentary.
BraesDemBlog is a group weblog by the Braeswood Democrats. Steve Bates gets the credit for pushing them into blogging. By a slight margin, they beat out the HDF as the first Houston organization to have a blog, but they both take a back seat to the Brazoria County Democrats. I think this is a great trend (and I happen to know, though I can't say anything specific yet, that the trend will be continuing). I'll have more to say about this shortly, probably at the same time as when I can talk about my parenthetical item.
Finally, BANews is not a new blog but an RSS feed of several blogs, updated hourly and split into various categories. It's a new service provided by the folks at Barefoot and Naked. You can read about their policies if you think your blog belongs there.
You'll find all these links on my sidebar. I will consider it a Good Thing if I eventually have to create a separate page for all links like these. Check 'em out.
In the spirit of Friday cat blogging, I see that San Antonio is getting some new feline residents.
The first tiger of 24 rescued from a New Jersey sanctuary greeted Texas on Thursday with a spine-tingling roar."Stop it! Get back, get back," said Carol Asvestas, 52, director of the Wild Animal Orphanage, a 112-acre San Antonio nonprofit that agreed to take in the two dozen Bengal tigers.
The big cats were collected Tuesday from the Tigers Only Preservation Society, a Jackson, N.J., organization that the state for five years has worked to shut down because of squalid conditions.
Asvestas, who traveled to New Jersey to assist in the transfer, called the animals' living quarters "appalling." Several of the tigers, which range in age from 3 1/2 to 10 years old, had burns on their feet from standing in urine. Hip bones on some of the animals protruded from their sides because they were forced to compete with more dominant animals for food and were malnourished, she said Thursday.
Most were housed in narrow metal cages called shoots and couldn't turn around. One lived in a windowless trailer and never saw daylight. Another was found covered in its own feces, Asvestas said.
The tigers' rescue, one of the largest in the United States, was delayed in court for years by owner Joan Byron-Marasek's attempts to keep the collection. The legal battle, and the oddity of so many cats in suburban New Jersey, generated countless news stories along the East Coast and earned Byron-Marasek the moniker of "Tiger Lady."
Even this week, Byron-Marasek sought the court's help in stopping the transfer, arguing that it was an unlawful taking of property prompted by real estate developers who wanted her land cheap. A federal judge on Wednesday, however, declined to stop the convoy of tigers, already on its way to the northwest Bexar County animal orphanage, about 20 miles from downtown San Antonio.
Here is a local paper's account of the court ruling. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has a press release with some photos of the tigers' living quarters. Here is the Tigers Only Preservation Society web page, which has an understandably different view of the situation. Personally, I just think it's a shame these cats can't live where nature intended them to. Being cared for is the next best thing, but it's still a shame.
Criminy. There's just no end to the ways that Tom DeLay will go to raise money in secret and in avoidance of campaign finance laws. Now he's using charity as a cover.
It is an unusual charity brochure: a 13-page document, complete with pictures of fireworks and a golf course, that invites potential wealthy donors to give as much as $500,000 to spend time with Rep. Tom DeLay during the 2004 Republican convention in New York City -- and to have part of the money go to help abused and neglected children.DeLay, R-Sugar Land, the House majority leader, has both done work for troubled children and drawn criticism for his aggressive political fund-raising across his career in Congress. He said through his staff that the entire effort is fundamentally aimed at helping children.
But aides to DeLay acknowledged that a portion of the money will go to pay for late-night convention parties, a luxury suite during President Bush's speech at Madison Square Garden and yacht cruises.
So campaign finance watchdogs say DeLay's effort can be seen as a creative maneuver around the recently enacted law meant to limit the ability of federal officials to raise large donations known as soft money.
"They are using the idea of helping children as a blatant cover for financing activities in connection with a convention with huge unlimited, undisclosed, unregulated contributions," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington-based group that helped push through the recent overhaul of the campaign finance laws.
And other lawmakers may well follow DeLay's lead. Already Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Senate majority leader, is planning to hold a concert and a reception in conjunction with the convention as a way of raising funds for AIDS charities.
DeLay's charity, Celebrations for Children Inc., was set up in September and has no track record of work. DeLay is not a formal official of the charity, but its managers are DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro; Craig Richardson, a longtime adviser; and Rob Jennings, a Republican fund-raiser. Richardson said the managers would be paid by the new charity.
Richardson said the goal was to give 75 percent of the money it raises to children's charities, including some in the New York area. He said the charity also planned to stage events at the Super Bowl.
But because the money collected will go into a nonprofit organization, donors get a tax break. And DeLay will never have to publicly account for who contributed, which campaign finance experts say shields those who may be trying to win favor with one of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington.
Richardson dismissed such criticism. He said that every convention has parties and that by doing this DeLay was giving some money to worthy causes. He said that DeLay has a long record of providing money to neglected children through his own Houston-based DeLay Foundation for Kids.
After a week off, Bill White and Orlando Sanchez are back on the campaign trail. There was the usual carping between camps, but the real news is here:
White, meanwhile, worked on making inroads with Houston's African-American population, which gave more than 80 percent of its support to mayoral candidate Sylvester Turner. Turner, a black state representative, placed third in the nine-candidate field Nov. 4.White, an Anglo, announced endorsements by several prominent black elected officials -- including Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, state Sen. Rodney Ellis and Fort Bend County Constable Ruben Jones, who plays an important role getting African-Americans to the polls in the Missouri City area.
During a news conference Thursday at Mickey Leland Memorial Park, White said he and wife Andrea White were with Leland the night before the congressman left on a 1989 trip to Africa, where he died in a plane crash.
"Bill White is no stranger to our community," Lee said. "Before he was old enough to register himself, Bill worked in the civil rights movement of the '60s registering minority voters.
"He supports affirmative action in its truest spirit to provide opportunity for those who have been historically denied such opportunities."
White did pretty well in the general election in predominantly Hispanic precincts as well. Check out these numbers from Tim Fleck.
Whereas Sanchez had carried a majority of Hispanic voters in his losing 2001 runoff against Lee Brown, an Insider survey of eight key precincts in last week's election showed a dramatic reversal.In Magnolia Park's Box 11, Sanchez had beaten Brown by 294 to 183, a 63 percent majority. Last week Bill White took the same precinct 279 to 160, a 58 percent majority for the leader. Likewise, in Denver Harbor's Precinct 560, a Sanchez majority of 77 percent over Brown was reversed with White receiving 127 votes to 103 for Sanchez. Sanchez carried only two of the key precincts surveyed.
"The Hispanic community figured out that Orlando is a Republican," analyzes [consultant Craig] Varoga.
"I think the Republican outreach effort to Hispanics has a lot of explaining to do," agrees Marc Campos, who worked for Sylvester Turner's mayoral campaign.
The most shocking thing I've read in a political story this week:
As we went to press some big-bucks Sanchez supporters were reportedly chewing over the idea that their candidate might be better off dropping out of the runoff in a unity gesture. If that happened, Orlando would in defeat have made Houston political history.
All righty, I have installed and enabled Jay Allen's MT Blacklist. It was easy to install and helped me find and kill an old piece of spam, so I'm a happy blogger. If for some reason you encounter any problems posting a comment now, please please please send me a note ASAP to kuff - at - offthekuff dot com and I will investigate it. Please if possible send me the text of the comment you tried to enter and the message you saw when you hit Submit. I'm adding this info to the Blog Policies page for future reference.
You MT bloggers out there, get yourself upgraded and give this thing a try. I know I spent way too much time and effort cleaning up after comment spammers. I have high hopes I'll never have to do it again.
Everything you want to know about Alabama judge Roy Moore's removal from the court can be found in the War Liberal "Get Your Moore On" archives. As the latest entry indicates, Mac is skeptical about Moore's prospects for higher office, news that's almost as good as the news of his ouster to begin with. Unfortunately, I think Mac's prediction about what Moore's future likely does hold is spot on. Check it out.
I'd like to join with Byron and Greg in announcing the candidacy of Richard Morrison for the 22nd Congressional District. Richard will be taking on Tom DeLay in 2004, and he could surely use your support. I hope to have some more information on Richard in the near future, so watch this space.
Well, that's not quite what Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst told the Dallas Morning News, but it's pretty close.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst vowed Tuesday never to allow congressional redistricting to revisit the Texas Senate this decade, even if the freshly redrawn boundaries fail to survive legal challenges.Attorney General Greg Abbott has told GOP leaders that the new boundaries are sound and will not buckle under legal scrutiny.
But Mr. Dewhurst, a Republican who presides over the state Senate, allowed for the possibility of defeat Tuesday in addressing the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News.
"He says it's defensible," Mr. Dewhurst said. "It's difficult for me to argue. ... I know I'm going to take some criticism of this, but if it's not defensible, we are not going to take this up again this decade."
A three-judge panel is expected to decide the legality of the map, designed to bolster Republican strength in the Texas congressional delegation by up to seven seats, by Christmas. The plan also is undergoing review by the Justice Department.
Mr. Dewhurst said Tuesday that he had preferred a safer Senate proposal over the more aggressive House approach that was adopted by the Legislature.
[...]
"I preferred the map that came out of the Senate, in which we [Republicans] would have elected the same numbers in Congress as we do in the Senate right now, 19 or 20, and not touched any of our minority districts," he said. "I think that's better public policy and, quite frankly, better politics."
Bob Richter, a spokesman for House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland, defended the aggressive new map.
"We feel like the map is legal and will survive in court," he said. "If it doesn't, then we will have to revisit it. If the Senate is not willing to do it, then it probably wouldn't happen."
Mr. Dewhurst said congressional leaders played a key role in persuading state lawmakers to choose the more aggressive proposal."We were besieged by visits from members of Congress," he said. "We had a groundswell in the House that carried over into the Senate to go to a map favored by a lot of members in Congress."
While Congressional lines may be in place one way or another until 2011, keep your eyes open for a possible attempt to redraw court jurisdiction boundaries, as this may be a backdoor effort to unseat or disarm Travis County DA Ronnie Earle.
Earle...oversees the state Public Integrity Unit and thus has the authority to prosecute state leaders for any official misconduct. This makes Earle pretty much the last Democrat in Texas with statewide power, and some Republicans -- including those in Travis Co.'s House delegation -- don't hide their desire to get him out. Past efforts to strip the Public Integrity Unit from Earle's office have been unsuccessful, if only because the efforts have been seen as retaliation for Earle's specific prosecutions of such state officials as U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Under cover of a wholesale redistricting effort, this time may be different.Earle's office refuses comment on the possibility. Few expect [House Speaker Tom] Craddick's plan to include a gross attempt to drive Earle from office -- like pairing Travis and Williamson counties under one DA. Far more likely is that a bill that remaps judicial and prosecutor districts across the state will include a provision placing the Public Integrity Unit under the control of the Texas attorney general.
DMN link via Byron.
The grand jury which heard evidence in the indecency with a child case against local conservative talk show host Jon Matthews returned an indictment against him. Matthews was arrested and released on a personal recognizance bond and is now awaiting trial.
The indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday after Matthews was arrested, alleges Matthews knowingly and intentionally exposed his genitals to a girl under the age of 17 on Oct. 9."The indictment alleges there was exposure but not contact with the child," Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey said.
The conservative talk show host, who also writes a column for a Fort Bend weekly newspaper, was taken into custody by Sugar Land police about 3 p.m. and driven to police headquarters. He was transferred to the county jail in Richmond, where he was released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond.
Matthews, 59, made no statements to reporters as he left the jail Wednesday evening. His attorney, Stephen Doggett, also declined to comment.
Matthews, who served in the U.S. Marines, usually wrote about Fort Bend County issues, often railing against local school district officials whom he dubbed "educrats."Matthews' column also led to a libel suit filed against him last year by former Sugar Land Mayor Dean Hrbacek.
The suit claims Hrbacek's reputation was damaged by Matthews, who called Hrbacek "Mayor Osama" and "Dean Osama Hrbacek," in reference to the terrorist leader.
The Rice MOB gets profiled by a classical music critic for the Star-Telegram, who was a member of the Baylor band 30 years ago. He did a pretty nice job of it, too, even if he didn't include any of the quotes that I gave him. Oh, well. Fame is a fickle mistress.
Hey, guess what? You may have already won a free telemarketing call from Tom DeLay and the chance to write a fabulous check to one of his political action committees!
AIR FORCE CHAPLAIN James Helton says he was flabbergasted when he first heard the news from his wife. "She told me you've been selected for a national award by Congressman DeLay, and they really want you to call the office."Helton wondered why a powerful Republican leader would want to honor a humble Air Force reservist and quickly returned the call. He was so upset by what he heard that he invited NBC News to record the conversation when he called back a second time.
First there was a recorded message: "This is Congressman Tom DeLay. I'm asking you to serve as an honorary chairman on our business advisory council, and you will be recognized with our national leadership award."
Then, a telemarketer came on the line: "You'd be invited to private dinners with congressmen and quarterly strategy sessions in Washington."
In the call, Helton was also promised an exclusive black-tie president's dinner and his name in a newspaper ad.
Then came the pitch from the telemarketer: "We're asking each chairman for a one-time gift of $300 or $500 for the ad. Can we count on your support?"
Helton replied: 'That's pushing my budget a little. Does it have to be paid all at once?"
"Would $100 or $200 be any better for you? And I could even split that down into two payments as well," replied the telemarketer.
Helton, an independent voter who voted for Bush in the last presidential election, did not send a dime. "It was dishonest, it was sleazy, and it was certainly unbecoming a national party like this," said Helton.
Past awardees include a convicted sex offender and a maker of drug paraphernalia — both awards were later rescinded.The award also is proudly displayed in the office of an adult film promoter, Harry Weiss, who sent Republicans a check from his company — "Nefarious Films."
"They cashed the check, so I guess they’re happy to have me aboard," Weiss said.
During the early stages of the 1996 presidential contest, I formed several legal organizations. I sent a number of checks to the leading candidates, as well as Ross Perot, just to see how greedy they could be. I appointed my assistant, Gillian, the head of each organization and signatory of each check. Legitimate $75 and $100 checks went to all of the candidates from the following organization: Pedophiles for Free Trade, The John Wayne Gacey Fan Club, Hemp Growers of America, Satan Worshipers for Dole and Abortionists for Buchanan.
DeLay story via Liberal Oasis (scroll down a bit).
Byron points to this update on the construction of a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Austin: It's going forward, with Planned Parenthood of Austin acting as their own general contractors. Good to know that Chris Danze and his harassment campaign hasn't succeeded at stopping them.
PPA also announced that they exceeded their fundraising goal at their eighth annual Public Affairs Luncheon, something that is both good news and a sure sign of tough times. As if you couldn't already tell.
The clearinghouse for stuff related to Jay Allen's comment spam disabler is here. Note that you can submit spams you've received for possible inclusion into the master list, something which will help others as well as yourself. If you're feeling a bit more militant about the whole thing, you can read The Comment Spam Manifesto and Cutting Comment Spammers Off At The Knees. Thanks to Linkmeister for the tip.
This is the first update I've seen on radio talk show host Jon Matthews' situation since the original story appeared.
RICHMOND -- Radio talk show host Jon Matthews appeared before a Fort Bend County grand jury Tuesday less than a week after the Sugar Land Police Department completed an investigation concerning him.Matthews, 59, was the subject of a criminal investigation launched by police after they received an allegation about Matthews. Police have not publicly discussed the nature of that allegation.
After Matthews left the grand jury room, neither he nor his attorney, Stephen Doggett, would comment on the case. He appeared before the panel for about 90 minutes.
Afterward, the grand jury took a break and then Matthews' wife, Carolyn, spent about 40 minutes in the grand jury room.
Fort Bend County District Attorney John Healey said he could not discuss what happened during the hearing. Healey and four assistant prosecutors were in the room for most of Matthews' appearance.
The Fort Bend County grand jury seals indictments when the defendant is not in custody, so it was not immediately known if the grand jury issued an indictment.
Marshall Slot, a Sugar Land officer who worked the case, also appeared before the grand jury Tuesday.
The investigation is centered on an allegation made recently by a community member, police spokeswoman Pat Whitty said two weeks ago.
The Houston Chronicle requested a copy of the police report under the Texas Public Information Act. Sugar Land city officials want to keep the report confidential and have asked the Texas attorney general for a ruling on the matter.
During the investigation, Matthews has been off the air.
UPDATE: This is not a forum for discussing the fate of Jon Matthews. Please take that discussion elsewhere. Thank you.
This entry of mine, on what to do with the Astrodome, made it into this week's Chronicle Hotlist. More proof that if you hang around long enough, you can clog up almost any Google search.
One of the things we saw a lot of in France, out where we were in the champagne country near Epernay and Reims, was war memorials. An awful lot of WWI and WWII happened right there, and there's no forgetting it. Every little town we visited had a memorial to its fallen sons and daughters. Even a tiny little town where we stayed like Reuilly, which occupied about 300 meters on the highway, had a monunment. You couldn't avoid the history and the loss if you wanted to.
One place we visited was Bois de Belleau, now also known as Bois de la Brigade de Marine, which was a critical battle in June of 1918. The memorial, whose inscription you can get a closer look at here, is as remote and foreboding now as it must have been then.
On the other side of the wood is the American military cemetary, whose land was given in perpetuity by France to the US in 1919. The entrance leads up to a beautiful chapel, where inscribed inside is the name and hometown of every soldier who is known to be buried there. Over 2300 soldiers rest in peace here, though about half of their names are not known. A plaque by the visitor's center informs you that there were 116,000 American dead and 300,000 wounded, while France lost 1.4 million soldiers, with another 3.5 million injured. No other Allied country suffered as many losses. You can see some more pictures here.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.
Hot dog! Tom DeLay's insidious Bacardi-benefitting provision that he tried to sneak into the 2004 defense appropriations bill has been killed.
House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), under pressure from the Senate, has ended an attempt by rum maker Bacardi-Martini Inc. and Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to alter U.S. trademark law in Bacardi’s favor.But opponents of the DeLay provision, including Pernod-Ricard of France, are still concerned that the Texas Republican or another Bacardi ally on Capitol Hill may try to slip the measure into an upcoming omnibus spending package that GOP Congressional leaders are assembling for the unfinished fiscal 2004 appropriations bills.
DeLay had pushed for inclusion of language in the 2004 Defense authorization bill that would help Bacardi in its long-running battle with Pernod-Ricard over who owns the rights to the legendary "Havana Club" rum label.
Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), however, objected to DeLay’s provision — along with several other unrelated items — arguing that they did not belong in the underlying Defense authorization bill. Hunter announced on Thursday that he was withdrawing the measure.
"It's unfortunate when there isn’t sufficient support to step up to the plate and defend American companies from evil dictators" like Cuban President Fidel Castro, said Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman.
Grella was unable to comment on whether DeLay would attempt to include the provision in the omnibus or other legislation before Congress adjourns for the year.DeLay’s provision sought to alter Section 211 of U.S trademark law to ensure that U.S. and foreign companies are prevented from registering or defending in court trademarks associated with property expropriated by foreign governments.
This change would have benefited Bacardi at the expense of Pernod-Ricard and the Cuban government, which set up a joint venture in 1993 to market Havana Club. The European Union, on behalf of the French government, filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over Section 211, a 1999 law pushed through Congress by then-Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) on behalf of Bacardi. In a ruling last year, the WTO sided with the European Union, saying Section 211 was discriminatory as it currently stands because it only applies to foreign companies. The United States has until Dec. 31 to change its law to comply with the WTO ruling.
"We're very pleased," said William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents hundreds of companies that own trademarks in Cuba and which fear retaliation by the Castro regime if the Havana Club dispute is resolved in Bacardi’s favor.
Reinsch and the NFTC, which support an alternative proposal designed to repeal Section 211 entirely in order to bring the United States into compliance with the WTO ruling, said he feared there would be another attempt by Bacardi to get its proposal approved.
"We're expecting another effort somewhere else, I don't know where," said Reinsch.
Bacardi has given more than $800,000 to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle since 1997. Of that total, $43,000 went to DeLay or organizations under his control. But the Texas Republican vehemently denied the allegation that there was any link between the Bacardi donations and his actions on behalf of the company, which has been involved in the Havana Club dispute for more than a decade.
UPDATE: A bit more coverage from the Palm Beach Post.
I came across the following curious entry in the Quorum Report the other day and have been trying unsuccessfully to find out more information about it.
AUTOMATED PHONE EFFORT TO RECRUIT OPPONENT FOR CRADDICKCalls blanketing Midland today [11/7]
Dave Wilson is a small businessman and a master electrician out of Houston who also happens to be politically active. In fact, he initiated the petition drive that got Proposition 2 on the Houston ballot two years ago. Prop 2 successfully prohibited health insurance and benefits to same sex partners employed by the City.
Mr. Wilson is clearly unhappy with Speaker Tom Craddick. So much so, in fact, that he has initiated his own automated telephone effort targeting Craddick's house district based in Midland as well as legislative offices in Austin.
So I see that John Kerry Version 2.0 is ready for shipping, and now he's even anti-Deanier than before. Can't you just feel the excitement?
No? Me neither. And it's a damn shame. John Kerry, is smart, good looking, a genuine war hero with strong foreign affairs creds, has virtually unlimited funding available thanks to his zillionaire wife, and has been running for President since back when Dubya was still getting popped for DUI. Why is his campaign such a dead fish?
I don't know whether Kerry has been badly served by his revolving door campaign staff, but I do know that any candidate who has people like Rand Beers and Joseph Wilson falling into their laps and doesn't have them out there front and center every day explaining why George W. Bush is screwing the pooch on every conceivable front in the War on Terror is someone who, frankly, deserves to lose. Never before has so little been gotten out of so much.
And now he's going to spend more time and energy attacking Howard Dean instead of recognizing the reality that the primary is down to a two-person race and he needs to compete for the wild card spot instead of trying to claim the frontrunner spot. What a waste.
This ought to be fun.
Two political action committees formed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to push Republican causes have failed to disclose required information about their finances, national watchdog groups said in a complaint filed Monday with the Internal Revenue Service.Public Citizen and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the IRS to conduct an audit of Texans for a Republican Majority and Americans for a Republican Majority, and require the committees to disclose information about their contributions.
Both PACs are Section 527 organizations, named for the portion of the IRS Code that authorizes them.
They are allowed to collect unlimited amounts of "soft money" donations from corporate donors and individuals, but Public Citizen and CREW contend the committees have "either recently failed to file any financial disclosure statements or filed incomplete statements with the IRS in direct violation of the law."
Soft money refers to political funding that may be used to push causes or issues, but not to directly advocate election of individual candidates.
DeLay political aide and Texans for a Republican Majority Director Jim Ellis said the PACs have complied with the law. He dismissed the complaint as an attack on conservatives.
"Their real target is Tom DeLay," Ellis said. "It's a political attack and they need to do better research."
Ellis added that DeLay should not be named in the complaint because he no longer controls the committees.
The watchdog groups contend that DeLay remains associated with the committees through his appointments of Ellis and other political allies to key positions in the committees.
From the continuing story of Things Rick Perry Doesn't Want You To Know:
Gov. Rick Perry's office has filed a lawsuit seeking to keep secret the financial incentives offered to Boeing Co. to build a plant in Texas.The lawsuit filed Thursday was in response to a request from Alfred Ehm, a member of the Texas Central Rail-Corridor Coalition of San Antonio, for details of the possible tax breaks that were being offered to the airplane maker.
"I'm trying to make a point that the government cannot receive and spend taxpayer money and claim they're not a public agency," Ehm told the Austin American-Statesman.
The state's Department of Economic Development, run by the governor's office, is negotiating with Chicago-based Boeing to build a manufacturing plant in Texas.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office ruled in October that some of the information about the incentives must be released.
But the economic development department contends the incentive package Texas offered Boeing should not be open to the public because it contains confidential commercial and financial information. Exposing the information would jeopardize the state's ability to attract businesses, the department said in an August letter to the attorney general.
"If businesses believe that communications with the state during the site selection process cannot be kept confidential, then Texas will be put at a severe competitive disadvantage and it will not be considered a business location," the letter said.
The attorney general's office ruled that the economic development department had "not demonstrated that the submitted information is protected trade secret information or commercial or financial information of a business prospect."
Notice the argument about trade secrets in that first story. It comes up again in another context.
Companies clamoring for state tax dollars that serve the needy are insisting that their bid proposals be kept a closely guarded secret.At least 11 companies are making legal arguments to Attorney General Greg Abbott that, if successful, could make agencies serving Texas' most vulnerable populations far less subject to public scrutiny.
The companies are seeking consulting contracts to help the Texas Health and Human Services Commission consolidate 12 social services agencies into five.
The success or failure of the consolidation project and another subsequent wave of privatization could have serious impacts on the elderly, mentally ill or mentally retarded, physically disabled, abused children and low income families.
One potential contractor simply wants to protect Social Security numbers already exempt under the Texas Public Information Act, while a sole proprietorship seeks to protect personal financial information.
But some firms offering to help the state consolidate health and human services agencies argue the public shouldn't know which or how many individuals are actually working on a given project or what their experience level is.
Several companies claim that even "executive summaries" of their bids to do state business contain valuable trade secrets that would seriously damage the companies if revealed.
And of course, it wouldn't be a story about Governor Perry and privatization if there weren't a bit about one of his pals profiting from the whole thing. For all I know, Ray Sullivan is the best person for the job. Sure is nice how these things work themselves out, though, isn't it?
NYT link via Atrios.
Seems we've finally found the cure for "git tuff on crime" syndrome: Massive state budget shortfalls.
Fourteen years ago, Maryland opened its ultramodern Supermax prison, a high-tech fortress to hold the "worst of the worst."In contrast, a few blocks away stood the Maryland Penitentiary, a dark, gothic, castle-like structure built nearly 200 years ago when inmates were supposed to contemplate their sins in solitude and disgrace.
But when Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's secretary of public safety and correctional services, recently described a Maryland institution as so out of step with modern correctional philosophy that it ought to be razed, she was talking about Supermax.
"First of all, it's inhumane. Second, it has no program space," she said. "Nor can it be converted. It was built so hard, we can't change anything. We're talking about tons and tons of concrete and steel that would cost a fortune to dig into."
That kind of talk represents a dramatic change in thinking among corrections officials across the country. Squeezed by shrinking budgets and burgeoning numbers of inmates, states are moving away from the lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key attitude of the 1980s and '90s and focusing more on drug and alcohol treatment, education and job training.
Saar describes Supermax as a relic of an era when rehabilitation programs behind bars were dismissed as coddling of criminals.
"In the 1980s, we began putting people away for a longer period of time, giving them less opportunities for drug treatment and education, and we abolished parole," said Saar, appointed by new Gov. Robert Ehrlich last January. "But, hey, has it worked? I think an honest person would have to say it hasn't worked."
Even Alabama, one of the most conservative states, now has a sentencing commission that has made reform recommendations, which the Legislature has begun to enact this year."I've been in the attorney general's office 30 years," said Rosa Davis, the chief assistant attorney general in Alabama, "and we've been the 'lock them up and throw away the key' office. We're now learning the difference between being tough on crime and smart on crime."
John Williams speculates about the future of soon-to-be-former City Council member Gabriel Vasquez, who surprised many people (including at least one of his opponents) by jumping into the City Controller race at the last second. I confess, I liked Vasquez more before he switched parties, and while I still don't understand his decision to abandon his Council seat for a longshot bid at the Controller's office, I do agree that he'll be back. Someone has to carry the banner for the state GOP's vaunted Hispanic outreach, and the odds are against it being Orlando Sanchez at this point.
SAN ANTONIO -- A number of Texas families with husbands, sons and other relatives serving in Iraq gathered in a drizzle Saturday morning here to voice their opposition to how the U.S.-led war is being handled."This is how I show my support," said Candance Robison, whose husband, Army 1st Lt. Mike Robison, is serving with the 82nd Airborne Division in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, the heart of anti-American insurgency.
"If my husband got killed and I hadn't done everything I could to bring him home, I'd never forgive myself," said Robison, a 27-year-old mother of two from suburban Dallas.
Shannon Sharrock, a Baylor University law student, says her heart stopped when she heard that a Black Hawk helicopter from the 101st Airborne Division had gone down near Tikrit on Friday and that all aboard were dead.
Her husband, Capt. Joseph Sharrock, is a Black Hawk pilot attached to the 101st Airborne.
"I immediately thought of Joe," said Shannon Sharrock, a 1997 West Point graduate and former Army helicopter pilot. "He called at 3:30 this morning to make sure I knew that he's OK. ... He knew all six aboard that helicopter."
Sharrock, Robison and others said they wholeheartedly support America's fighting men and women in the Middle East. Their complaint is strictly with the decision-makers in Washington.
"It's our job and our duty to question our government and hold it accountable for what they're doing over there," said Sharrock, who lives in Temple.
Increasing numbers of Americans also appear to have doubts, as more U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, 32 of them just last week.
A CNN-USA Today poll released Thursday found that 54 percent of Americans disapprove of how President Bush is handling rebuilding efforts in Iraq. The same poll in August found that 57 percent supported the president's performance.
Sixty percent of the poll's respondents believe things are going poorly for the United States in Iraq, double the number that felt that way in June, and 39 percent say that it was a mistake to sending troops to Iraq, up from 23 percent in March.
The two dozen Texans who traveled to San Antonio to voice their opposition say the shift in national sentiment toward the war has made it easier to speak up without automatically being branded as being anti-American.
Sharrock said, however, that she still can't share her beliefs with many friends at Fort Hood, where her husband's unit is based.
"They think you can't speak against the war without speaking out against the troops," she said. "I'm against the war, therefore (to them) I'm unpatriotic."
Maria Longoria's son, Army Spc. Raymond Longoria, was flying in a Chinook helicopter next to the one shot down last Sunday near Fallujah that killed 16 Americans.
She says her rare conversations with her son, who is part of an engineering unit attached to the 82nd Airborne, indicate that he's doing his job, but that his morale has started to sag.
"He thinks it's not working and it's getting worse," said Longoria, a Dallas resident whose family entourage included her son's wife, Monica, and 2-year-old daughter Alexis. "Whatever they rebuild, the Iraqis just destroy again."
In south San Antonio, the family of Army Sgt. Michael Paul Barrera laid him to rest.
[Barrera's mother Hilda] Guardiola, who thinks the war Bush launched against Iraq is a mistake, is angry at the president. He didn't see or call her when he was in San Antonio for a fund-raiser, she said. She thinks of a photograph she saw recently of the president hugging an Anglo woman who lost her home to California's wildfires, and she suspects Bush didn't call to offer his condolences because she's Hispanic.And she thinks that Bush's failure to offer sympathy underscores a greater indifference to the troops.
But she knows Barrera would get mad at such talk.
"'Mom, that's my commander-in-chief, and I am doing my job,'" she recalled him telling her when she criticized Bush.
"OK, Mikey," she would say. "Sorry."
"He had a lot of respect for the president, and we're Democrats. But that was his boss, and you weren't going to talk about his boss."
As the Mass ended, the mourners filed out and waited for the casket to be carried to the hearse. Standing in the crowd, former Army South Commander Maj. Gen. Alfred A. Valenzuela reflected on this, the 11th funeral of a Texas soldier he has attended.Most, he said, were Latinos who shared much with Barrera.
Valenzuela frankly addressed concerns being voiced that a disproportionate share of the dead and wounded are from rural areas, where options are few, and that many enlisted so they could someday attend the college they could not otherwise afford.
"It's a true statement that they are coming from small cities," he said. "And some are coming from college, true statement.
"They're coming from the post-war generation," he said, noting that today's young warriors aren't too different from himself.
"I'm a baby boomer. My father went to World War II, took advantage of the GI Bill and his son decided to go into the Army.
"This is the new generation," he said proudly, "and they are awesome, absolutely awesome."
Skewed statistics of Latinos in the military is nothing new, he added, noting that Latinos have earned a disproportionate number of Medals of Honor, including one whose recipient was not counted as a Latino for years because his surname was not Spanish.
He also pointed out that Latinos have unusually high retention rates in military service.
Still, as the casualties in Iraq mount, one disturbing element is becoming apparent: The all-volunteer military that replaced a draft once faulted for victimizing the poor, minorities and those from communities where options are few now seems to have many of these same faults.
Shouldn't it concern all of us that the military option attracts a particular group mainly because the other options are far less accessible — whether the group be minorities or rural residents?
And shouldn't all Americans be concerned that some kids may be dying to go to college?
During the time that I was undecided about which candidates for City Council I should support, I spent some time looking at the various candidates' web pages. I came away very unimpressed with their efforts, and with a few simple ideas of how they could have vastly improved the experience for me. I offer those ideas now as a public service.
This is a total no-brainer. The cost is negligible - I've got a year of webhosting and 500 MB of disk space for $10 a month. The services of a competent webpage designer to get you started is a few hundred dollars. You'll need someone on your staff who can handle maintaining the site once it's been created, but you can probably get a volunteer to do it. Frankly, I've come to the conclusion that any candidate that doesn't have the money and wisdom to set up a website isn't a serious candidate for whichever office they're running.
Maybe it's just me, but I've never come across an animated intro page where my first reaction was not to reach for the "Click here to skip" button. All these things ever do for me is make me feel that my time is being wasted and that the page I'm looking for must be lacking something if the designer felt the need to distract me like this. And I'm speaking from the perspective of someone with a high end PC and a cable modem. I really hated this crap when I was on an older PC and still had dialup. Just say No to animation on a campaign site.
On Peter Brown's page, the links to his list of supporters and endorsements both point to PDF files. The Quorum Report, a political albeit not campaign-related site, links press releases as Word docs. All these things ever are is formatted text with an occasional logo, and yet each of them forces a new program to run, which takes considerably longer and uses a lot more system resources than a link to another page would.
There's no good reason for this. Not everyone has Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Word, meaning some people can't follow these links. Even if you assume everyone has these programs, why should your site visitors be forced to spawn another program when they've already got a perfectly good web browser running? People, this is why God gave us HTML. The only reason you should ever consider linking to something else is if you've got a long document that someone might want to download and print in order to read offline. Don't make me run another program if I don't want to.
Presidential candidates have gotten a lot of press lately for their website innovations, which is great, but it obscures the fact that any one of these candidates, even the fringe ones, will get a lot more mainstream media coverage than all of the non-Mayoral candidates in Houston got combined. How much would you know right now about Ronald Green, or Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, or Bruce Tatro, if all you had to depend on was the Houston Chronicle and the local TV news?
There's a paradox involved when a local candidate gets on to a medium with international reach, but there's a simple fact that needs to be considered: Your campaign web page is the one place in the world where potential supporters can find out about you exactly what you want them to know. You are not at the mercy of a city desk editor or local news producer who's got more exciting stories to run. It's just you and the reasons why people should vote for you, unfiltered and unexpurged.
I was very disappointed to find that many candidates never got past bullet points on their web sites. Sue Lovell is a good example. Everything she lists here is great, but they're all goals, not means to them. I guarantee every one of her opponents would have said they support each one of these statements. It's in how they plan to achieve them that we can begin to separate the contenders from the pretenders.
I'm not saying that candidates should lay out detailed policy-wonk statements on their pages - doing so would likely provide oppo research more than anything. But I am saying that giving a link that says "Click here to learn more" about job creation/traffic management/deficit reduction/whatever from your page of bullet points is necessary. Consider your audience here: the kind of person who Googles you in order to learn about you is the kind of person that wants to see this information. Don't leave that person feeling unfulfilled.
You knew I'd get to this eventually, didn't you? Well, it's really an extension of #4. In Houston this year, there are a lot of big issues for people to decide - Metro, property tax limits, drainage fees, road construction management, etc. I'd have liked to know how a challenger would have voted on the Metro referendum, and how they would have voted in Council on the property tax and drainage fee issues. The easiest way to know is for the candidates themselves to say so openly, and blogging makes that easy to do.
A candidate who blogs can link to news stories that are related to whatever issues they want to talk about and say things like "This is what I support", or "This is exactly what I'll put a stop to". A candidate who blogs can link to news stories that feature them and say things like "Here's what I meant by that" or "Here's what else I said that they didn't print". A candidate who blogs can get his or her own words out there.
This story really makes me mad.
Construction on Planned Parenthood's South Austin clinic took a hard hit this week when the project's general contractor walked away because of intense pressure from abortion opponents.Planned Parenthood officials said Browning Construction -- a San Antonio company that is one of the state's largest building contractors -- broke its contract to oversee construction of the 9,931-square-foot clinic.
"They were afraid their business could not survive this project," said Glenda Parks, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region.
In a written statement, company President James Browning said, "We have requested that the construction contract be terminated because we are unable to secure and retain adequate subcontractors and suppliers to complete the project in a timely manner, due to events beyond our control."
Planned Parenthood has not decided whether to take legal action and is exploring its options.
[…]
Parks said two other contractors have volunteered to spearhead the construction but wouldn't give their names. Though work on the building has slowed, she said it has not stopped.
[…]
Browning's departure comes after hundreds and possibly thousands of people across the country participated in an Austin-led campaign to cripple the project.
In September, Chris Danze -- president of Maldonado & Danze, a concrete construction contractor -- organized a boycott.
"Planned Parenthood is an organization with a health care wrapper, but it is a social movement at its core," he said. It's "a social movement that promotes sexual chaos, especially among our youth. Out of this sexual chaos comes the violence of abortion. That is the heart and soul of this movement."
The 48-year-old Austin man, who said he personally assists women who have troubled pregnancies, persuaded concrete suppliers to boycott the project. He kept a list of companies that worked on the facility, contacted churches and asked pro-life supporters to call the contractors.
Word got out.
News outlets across the country picked up the story, including the Christian Broadcasting Network, Parks said. Hundreds of people called companies working on the clinic.
One contractor received 1,200 calls to his business line, Parks said. Another received several hundred at his home.
Parks said the contractors felt harassed and threatened. Danze said he has told callers to be polite and respectful.
"The calls involved two elements," Danze said. "The first is that it's wrong to build an abortion chamber. The second is that it's bad for future business."
Former Austin Mayor Bruce Todd called that "economic blackmail."
"It's about tyranny," he said. "It's about harassment."
With a big assist from Michael Croft, I finally got the Movable Type 2.64 upgrade installed, and as an extra added bonus got migrated from the BerkeleyDB to MySQL. I think I'm going to have fun playing with MySQL, which owes it to me after the (admittedly mostly self-induced) frustration that we had loading and configuring it. Here's a hint for future generations: If you can log into your MySQL database directly but MovableType keeps failing, be really sure that the mt-dbpass.cgi file you keep uploading is really called mt-dbpass.cgi and not something that looks like, but is actually not, mt-dbpass.cgi.
Somewhat amusingly, in our quest to figure out this mystery, we came across this support forum thread in which Michael was helping to troubleshoot someone else's MySQL problem. It pointed us to the MTWiki entry on MySQL, which is a good thing to have in your back pocket even if we didn't get the clue from it.
Anyway. Next up is the long-awaited MT Blacklist plugin for killing comment spams. And on we go.
Public Citizen's White House for Sale blog has some good coverage of Howard Dean's referendum on whether he should abide by his original statement to participate in the presidential public financing system (see here and here), as well as a suggested compromise (PDF): abide by the limit during the Democratic primaries, then Do What You Have To Do in the general election. I'm OK with that.
I completely agree with Larry: if the Art Car Parade withers and dies due to lack of sponsorship money, it will be a cultural disaster in Houston. We're talking about one of the few genuine grassroots institutions that originated here and spawned imitators around the world, one of the few things that generates stories about Houston with an "ain't it cool?" plotline and no precious quotes from Elyse Lanier. And yes, it's a growing and recurring reward instead of a onetime bonanza for the Galleria and the strip clubs like the Super Bowl will be. I can only hope this story helps them out.
From today's Chron:
Lea Fastow, the wife of ex-Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, is in negotiations with prosecutors for a plea bargain that could send her to federal prison for five months or more.She could appear in court as early as next week to agree to, and possibly begin, a prison term, sources said.
If she were to accept a plea bargain of five months in prison and be immediately incarcerated, she could be home to take care of their children around the time her husband's trial begins April 20, 2004.[...]
A family friend said Lea Fastow is willing to consider pleading guilty and forgoing a chance to tell her side to a jury because it would be better for her two small children and could ensure they would not be without a parent at home. "It's a matter of willing to risk less when it's for her children than she would risk if it were just for herself," the friend said.
Lea Fastow's attorneys have alleged she was charged only to squeeze her husband into pleading guilty and cooperating with the government, perhaps to help prosecutors charge those above him on the corporate ladder: former Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling and former Chairman Ken Lay.Most attorneys involved or closely watching the case said Thursday that the plea bargain is probably being offered because prosecutors believe the squeeze play did not work. A few thought Lea Fastow may be pleading because it did work and Andrew Fastow will hammer out a plea bargain as well. Andrew Fastow's lawyer David Gerger could not be reached for comment Thursday.
It is unlikely Lea Fastow would be cooperating to help the government convict her husband. But the law states that if discussions between husband and wife are part of a crime, such as a conspiracy to commit fraud, the couple does not have the protection of marital privilege for communication about the conspiracy. In a situation where both participated in a conspiracy, even if only one spouse is charged, the other, if given immunity, might choose to testify about their conversations.
The sleazy anti-Adrian Garcia mailer that went out in the days before the election did not have their intended effect, as Garcia was the leading vote getter and the candidate that everyone believes was behind the mailer failed to make the runoff. However, Garcia was not the only candidate was was on the receiving end of this attack, and in this case the target wasn't as lucky.
Houston Community College System trustee runoff candidates Herlinda Garcia and Diane Olmos Guzman on Thursday picked up their campaigns where they'd left them before Tuesday's election: bickering and vowing to rise above the fray.Garcia, who received 41 percent of the vote, attributed the runoff to a last-minute mailing of mysterious origin that attacked her for failing to pay taxes and micromanaging the system. It was paid for by a group called Citizens for a Better America.
"Diane bears responsibility because her operatives started circulating the charges long ago," said Garcia, the incumbent. "It may be some other entity that wanted to force the runoff, but they wouldn't have had these charges if Diane hadn't brought them up in the first place."
Olmos Guzman, who received 39 percent of the vote, said she had nothing to do with the mailing and has no idea who was behind it.
Garcia and Olmos Guzman will go up against each other for the HCCS District 3 trustee job in the Dec. 6 runoff. They outpolled third candidate Jose De La Isla, who received 20 percent of the vote.
Blog long enough and sooner or later you'll be a result in enough Google searches to really get noticed and/or become a pain in the butt to anyone trying to find good data. However you slice it, The Register picked up and linked to this post of mine in which I recounted the results of my silly "Who Is Atrios?" poll in an article they wrote about the settling of the Atrios/Luskin tete-a-tete. Thanks, guys! I promise to use my newfound fame for good and not for evil. Thanks also to Michael, who was kind enough to point this out to me last night.
For those of you who tuned in late, my poll and several of its choices were inspired by Mickey Kaus, who on December 17 (you have to scroll down to get there) half-jokingly wondered if Atrios was really Sidney Blumenthal. It's been a running gag ever since in Atrios' comments.
By the way, if you want to know what that mysterious "joint statement" between Atrios and Luskin was about, Dwight Meredith explains it quite well.
UPDATE: Atrios has some more info on that joint statement along with a plea to give to a relevant worthy cause. Check it out.
You've probably read about the Texas Clemency Memos, in which we learned about the extremely casual way that Alberto Gonzales advised then-Governor Bush about the death penalty clemency process. What you probably didn't know (I sure didn't) was that one result of this article was to spur Governor Rick Perry and current Attorney General Greg Abbott to loosen the rules that cover the classification of state documents. It's now a lot easier for the government, via a ruling by the AG, to declare things off limits to public inspection. Read all about it here.
Greg Wythe has a long and in depth review of Zell Miller's book "A National Party No More" that's well worth your time to read. Greg is someone who's closer to Miller's end of the party spectrum than I am, and he finds some merit and a lot of fault with what Miller has to say. Check it out.
While you're there, you should also read about Elaine Kamark and her thesis on why Massachussettes keeps electing Republican governors. It's essentially the same problem in different clothes: not making a good enough effort to understand a large segment of the voting population. Quite a bit to think about between now and next November.
Is it just me, or has Sitemeter been sucking rocks the past few days? The reports are often unavailable, and I lost about half a day's hits on Sunday. Not such a big deal, but my blog at least seems to be taking a long time to finish loading lately, and it's always because of the Sitemeter icon. Anyone else noticing a problem?
I once lived a pretty good bachelor's life. Oh sure, the place was always a mess, the fridge was full of beer and accidental science projects, and the decor could charitably be described as "the lease says no holes in the walls", but my roommate Matt and I had a blast. We threw lots of parties - the one in which some friends from Austin brought an ice cream recipe and a large canister of liquid nitrogen stiill stands out as one of our greater triumphs - and were the de facto social center for our then-mostly single friends.
I'm a semi-respectable married homeowner now, and as happy as I am with that, I can't help but feel a sense of missed opportunity when I read this bit of angst by NBC's entertainment chief Jeff Zucker, who decries the lack of TV shows that speak to younger men.
Zucker, who has already canned two high-profile new series, said while networks question some of Nielsen Media Research's numbers this year, TV executives need also look in the mirror."Our programming is not that good and the Nielsen sample is bad. End of story," said Zucker, speaking to the International Radio & Television Society Foundation.
[...]
All of the network entertainment chiefs speaking before the IRTS Tuesday directed some anger toward Nielsen. They don't quite believe Nielsen's numbers that say viewership is off 10 percent this season among men aged 18 to 34, a crucial group for advertisers.
Zucker said he doesn't believe it's a coincidence that Nielsen's measurement of young male viewership has increased over the past three weeks after network complaints became public.
[...]
Zucker also said the networks had put on several new shows this fall that appealed to females, like NBC's "Miss Match," CBS' "Joan of Arcadia" and ABC's "Karen Sisco" and "Hope & Faith."
"Where's 'Chuck & Matt'?" Zucker asked. "If we just keep putting on shows that aren't necessarily going to appeal to young men, we're making a mistake. We're standing at the front of that line."
(On a side note, I kinda like "Karen Sisco". Why does Jeff Zucker think it's a female-appeal show? It's got guns, a hot babe, and lots of wisecracking. I mean, if they were to add a wacky best friend for Karen to whom she dishes about her crappy luck with men, then I could see it. As is, if the show draws poorly among men, I think the marketing types are at fault. But maybe that's just me.)
And so now the candidates who couldn't quite clear the 50% pole are gearing up for the runoff. Bill White and Orlando Sanchez are all about the money right now.
White, CEO of the Wedge Group, an investment consortium, indicated he will spend whatever it takes in his bid to succeed term-limited Mayor Lee Brown.So confident was White of making the runoff that he mailed a fund-raising letter on Election Day to supporters who got it Wednesday. Polling in the days before the election showed him leading the race.
White did not say how much more he expects to spend from his own pocket.
"I don't know how much it will be," White said. "But I do know that we will have more volunteers and small donations than Mr. Sanchez."
To counter White's ability to dip into his own pocket, Sanchez said he intends to focus on his anti-tax message, which includes streamlining City Hall.He expects to get considerable support from the Harris County Republican Party, which spent several hundred thousand dollars in the general election attacking White, the former chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, as a liberal Democrat.
During that campaign, Sanchez sometimes downplayed his support from Republicans, boasting of support from Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas GOP leaders in directed mail-outs to Republican voters but not to Democrats.
White, similarly, emphasized his Democratic background before grass-roots Democrats, while focusing on other issues in other appearances.
Last week, Perry visited Houston to help with a fund-raiser for Sanchez. But they did not conduct the joint news conference that typically accompanies such visits just before an election.
Sanchez said he has not heard from national Republican leaders about whether they will help fund his runoff campaign.
[A]n emergency trip to Washington last month to appeal for Republican National Committee cash netted him nothing in the way of immediate relief, according to GOP sources.[...]
According to a GOP source, Sanchez's financial prospects will not improve in a runoff, particularly against White.
"The RNC made no promises to Orlando when he asked for a million, and they also said, 'If it's White [in the runoff], forget it.' The cavalry has not come, and from what I was hearing, the cavalry ain't coming."
As for Turner endorsing someone, I think he'll either endorse White or he'll endorse no one. Endorsing Sanchez would make him as popular with his Democratic colleagues in the Lege as Ron Wilson is. It's not out of the question, but it would sure look spiteful. Turner and Sanchez didn't agree on a whole lot of issues as well, so it would be hard to take such an endorsement seriously. You just never know, though.
Elsewhere, Annise Parker and Bruce Tatro are ready to go at it. Tatro thinks he's in good shape, and maybe he is.
At first blush, it may appear that Tatro has the more difficult task. Parker, who won 42 percent of the vote Tuesday, outpolled him by more than 2 to 1.But Tatro points out that the runoff is a new race and that he has until the Dec. 6 runoff to catch Parker.
"Without rail and Sylvester (mayoral candidate Sylvester Turner) on the ballot, those dynamics work in my favor," he said. "I'm optimistic."
There's another factor that can work in Parker's favor, and it's in the City Council runoff races, in particular the one between Bert Keller and Ronald Green.
With Michael Berry winning the historically black Position 5, the contest between Keller and Green is considered key.Berry, who jettisoned his mayoral bid shortly before the filing deadline, said he had promised Keller, another white Republican, that he would not run against him. Instead, he ran for the Position 5 seat now held by term-limited Carroll Robinson.
The seat had been held by blacks since Judson Robinson Jr. became the city's first black councilman in 1971.
"I'm not going to say, and never have said, that this is a black seat, but I know this is a sensitive issue from a community perspective," said Dwight Boykins, who trailed Berry with 25.1 percent of the vote after a campaign season rife with racial overtones.
Boykins is director of governmental affairs and community relations for Texas Southern University.
Keller was upbeat Wednesday, saying he has run a positive campaign and will not change.
"This whole conspiracy stuff about some people wanting to keep blacks out of City Hall is just confusing people," he said. "Obviously, there's no conspiracy or a lot of the right-wing members of the Republican Party would not have opposed me.
"Now that some of that is all over, you have a two-candidate race and everybody will completely focus on the merits and the issues. I'm running on efficiency."
Tom DeLay continues to catch heat for his shameless shilling of Bacardi's corporate interests at the potential expense of every other company in America that would like some day to do business in Cuba. It's so bad that some House Republicans may do the unthinkable and actually defy his authority.
To the dismay of Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and some large corporations, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is seeking to insert a controversial Cuba trademark measure into the defense authorization bill, which is now in conference.DeLay’s bill — as well as alternative approach crafted by Flake and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) — were both crafted so that the U.S. trademark laws would be in compliance with a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling. The WTO has held that parts of a law passed in 1999 violate the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights and has given the United States until the end of this year to change it.
Critics of DeLay’s bill say the measure would only benefit rum maker Bacardi-Martini Inc. and harm other businesses that have a significant financial interest in a post-Fidel Castro Cuba.
The majority leader has repeatedly criticized Castro and has vigorously fought legislative efforts to normalize relations with the communist regime. DeLay believes his legislative fix, which has not been formally introduced, would protect U.S. interests and hurt Castro.
Flake calls DeLay’s arguments "baloney," adding, "He's wrong. … [His] bill would only help one company."
The Arizona legislator says businesses "are incensed" about the possibility of DeLay’s bill being signed into law, adding that he is planning to talk directly with [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert on the issue. That conversation is expected to take place within the next week.
Companies that support Flake’s bill include DaimlerChrysler, DuPont, Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Halliburton, Eastman Kodak, and the Grocery Manufacturers of America.These companies point out that there are more than 5,000 trademarks registered in Cuba that are vulnerable to counterfeiting and infringement.
Industry lobbyists say they have to tread lightly, acknowledging the awkwardness of taking on DeLay.
Flake and three House Democrats last month notified the House and Senate committees on armed services of the DeLay bill. The Oct. 14 letter stated, “It is important to note that the [DeLay language] did not go through the committee process. … It would be unfortunate if the purported ‘fix’ language also was not properly reviewed in the Judiciary Committee.”A House Armed Services aide declined to comment on the fate of the DeLay language, saying only that a vote on the defense authorization conference report is expected soon.
John Ullyot, a spokesman for the Senate Armed Services Committee, declined to comment but pointed out the DeLay language was not included in either the House or Senate bills.
Lobbyists who support Flake’s measure say they expect DeLay to attach his language to any vehicle that is moving through Congress this year.
(On a side note, we now know one of the House Judiciary Committee members who were complaining anonymously in the previous installment of this saga. The others are all Democrats, so they don't count as far as DeLay is concerned.)
Thanks as always to AJ Garcia for the tip.
Perry's perks go to big spenders, says the Chron. Fetch me the smelling salts, quick!
In a solicitation delivered to companies and business-related groups this week, the governor's office asked for donations ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 to fund Perry's new "TexasOne" program for recruiting new businesses.About 30 invitations, including one to the Greater Houston Partnership, were sent, Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said.
[...]
Donors at all levels are promised invitations to business briefings hosted by the governor. Additional incentives are keyed to the size of the contribution.
Tier 1 members, those contributing $50,000 a year for three years, are offered participation in an annual quail hunt with the governor at "one of Texas' premier ranches."
Tier 2 donors, those giving $25,000 annually for three years, would be invited to a luncheon at the governor's mansion.
And before anyone starts carping about quid pro quo and stuff like that, I'll remind you that it's wrong and unethical to link legislative activity to campaign contributions, and if that doesn't shut you up we'll start saying it's un-American, too. Off with your heads!
So what will "TexasOne" be spending its money on, anyway?
Funds raised would help pay for a recruitment campaign that, in addition to advertising and trade shows, would include VIP trips for business executives to high-profile events, such as February's Super Bowl in Houston.According to the information packet delivered to potential donors, such events will feature "red carpet treatment throughout: flight into Texas, limousine transportation, 4-star hotel accommodations ... tickets/box seats for event, personalized clothing (jackets, etc.) for each guest, gifts, etc."
If they mayoral runoff leaves you cold, there will be other races to settle in December as well. The Comptroller's race is down to Annise Parker versus Bruce Tatro. Parker had 42%, Tatro 21%, and three other candidates had between 10 and 15% each. Two items of interest: One, even though this article has a 1:57 AM time stamp and the one on the Mayor's race is from 6:51 AM, this one specifically names December 6 for the runoff, while the more recent article says nothing. Make of that what you will.
Two is about the candidate who came in fourth and was running fifth early on.
[Gabriel] Vasquez, who changed his political affiliation to the Republican Party earlier this year, is still trying to establish his conservative credentials. He has been threatened with censure by the local GOP, however, after he voted in October against a tax cut the party supported.Vasquez, who has served two terms on City Council and could have run again under city term limits, risked his virtually guaranteed district council position to run for controller.
Although Vasquez said he had no intention of running for higher office, Tatro contended that it was "no small secret" that Vasquez was running for Congress and was using the controller campaign to test his viability as a Republican candidate.
Speaking of the At Large races, there appear to be two more runoffs. Unfortunately, the article has very little hard data, so we go instead to the County Clerk and scroll to Page Four, where we see that Mark Ellis, Gordon Quan, and (sigh) Boy Wonder Berry have won, while Shelley Sekula Rodriguez Joyner Kersee Cougar Mellencamp Gibbs and Bert "Love Potion #9" Keller have to do it again, against Peter Brown and Ronald Green, respectively.
Finally, there will be more runoffs in the Council district races. The one I care about most is District H, where for once there will be an election where I can't possibly lose as Hector Longoria failed to make the cut, leaving Adrian Garcia and Diana Davila Martinez to face off. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that whoever spent all that money mailing out hit pieces against Garcia (and I got another one on Monday) spent it in vain.
Bill White led the pack, but as expected there will be a runoff, with White facing Orlando Sanchez. Sylvester Turner finished third, which has to be a tough blow for him.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, White had 38 percent of the vote to Sanchez's 33 percent and Turner's 29 percent.Six lesser-known candidates barely registered in the vote.
[...]
Sanchez, who nearly defeated Mayor Lee Brown two years ago by assembling a coalition of conservatives and Hispanics, was the presumed front-runner at the outset of the race. But polls showed his support slipping, with significant chunks of self-identified Republicans and Hispanics turning to White.
Initially, City Councilman Michael Berry's candidacy threatened Sanchez's support among Republicans. But Berry dropped out of the race at the last minute and endorsed Sanchez.
As Sanchez dropped in the polls, he launched an increasingly nasty attack against White. He called him a liberal -- considered a dirty word among some of the GOP voters Sanchez was struggling to hold onto; accused him of trying to block U.S. troops from voting; and linked him to unpopular Mayor Lee Brown, from whom all three candidates worked to distance themselves during the race.
White responded with a mailing showing a picture of an empty chair and listing Sanchez's poor attendance record at city budget workshops while he was on City Council, his lack of management experience and his troubled and short-lived career as a Harris County probation officer.
Sanchez quit his probation office job under threat of being fired for missing work to campaign for public office.
Exit polling conducted for the Chronicle by the University of Houston Center for Public Policy indicated that White got 35 percent of Hispanic voters, 17 percent of black voters, 55 percent of white voters and 70 percent of Asian-American voters.The exit polling also showed that White drew 53 percent from self-described moderates, 58 percent from liberals and 28 percent from conservatives.
White's support among Republicans, 30 percent, flew in the face of heavy advertising from the Harris County Republican Party, which launched a big campaign to label White a "liberal Democrat." He was chairman of the Texas Democratic Party from 1995 to 1998.
[...]
As the 2003 campaign wore on, Turner and Sanchez appeared unable to maintain their bases.
Turner polled about 75 percent among black voters, according to exit polling, and drew less than 10 percent among Republicans, whites and Hispanics.
Turner was hurt by his support for Rep. Tom Craddick of Midland for state House speaker.
Fellow black Reps. Garnet Coleman and Senfronia Thompson pounded Turner for that and endorsed White.
"White is the first white candidate since the (former Mayor Kathy) Whitmire days who has really gone out and made that effort to woo blacks," Jones said.
Sanchez, meanwhile, lost his steam among Hispanic voters, who helped galvanize his 2001 campaign in hopes of electing the city's first Hispanic mayor.
The exit polling indicated that Sanchez got 55 percent of Hispanic voters, compared with more than 70 percent in his 2001 runoff.
Tatcho Mindiola, director of Mexican-American studies at the University of Houston, said Sanchez, a Cuban-American, has lost stature among historically Democratic-voting Mexican-Americans because he is a Republican.
That probably kept his totals down Tuesday and could hurt him in a runoff.
"It's been two years, and people have taken a close look at him," Mindiola said. "That didn't help Orlando, who seems to be captive of a very rigid element inside the Republican Party."
Sanchez made a hard right turn, coming out against Metro's plan and siding with tax-cut conservatives after fellow Republican Michael Berry dropped out of the race.
But that didn't win Sanchez as much Republican support as he had hoped.
Besides, party affiliation appeared less important this year than in 2001, when Republicans heavily supported Sanchez. Only 10 percent of voters in the exit polls listed party affiliation as their top consideration in selecting a mayoral candidate. Of those, 57 percent voted for Sanchez.
Thirty-six percent of voters polled indicated that "ability to do the job" was the most influential criterion in voting for a mayoral candidate. Of those, 51 percent voted for White, 36 voted for Turner and 10 percent voted for Sanchez.
We should find out this week when the runoff will be. My best guess is Saturday, December 6 - the first Saturday in December seems to be the default day. Anything can happen in a runoff, where turnout is often measured in single digits. If you want to see the person you voted for actually win instead of just making it to the finals, you'd better clear your calendar in early December.
Woo hoo! Let me hear those sweet sounds of concession:
Anti-rail group Texans for True Mobility broke up its party at midnight but refused to concede defeat until the final precincts report. Rail foes acknowledged likely defeat, however, while maintaining the narrow margin shows voters were skeptical of Metro's plan."This is far from a mandate," said Michael Stevens, chairman of TTM.
Paul Bettencourt, Harris County tax assessor-collector, said "Metro needs to heed that there are serious concerns in the community that their plan doesn't fix the problem."
The next step for Metro is to obtain federal matching funds. Otherwise it won't be able to afford to build the rail lines. U.S. Rep. John Culberson and fellow rail critic House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, vowed during the campaign to fight for federal dollars on behalf of Metro if voters endorsed the plan.
"This vote does reflect the desperation of Houstonians for immediate traffic relief," said Culberson, R-Houston, one of Metro's harshest critics. "The closeness reflects deep flaws in Metro's plan."
But Culberson said despite his dissatisfaction, he will follow the voters' will.
"My job now is to move forward with this new instruction from the voters," Culberson said. "I've got my marching orders."
El Gato has a long and detailed post about Comptroller Strayhorn's recent announcement that the state of Texas will kick back $8.7 million to the city of Houston, the Super Bowl Host Committee, and Harris County to help defray expenses from Super Bowl XXXVIII. That represents the anticipated extra sales tax revenue that the Super Bowl is going to generate.
"Approximately 104,000 happy visitors will take back warm memories of Texas--after they leave quite a few dollars here," Strayhorn said. "Texas will be a winner, no matter who wins the big game."Senate Bill 275, passed by the 78th Legislature, requires the Comptroller to forecast revenue gains from increased collections from sales, motor vehicle, hotel occupancy and alcohol taxes in the market area of a major sporting event. The law is being used for the first time with Super Bowl XXXVIII, scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 1, 2004, at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Based on a formula in S.B. 275, a portion of the expected tax revenue increase will be placed in a new "Other Events Trust Fund" to help defray expenses related to the Super Bowl.
Strayhorn estimates visitors will spend an average of $373 per day for 4.3 days, leaving $165.5 million in the Houston area. Her estimate includes lodging ($68.8 million), bars and restaurants ($26.8 million), entertainment ($15.3 million), transportation ($13.7 million) and merchandise and other retail sales ($41 million).
In addition, the Houston Super Bowl Host Committee will spend $10.1 million dollars preparing Reliant Stadium and other facilities, media and team hotels, transportation, security and law enforcement, deploying 10,000 volunteers and hosting nearly 4,000 members of the world media.
(On a side note, the Planning Committee will no doubt be pleased to hear that none of the three hotels I mentioned above have any vacancies for the period of January 30 - February 2. I checked room rates for the week of December 29 - January 2 instead.)
There are two other things that stand out to me. One is that multiplier which I mentioned before. The value that the state is using is causing various respectable economists to choke with laughter.
"You probably will not find an academic economist who isn't critical of these numbers" from the state, the NFL and the host committees, said Dennis Coates, a University of Maryland sports economist. "You will only find a comptroller or paid consultant coming up with those numbers."Several sports economists have told the Houston Chronicle that the Super Bowl will have a $20 million to $50 million economic benefit for the Houston region. One economist has said it will have no effect on taxable sales at all.
[...]
The comptroller's office relied in many instances on a multiplier of 2.3 to calculate indirect spending and total spending -- meaning direct spending was more than doubled in their estimates.
Tamara Plaut, senior economist in the comptroller's office, called that multiplier "pretty conservative." It was derived from economic models used by the state of Texas, she said.
But Coates, the University of Maryland economist, said of the 2.3 multiplier: "Oh, my God, I think that's outrageous. That's absolutely ludicrous. That's way too high."
He agreed with Stanford sports economist Roger Noll that a multiplier of about 1.2 ought to be used -- meaning that direct spending increases indirect spending very little.
Philip Porter, a sports economist at the University of South Florida and director of the school's Center for Economic Policy Analysis, said the multiplier is way too high and the NFL, the host committees and now the comptroller's office are using economic models designed to overstate the economic impact of the Super Bowl.
"I can guarantee you that there won't be any $8.7 million increase in state taxes due to the Super Bowl," Porter said.
James LeBas, chief revenue estimator for the comptroller's office, said, "Reasonable minds will differ. I welcome diversity of opinion."
The other thing I don't quite understand is why Strayhorn is making a big deal out of this at all. Senate Bill 275, the vehicle that allows for giving front money to Super Bowl committees, was designed to give power to the Governor's office. From the press release on SB 275:
Senate Bill 275 renames the Texas Department of Economic Development as the Texas Economic Development and Tourism Office and makes it a division of the Governors Office with an executive director appointed by the governor.
I agree with El Gato here - this smells like a bad gamble to me, and I want to know how it turns out. And isn't it awfully convenient how there's always money for this sort of thing? At least we know where our priorities are.
A trial date has been set for the redistricting lawsuits, but strangely enough I can't tell what it actually is. There's a bunch of motions and hearings going on, so read it and see which date seems the most likely.
The federal court gave lawyers for the state until Friday to propose an order on how county election officials should proceed in drawing new precinct lines, electing precinct chairs and issuing voter registration cards.Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the counties are required to prepare for the election using the plan that was in place in 2002 until the U.S. Justice Department rules on whether the Legislature's plan legally protects minority voting rights. But state law requires election administrators to prepare as if the new plan is lawful.
U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Patrick Higginbotham told the state's lawyers the court may want to have the election administrators continue to organize under the 2002 plan until the Justice Department or the court rules on the Legislature's plan.
"One approach may be to say we have a legal plan, and we're going forward to try the legality of the proposed plan," Higginbotham said. "Until we get (the Justice Department's) preclearance, we have a legal plan in place."
Andy Taylor, an outside counsel representing Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, said the Justice Department has until Dec. 23 to rule on the Texas congressional redistricting plan.
Higginbotham said the court can try the case as if Justice had approved the plan and then make its own ruling immediately after the Justice Department acts. However, many of the redistricting lawyers believe the Justice ruling will occur before the December trial.
The judges also granted a request from attorney Anthony Griffin to hold a hearing Dec. 8 on a motion to throw out the Legislature's plan with a summary judgment. Griffin represents Democratic U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas, both African-American members of Congress.Minority groups say the Legislature's plan dilutes the voting strength of minority voters. Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the GI Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The GI Forum is represented by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Paul Smith, a lawyer representing Democratic plaintiffs, noted for the court that he is arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in early December on whether partisan redistricting should be restricted by law. An outcome in that case could directly impact Texas because the Legislature redrew the state's congressional district boundaries only to give Republican candidates an advantage in the elections.
"I don't know that there is any way we can deal with the cloud on the horizon as to partisanship in redistricting," Higginbotham said.
Smith told Higginbotham that if the court ignores the Supreme Court hearings, it runs the risk of being overturned if the nation's high court rules against partisan redistricting in March or April.
"We do see a danger that a new map will take effect and then be ruled illegal three months later," Smith said.
Via Joanne McNeil comes this Wired article about electronic voting in Australia and why their system is more robust, more secure, and way less controversial.
Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What's more, it was accomplished from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a state election in 2001.
"Why on earth should (voters) have to trust me -- someone with a vested interest in the project's success?" he said. "A voter-verified audit trail is the only way to 'prove' the system's integrity to the vast majority of electors, who after all, own the democracy."As for the costs of securing and storing such receipts, [software engineer Mark] Quinn said, "Did anyone ever say that democracy was meant to be cheap?"
Quinn also believes that voting systems must use open-source software.
"The keystone of democracy is information," he said. "You have a big problem when people don't have enough information to make up their minds or, even worse, they have misleading information and make up their minds in a way that would be contrary to what they would decide if they had the full story.
"Any transparency you can add to that process is going to enhance the democracy and, conversely, any information you remove from that process is going to undermine your democracy."
[...]
Quinn, who was working in Chicago for Motorola during the 2000 presidential election, says he is "gob smacked" by what he sees happening among U.S. electronic voting machine makers, whom he says have too much control over the democratic process.
It has been widely reported that Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, one of the biggest U.S. voting-machine makers, purposely disabled some of the security features in its software. According to reports the move left a backdoor in the system through which someone could enter and manipulate data. In addition, Walden O'Dell, Diebold Election System's chief executive, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party. He stated recently that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.''
"The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their system is to be able to rig elections," Quinn said. "It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election."
"I can't imagine what it must be like to be an American in the midst of this and watching what's going on," Quinn added. "Democracy is for the voters, not for the companies making the machines.... I would really like to think that when it finally seeps in to the collective American psyche that their sacred Democracy has been so blatantly abused, they will get mad."
It's Election Day, and if conditions aren't ripe today for good turnout, no such conditions exist: A warm, sunny day, a very high-profile mayoral race, an almost-as-high profile referendum, and only one unopposed candidate on the ballot. Early voting is up 30% over 2001. If you haven't voted yet, you've got twelve hours to do so today. If you don't know where to vote, click here and find out.
UPDATE: Rob is writing again, and he has his endorsements up. If other local bloggers have an endorsement post, send me your link or leave it in the comments and I'll add it here.
UPDATE: Another Rice Grad isn't voting here this year, but he does have his preferences.
UPDATE: Oopsie. Bad eSlate machines!
Those who showed up early at the Holiday Inn at 7787 Katy Freeway to vote found that the eSlate machines that were supposed to make voting so much easier and more accurate were on the fritz. While technicians made repairs, election judges passed out sheets of paper torn in half, along with sample ballots, and telling voters to write in their votes.David Puckett said he sat down on the floor and spent 25 minutes scribbling down his choices while other voters just took the time to write in their votes on the top races before dropping their homemade ballots into a pasteboard box. He said an election judge told him to write on the back of the paper if he ran out of room and then told him he might need to vote again this afternoon if the eSlate machines come back up. Then, Puckett said, the judges decided a second vote wasn't such a good idea.
"They're making up rules as they go," he said. " It's unbelievable."
Puckett's worried his vote won't count.
"I will come back if I need to. I want my vote to count," he said. "It's my privilege. It's my duty. I want my people to win.
Just a few tidbits from the news...
Texas Congressional Democrats have been meeting with the Justice Department to argue that the new map violates the Voting Rights Act. As we know, Justice Department approval is necessary for the new map to take effect.
A federal judge has set December 8 as the trial date for the various lawsuits. A pretrial hearing is being held today to see about combining the existing lawsuits (the League of United Latin American Citizens has filed the most recent) into one. The Washington Post has some historical background.
In the "why should this be any different? department, Democrats and Republicans are arguing about whether the new map can be implemented in 2004 regardless of the outcome of the Justice review and the federal lawsuits.
None of this has stopped the flood of candidates announcing for various US and State House seats. The Quorum Report has a number of such items, and the Austin Chronicle has more.
Thanks to Save Texas Reps for various links.
Congratulations to Elisa and Markos for the birth of their son!
UPDATE: Geez, how did I miss that Dawn and Kevin have a new baby as well? Congrats all around!
This is a bit of a shock, but no surprise.
All-Star closer Billy Wagner was traded Monday from the Houston Astros to the Philadelphia Phillies.Philadelphia sent Houston right-hander Brandon Duckworth, and minor league right-handers Taylor Buchholz and Ezequiel Astacio.
The Astros should be a contender next season if they stay healthy (this is not a trivial concern, unfortunately), thanks in part to the organizational myopia in Chicago and St Louis. If they can find a league-average catcher to replace the giant sucking void that Brad Ausmus leaves behind, their lineup will be at least reasonable in all eight spots. (How bad was Ausmus last year? You could credibly claim that prior to the All Star break, when his "bat" finally awoke for the year, Wade Miller was a bigger offensive threat than he was.) They're by no means a juggernaut, and there's always the Jimy Factor to worry about, but they're in decent shape.
That said, Wagner was right about one thing: Drayton McLane's whining about payroll is older than Strom Thurmond's pediatrician. If that eight million winds up back in Drayton's pocket instead of being invested in the product he puts on the field, Wagner's criticism will be fully justified.
You may wonder why I'm spending so much time and figurative ink on the smear job against Adrian Garcia, which is something that maybe five people reading this have a direct stake in. I'm pissed that someone who may or may not live in this district, indeed may or may not even live in Houston, is doing this sort of cowardly thing to try and affect this election. I don't necessarily have a beef with the content of the mailers themselves - they're misleading and trivially debunked as I've already shown, but they're no worse than what you see every damn year. A good candidate, and I believe Adrian Garcia is a good candidate, can stand up to that sort of attack most of the time.
No, what chaps my ass is that the jerks behind this thing are thumbing their noses at us under a cloak of secrecy. We can't evaluate the reasons behind the attack because we don't know who it is. We don't know if this is someone in District H who may or may not have a legitimate gripe against Adrian Garcia, or if it's some outside agitator who is working clandestinely for another candidate, or if it's just some wanker with too much money on his hands. All we can do is speculate and try to track them down.
It's for this reason that I hold groups like the Texas Association of Business and Texans for True Mobility in such contempt. Both groups, through their mouthpiece Andy Taylor, claim that their members would suffer somehow if their contributions towards electing Republican legislators or defeating a Metro referendum were made public. I say that's just tough. Those of us who are directly affected by their actions have a right to know what their stake is in the outcome that they're trying to shape. How do we know that the TAB contributors are really all Texas businesses and not companies from elsewhere trying to curry favor from Tom DeLay? It's not as if the very notion is absurd, after all. How do we know that TTM members are all in the area Metro services? It's not as if someone like James Leininger doesn't have an anti-rail track record, more money than God, and a fetish for secrecy.
In a way, the skulduggery behind the anti-Garcia mailer does Hector Longoria no favors, either. I'm ready to accept the notion that the Longoria campaign ordered or at least knew about this hit piece based on the fact that the return address on the mailer can be traced to a Republican PR firm and the fact that Longoria hasn't responded to an email asking him about it, and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. Obviously, this falls short of reasonable doubt, but as the person perceived to be the biggest beneficiary, the mailer puts Longoria under suspicion. If he really had nothing to do with it, he ought to be as upset as everyone else is.
So yeah, I think this is bigger than just a kefuffle in a local election. It's probably just a matter of time before it happens in one of your local elections, too.
After I received the second anti-Adrian Garcia flyer from the group that's masquerading as "Citizens for a Better America", I searched the Chronicle's archives to get some context on one of the quotes they're using to smear Garcia. I've now searched the Austin American Statesman and the San Antonio Express News for the others. Here are the results.
Quote from flyer: People need to "change their habits and develop more safety-minded type attitude." (Austin American Statesman, 12/24/91)
From the archive:
Stun gun sales rise with crime in Houston
Author: AP AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN Date: December 24, 1991 Publication: Austin American-Statesman Page Number: B3 Word Count: 336HOUSTON (AP) - With fear about the city's robbery and homicide rates on the rise, Houston retailers say stun guns and other "personal safety devices" have become popular Christmas presents.
"They don't feel safe, and they want their loved ones to be safe, and this gives them security," said Ron Hardman, manager of The Spy Factory. "They say they hate to have to buy this kind of gift for Christmas, but they think it's a good one."
Quote from flyer: Believes "Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their own neighborhoods." (San Antonio Express News, 12/13/00)
From the archive:
December 13, 2000 San Antonio Express-News
Family gun safety needed to avoid problems, misuseColumn
With so many guns on the street today, some people feel owning a firearm is the best way to stay safe at home. But for curious children and untrained individuals, a gun can be a ticking time bomb. Adrian Garcia, 39, is a police officer, husband and father of a 5-year-old girl. In his 20 years with the police department, Garcia has seen the problem of firearm misuse firsthand. "Nowadays, more and more people are arming themselves with handguns in order to solve their problems,
[View the full-text article, 418 words]
We'll see if this winds up having an effect on the District H race. A few other tidbits from the Woodland Heights chat board: At least one person has contacted District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal to see if any campaign laws have been broken; Hector Longoria has not replied to email from a WH person asking him if he had any knowledge of or involvement in this mailer; the faux CFABA group has apparently also targeted Herlinda Garcia (HCC Trustee District 3). Stay tuned.
Here's another Baby Boomers Discover The Secret To A Happier Life story. They've determined that if they work less, they have more time to do things that aren't work.
John de Graaf, 57, a Seattle freelance television producer and writer, was among the organizers of a Take Back Your Time day, held Oct. 24.He called it "a national conscious-raising event," and it included teach-ins and other events around the country to discuss ways to balance work and life.
The date came nine weeks before the end of the year, "and that symbolizes the fact that we Americans now work an average of nine full weeks more each year than do our peers in Western Europe," de Graaf says.
Americans may be richer, de Graaf says, "but they're overworked, overscheduled and overwhelmed -- in short, just stressed out."
Bill White continues to be the frontrunner in the latest poll taken on the upcoming election.
In the race to replace term-limited Mayor Lee Brown, White has 35 percent support while Sanchez has 25 percent and Turner has 19 percent.[...]
At the beginning of the mayoral campaign, some analysts questioned if White, an Anglo businessman, could succeed against two better-known public figures with ethnic and partisan identities. Sanchez, a former city councilman, is a Hispanic Republican, and Turner, a state representative, is an African-American Democrat.
But White is running at least second in all three major demographic groups. He leads among whites, splits the Hispanic vote with Sanchez and draws about a fifth of the black support. Just under half of the black support goes to Turner, with most of the rest undecided.
White -- former chairman of the state Democratic Party -- split 70 percent of the Democratic support evenly with Turner, and also drew almost 30 percent of the respondents who identified themselves as Republicans. Fewer than 10 percent of Democrats supported Sanchez.
Sanchez drew support of half the respondents who identified themselves as Republicans, with just 2 percent supporting Turner.
"Bill White seems to be putting together what academics call the rainbow coalition," Stein said.
Sanchez, who would be the city's first Hispanic mayor, appears to be losing the base that nearly helped him beat Brown in a 2001 runoff. The poll indicates that about 25 percent of voters who said they supported Sanchez in 2001 now support White.
If White gets into a runoff, he would fare well against either Sanchez or Turner, according to the poll.
In a hypothetical runoff with Sanchez, respondents preferred White 49 percent to 33 percent. Paired with Turner, White got 48 percent to 26 percent.
Turner and Sanchez are statistically tied at about 40 percent in a hypothetical runoff.
Though White leads the poll, his support is the softest while Turner's is strongest. More than three-fourths of Turner supporters described their support as "strong," compared with 69 percent strong support for Sanchez and 58 percent for White.
"I think that's because Bill White is a new face to a lot of voters and they still don't know a lot about him other than what they have seen in this campaign," Murray said.
For that matter, Sanchez isn't doing that well with Anglo voters, and he's no longer close personal television buddies with the Bush family, as Rick Casey notes.
Two years ago, the president and his mother and father had jumped into the Houston mayor's race by this point.President Bush had endorsed Orlando Sanchez. Former President Bush and Barbara cut a warm television spot for him.
This summer, political pros were predicting the same dynamic. The national Republicans would love to be able to show off an attractive Republican Hispanic as mayor of the nation's fourth-largest city.
A Mayor Sanchez could be an appreciated campaigner in some key states, including the still-crucial state of Florida.
But days before the election, the Bushes are nowhere to be seen.
This is not an oversight. President Bush recently spoke by phone to several Houston leaders, asking their take on the race.
What he heard from a number of sources was that Sanchez was not doing well.
The president also heard that the Republicans would benefit from supporting Sanchez only if he did a good job as mayor, an "if" made large by Sanchez's sketchy job background.
Chances are Bush was not surprised. A number of his friends and supporters were early supporters of Bill White.
In other poll news, light rail is holding to its lead though still not polling over 50%. The local experts expect it to pass, but I'll be nervous until the numbers are crunched. Finally, pretty much every other race is a question mark as nobody seems to know who any of the candidates are. "None of the above" still isn't an option on the eSlate machines, so we'll know soon enough. BTW, am I the only person wondering what the margin of error on these numbers is?
November 1 is Dia de los Muertos. It also would have been the 90th birthday of my paternal grandmother, Jessie Mary McLaren Kuffner, who passed away in 1986. In honor of her and in observance of the holiday, this is my ofrenda.
My grandmother lived most of her life in a two-family house on Oakland Avenue on Staten Island. She and my grandfather and their six kids lived in the upstairs part of the house, with the living area on the second floor and all of the bedrooms in the attic.
Nana and I were close from the day I was born. My parents lived in the downstairs residence when I made my debut in the world - according to my dad, he rushed upstairs to wake them up and let them know he had a son. (I was born at 6:45 AM. I've always been a morning person.)
My grandfather was in the last stages of the leukemia that was to kill him in another three months when I was born. After he died, Nana spent a lot of time with me - to grieve, to keep herself company, to get to know this new person that carried her late husband's name. She told me once that when she was feeling lonely, she'd come downstairs and ask if she could have me for awhile, and we'd sit upstairs together for hours on end.
It was Nana who taught me the alphabet and got me started reading. She had a little metal clipboard and a set of magnetic letters that she kept with her other toys in a box under one of her couches. That was my alltime favorite toy when I was little, and I'd make a beeline for it whenever I came to visit.
We moved into a house about a half mile away when I was three, but my siblings and I would get to sleep over at Nana's on a regular basis. She had an old-fashioned claw-footed tub that was way more fun for taking baths in than the plain old tub at home. The bedrooms up in the attic still had the wall decorations that my dad and his sibs put up, which was a neverending source of entertainment for us as well.
From 1960 to 1974, Nana taught second grade at Sacred Heart Elementary School, the same school that her kids had attended. She was my second grade teacher. I called her "Mrs. Kuffner" in class, though legend has it that I slipped up once and called her Nana when trying to explain why I was missing a homework assignment. I don't recall the incident, but it was one of her favorite stories from the classroom.
Nana learned to drive late in life. She owned two cars, a blue Nova that got stolen in 1973, and a green Nova that she got as its replacement. She called that car Twosie. It was a 1969 model and had about 20,000 miles on it in 1973. Thirteen years later, when I inherited it after her death, it had 54,000 miles. She was the proverbial little old lady who only drove to church on Sunday, except that she walked to church as often as not.
I learned to drive on that Nova, since it was an automatic and my parents only had stick shifts. I did learn how to drive a stick as well, but Staten Island is hilly, and I was prone to stalling. Nana's Nova was always available for me to borrow, and by the time I was driving, we'd moved to another house just two blocks away from her. This gave my sisters, who shamelessly took advantage of my eagerness to drive, a dilemma: Make me drive the stick and risk being the cause of a traffic incident, or accept the Nova and risk being seen by someone they knew.
Nana knew no strangers. She knew almost everyone in our neighborhood anyway, but everyone got a smile and a hello anyway. If you were a grandchild, you also usually got an invitation to reach into a coat pocket and collect whatever currency happened to be in there as well.
Nana was not an accomplished cook like my other grandmother, but she made a mean apple pie. I was a very appreciative audience for her pies, and even though no one quite makes them the way she did, apple pie is still my first choice for dessert.
Nana also had a world-class sweet tooth. There was always an open bag of candy hidden somewhere in her house. Butter mints, Mary Janes, Life Savers, all kinds of candies, she could never pass them by in the supermarket.
Nana was a model of consistency. Once, she considered replacing the wallpaper in her living room, which had been put up by Charles Senior years before and which was fading and peeling in places. What she wanted was the same pattern as before. When it was determined that it was no longer made, she decided against the project. She liked the walls as they were and didn't want a different look in the room.
Nana's favorite charity was a little secondhand shop that was run by the church. She volunteered there, and often picked up geegaws and clothes there, for us and for herself. This drove my mother slightly crazy, since the merchandise wasn't exactly high-end.
Nana loved singing songs to us kids. Mister Frog Went A-Courting was a favorite, though the lyrics she knew were different from these. When she got to the verse "And what do you think they had for supper?" she would sing the answer "A fried mosquito and bread and butter" in a voice of horrified delight. It cracked us up every time.
After she retired, Nana travelled around the country as often as she could visiting her children and grandchildren. Back then, Delta Air Lines had a Senior Citizen Annual Pass, where for a single fee you could fly wherever they went for the year. She had one main suitcase, a piece of green hardcover Samsonite on which she'd affixed the letter K in yellow tape. You could spot her luggage from across the airport.
She was visiting my Uncle Bill and his family when she died, on October 26, 1986. She had been to San Antonio to visit me and my cousins Ed, Matt, and Mike, the three sons of my Aunt Judy who were all attending UT-San Antonio, just two weeks before that. She missed by three months the first of her grandchildren to get married.
I could keep writing for hours about Nana. I think about her often and I miss her terribly. I know she would have loved Tiffany, and I know she would have loved visiting us here. Mostly, I know she would have loved the many great-grandchildren that have come on the scene since 1990. How I wish they all could have gotten to know her.
It's appropriate that Dia de los Muertos falls on Nana's birthday. It's a holiday that she would have liked, with its spirituality, its connection to family, and with its often offbeat and deeply personal touches. I will never get to celebrate it with her, but on this day I celebrate it for her.
Happy birthday, Nana. I love you, I miss you, and I will always remember you.
According to this story, most people in Houston have already decided how they're going to vote on Tuesday on the Metro referendum. That won't spare us from further advertising, of course, since each side needs to turn its voters out. But if when you see or hear an ad you say to yourself "Enough already, I've made up my mind", you can at least take comfort in knowing that you're not alone.
One item of interest:
The Business Committee Against Rail distributed fliers along some of the proposed train routes, warning businesses and homeowners that their properties could be seized by Metro for rail construction. The fliers also point out that many businesses went under because of construction of the Main Street line, which opens Jan. 1.
There's another anti-Adrian Garcia mailer going around, also purportedly from "Citizens for a Better America", and this time it came to my mailbox. Unlike the previous flyer, this one actually attacks a part of Garcia's record, but it's still amazingly flimsy.
Both sides show a photo of a man in a cap and gloves attempting to pry open a window, with a grainy photo of Garcia standing at a microphone (the pic is so fuzzy you can barely tell it's a mike) inset in the bottom right. Side one reads as follows:
In Houston:Crime is up 5%.
Robbery is up 12%.
Aggravated assault is up 3%.
Burglary is up 7%.All statistics are a comparison of the Houston 2002 and 2001 FBI Uniform Crime Report/January-December 2002.
Adrian Garcia serves as a cop under Lee Brown.
We need to tell him crime is on the rise.
Side two shows the same photos, with the burglar photo tinted red. It asks what Garcia, the Director of the anti-gang unit, thinks about "Houston's rising crime rate", and recycles the same three contextless quotes as before. Here they are, reprinted as they appear on the flyer, with my comments.
1. People need to "change their habits and develop more safety-minded type attitude." (Austin American Statesman, 12/24/91)
My comment: This sounds like standard crime-prevention advice. I'm at a loss to understand why the people behind this mailer think it's controversial.
2. Called citizen patrols "a crazy remedy." (Houston Chronicle, 12/03/02)
My comment: As I expected, this has to do with a story about vigilantism. I've reproduced the entire story below the More link, but here are the key grafs:
A band of residents of an East End neighborhood, fed up with cowering on their porches, has decided to respond to street gangs with a two-by-four to the head - and maybe worse.The loose collaboration that includes dads, military veterans and young men who spurned gangs has gone on the offensive, patrolling for gang members and attacking at least one when they believed they had caught him committing a crime.
"If we have to use violence, we'll use it," said Frank Black, the posse's leader.
The group began enforcing its own brand of street justice recently after seeking help from city officials and concluding that they couldn't count on Houston police to keep their neighborhood safe.
Black and his partners have agreed to suspend patrols for two weeks, however, after city officials promised to investigate the problem and put more officers on the streets.
Police added a warning that they will not tolerate vigilante justice and will treat lawbreakers the same, regardless of which side they're on.
[...]
Adrian Garcia , director the Anti-Gang Office, said forming an armed posse is "a crazy remedy. We would never encourage residents to do that."
A violent response to street thugs might only foment more violence, Garcia said. The gang task force, he said, instead tries to find creative, peaceful resolutions to street conflicts.
In a 1998 case in southeast Houston, Garcia 's office found that a family feud centering on two young lovers had sparked what seemed to be a gang war. The office began trying Monday to get to the root of the East End battles.
If a real resurgence in East End gang activity is occurring, Garcia said, it may be because some leaders convicted of crimes in the 1990s are making parole.
Garcia also noted that Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their neighborhoods to the degree that Black describes.
3. Believes "Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their own neighborhoods." (San Antonio Express News, 12/13/00)
My comment: Essentially the same quote that appeared in the above story. Presumably, it's the sort of thing that can be verified or contradicted by crime statistics. It makes sense to me, but there could be something to it. Regardless, it's a statement of fact, which the mailer presents as wrongheaded without any evidence.
I plan on contacting CFABA to let them know there's another piece floating around. We shall see if any evidence of their origins gets uncovered.
Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: TUE 20021203 20021203 20021203 02/00/00
Section: A
Page: 01
Edition: 3 STAR
Unhappy with city's response, neighbors take law in own hands / Group agrees to lull in civilian patrols after policereact
By ZANTO PEABODY
Staff
Correct: CORRECTION: This story misspelled the name of Houston Police Department Assistant Chief Joe Breshears. Correction published 12/4/02.
A band of residents of an East End neighborhood, fed up with cowering on their porches, has decided to respond to street gangs with a two-by-four to the head - and maybe worse.
The loose collaboration that includes dads, military veterans and young men who spurned gangs has gone on the offensive, patrolling for gang members and attacking at least one when they believed they had caught him committing a crime.
"If we have to use violence, we'll use it," said Frank Black, the posse's leader.
The group began enforcing its own brand of street justice recently after seeking help from city officials and concluding that they couldn't count on Houston police to keep their neighborhood safe.
Black and his partners have agreed to suspend patrols for two weeks, however, after city officials promised to investigate the problem and put more officers on the streets.
Police added a warning that they will not tolerate vigilante justice and will treat lawbreakers the same, regardless of which side they're on.
Assistant Chief Charles McClelland said the group's efforts could backfire and touch off a new gang skirmish - one between the residents and street thugs.
The posse confronted gangsters two weeks ago on a street corner and beat one with a plank after he tried to intimidate a young woman, Black said.
After Black informed city officials by e-mail that he had taken matters into his own hands, the Mayor's Anti-Gang Office began investigating, and Black agreed to the two-week grace period.
Black not only knows the battle could intensify, he hopes it will draw attention to his cause.
"I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "I'm scared. But we've been scared for a long time. I know somebody on our side's liable to get hurt or worse before somebody takes care of (the gangs)."
Black takes issue with what he sees as neglect from the Houston Police Department and the Anti-Gang Office. Gangs have their way on East End streets, he said, urinating in yards, selling drugs in plain view and robbing homes.
From his porch, Black said, he has not seen enough police to deter the criminals.
In addition to Black, the 13-member group includes a pipefitter, a man who resisted a gang invitation, a man whose wife was beaten by gang members, a young woman and eight other men.
Although she doesn't look especially tough, the woman is known in the neighborhood as a "pretty bad son-of-a-gun," fellow group members said.
Members who did not wish to be identified said they carried handguns on patrol last weekend and will do so again.
Two residents made their case to the City Council during a public comment session on Oct. 1. Since then, Black and his cohorts have gained an audience with police supervisors from their local South Central station, including Executive Assistant Chief Joe Brashears (SEE CORRECTION).
On Monday, after police learned that the Chronicle was looking into the issue, the blocks near Black's home were teeming with patrol cars and motorcycles.
Elisa Montes, a resident, said she wishes someone would do something about the gangs but fears that a mini-militia might do more harm than good.
"When they come looking for who hit their gang member, how do I know they won't come to my house?" Montes asked.
The working-class East End neighborhood near Jackson Middle School, at 5100 Polk, has its share of gang graffiti painted on warehouses and trash cans. Distant crackles, possibly from gunfire, could be heard from time to time Saturday night. A man was killed there three years ago during a gang initiation.
But to the casual observer, the neighborhood does not appear to be overrun by gangs. Children play in the parks, teenage girls walk home from school alone or in couples and residents work under jacked-up cars parked along the streets.
McClelland said that, while Black may see some gang activity, the area is not especially bad.
"There are no unique crime patterns," said McClelland, who heads South Bureau patrol units. "Crime is not out of control. Residents are not in life-threatening situations."
Police have investigated Black's many calls since early last year. McClelland said undercover officers could not confirm that the young men Black identified truly are gang members.
"Mr. Black definitely has some young people he doesn't like, and the feeling is definitely mutual," McClelland said. "But citizens still can't arm themselves to enforce the law."
A group of young men whom Black pointed out as gang members had the stereotypical look - including tattoos and baggy, sagging jeans - but they said they had no gang affiliation. One of them said they had shouting matches with Black but no physical fight.
Adrian Garcia , director the Anti-Gang Office, said forming an armed posse is "a crazy remedy. We would never encourage residents to do that."
A violent response to street thugs might only foment more violence, Garcia said. The gang task force, he said, instead tries to find creative, peaceful resolutions to street conflicts.
In a 1998 case in southeast Houston, Garcia 's office found that a family feud centering on two young lovers had sparked what seemed to be a gang war. The office began trying Monday to get to the root of the East End battles.
If a real resurgence in East End gang activity is occurring, Garcia said, it may be because some leaders convicted of crimes in the 1990s are making parole.
Garcia also noted that Houston gangs rarely attempt to terrorize their neighborhoods to the degree that Black describes.
The Anti-Gang Office is conducting a study to determine where gang violence is most concentrated in the city. After reviewing 3 ,000 police reports and interviewing hundreds of schoolchildren and gangsters, Garcia said, the hot spot seems to be in southeast Houston, well south of Black's neighborhood.
But for all the skepticism among city officials, Garcia and McClelland said they will send more officers to the blocks near Jackson Middle School to be sure there is no reciprocal violence against the vigilantes.
"If all these crimes were being reported and we did nothing, then we failed this guy," Garcia said. "Then my job is to go out there and get them out of harm's way."
McClelland believes Black wants police to resolve a dispute between neighbors, not gangs. If members of the vigilante group are found patrolling illegally with weapons, he said, police will disarm them.
Actually, it's more like Catholic High School Girls In Pursuit Of Vigilante Justice, as noted by Pete:
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- A man described by authorities as a known sexual predator was chased through the streets of South Philadelphia by an angry crowd of Catholic high school girls, who kicked and punched him after he was tackled by neighbors, police said Friday.Rudy Susanto, 25, who had exposed himself to teen-age girls on as many as seven occasions outside St. Maria Goretti School, struck again on Thursday just as students were being dismissed, police said.
But this time, a group of girls in school uniforms angrily confronted Susanto with help from some neighbors, police said.
When Susanto tried to run, more than 20 girls chased him down the block. Two men from the neighborhood caught him and the girls took their revenge.
Also noted by Atrios, who brings up the issue that vigilante justice is generally not a good thing. This is true, and there are good reasons to temper one's cheers for the girls, and particularly the neighbors who witnessed the beating. The possibility of the suspect pulling a knife or gun and defending himself, for example, should give pause. That said, it's hard not to empathize with victims who fight back. In the absense of any further evidence, I'll file this under Things I'm Not Too Worried About.
