Here's a new lefty political blog from Austin for you to check out: The View from the Left. He's got an RSS feed, so a subscription to same can be found in my Bloglines blogs.
Other recently-added subscriptions include:
- This Blog Is Full of Crap, the new home of Laurence Simon, founder of the now-defunct Amish Tech Support.
- The Joe Hill Dispatch, Fort Worth bureau (they also have an Atlanta version). Mostly news-roundup-y, but a good source of stories that may not make your radar otherwise.
- Free State Standard, an even more ambitious newsy site that is aiming to get contributors from every county in Texas.
- Panhandle Truth Squad, one of two West Texas-based progressive blogs that I know of.
- Back Roads of San Angelo, the other one, which looks like it just made a feed available (if it was there before now and I hadn't noticed yet, I apologize).
- Reveries of the Solitary Blogger, which is not new but is newly feed-enabled.
And going a little further back, there's Liberty's Blog, Houston's Clear Thinkers, Safety for Dummies, and Roman Candles.
Blogs come and go, and however you handle blogroll/subscription maintenance, keeping up with it is a PITA sometimes. If your link hasn't been added/updated yet, hold on, I promise I'll get to it eventually. And remember, an RSS feed is your friend. It's certainly my friend for keeping up with all this stuff.
So there's a national franchise called the "Texas Roadhouse", and there's a privately owned watering hole in La Vernia called the True Blue Texas Roadhouse. Put 'em together and what do you get? Right. A lawsuit.
The Kentucky-based Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain sued the La Vernia bar and owner Douglas Bode in U.S. District Court in Austin earlier this month, claiming trademark infringement.The Texas Roadhouse chain operates more than 165 bar-restaurants with Texas memorabilia on the walls and peanut shells on the floor. They're in 30 states and have 24 franchises in Texas, including Texas Roadhouses just off major highways in Waco, San Antonio and Killeen.
The True Blue Texas Roadhouse is a 40-by-100-foot corrugated metal building that used to be a garage. There's just one, next to fields of sunflowers on the two-lane Texas 87 between San Antonio and Victoria.
The front is painted the red, white and blue of the Texas flag, and the inside features four pool tables and a steady stream of country music. Bartenders serve bags of chips and a lot of Bud Light to a couple of dozen customers a weeknight and two or three times that many on weekends.
"I am just trying to make a living. I don't want to offend anybody," said Bode, 38, a tall man with big hands and a gentle voice. "For God's sake, I'm a Texas bar. Why can't I use that name?"
Bode, a former curtain company production manager, said he thought of the name on a late night drive with friends back from New Orleans. He did some research of business names with the clerk in Wilson County, and it looked as if True Blue Texas Roadhouse was available, he said. Just over two years ago, he opened up.
In the lawsuit, Texas Roadhouse's lawyer, Tom Walsh of Dallas, wrote that Bode violated the corporation's rights to its federal and state trademarks, which were filed before Bode opened the bar. The first Texas Roadhouse opened in Indiana in 1993.
By using "Texas Roadhouse" in his bar's name, Bode "calculated to deceive the relevant consuming public into accepting and purchasing Bode's services in the mistaken belief that they are Texas Roadhouse's services," wrote Walsh, of Fish & Richardson, a prominent Dallas intellectual property firm.
The nearest Texas Roadhouse restaurant to the bar is about 20 miles away in Live Oak, north of San Antonio.
Emphasis mine. I don't have any opinion about the merits of this lawsuit. I just find it really weird that the trademark to "Texas Roadhouse" is owned by an outfit in Kentucky and was first used in Indiana.
Even in Little League, I wouldn't expect to ever see a play like this. The infield fly rule is a subtle thing. Via Nail-Tinted Glasses, who also points out this excellent Legomation re-enactment for those who need a visual.
The Chron's a little late getting into the Strayhorn/Unitarian game, but their belated effort is pretty good. It's a concise rundown of the history of this controversy, and it provides some context. In particular, there's a quote attributed to Strayhorn that's been the whip for some of the bloggy beatings she's taken, and it's not quite about what the floggers think it is:
Of the organizations Strayhorn has rejected for tax-exempt status, several denials were based on sloppy paperwork. Other denials were based on the fact the organization is a faith-based social service group that did not meet the definition of a religion, such as meeting regularly at a location open to the public.But in at least five cases, the underlying question has revolved around a system of beliefs that involve a supreme being or beings. They range from Unitarians to a temple of witches and pagans in Copperas Cove.
The controversy actually began in 1997 under Strayhorn's Democratic predecessor, John Sharp, in a case involving the Ethical Society of Austin.
The group is an offshoot of the American Ethical Union and the Ethical Cultural movement that began in 1876. They describe themselves as "ethical humanists" who hold a unifying belief that "within human experience ethics is central."
But the movement takes no position on whether there is a supreme being.
Shortly after Sharp's staff granted the Ethical Society of Austin its religious status, the Austin American-Statesman ran a story about it with the headline "Godless Group Gets Religious Exemption."
That same morning, Sharp reversed his staff and ordered no organization be granted religious status unless it believes in "God, Gods or a higher power." In the Texas courts, this became known as the "Supreme Being test."
The Ethical Society of Austin sued. Strayhorn adopted Sharp's standard, inherited the lawsuit and continued to fight against granting the society religious status.
"The irony in all of this is ... the more supernatural a religion is, the easier it is to satisfy the comptroller's test," said David Weiser, a lawyer representing the Ethical Society of Austin.
Weiser said a pantheistic religion that performs animal sacrifices would find it easier to win a religious designation than a group based on highly reasoned beliefs.
"The test she advocates doesn't help get to the bottom of whether a group is a sham or not," Weiser said.
The Texas Supreme Court agreed. Without a written opinion, the court upheld a 3rd Court of Appeals order saying Strayhorn had been wrong in denying religious status to the Ethical Society of Austin.
The court noted that rulings in New York, California, Illinois, Maryland and the District of Columbia dating back to 1957 had determined Ethical Culture groups were organized religions.
"We understand the First Amendment to require a broader definition of what should be considered a religion than a simple Supreme Being test offered by the comptroller," the 3rd Court ruled.
Strayhorn immediately promised to take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. She said it is about "more than one organization trying to avoid paying their fair share." She said it is about protecting groups that deserve to be tax exempt.
"Otherwise, any wannabe cult who dresses up and parades down Sixth Street on Halloween will be applying for an exemption," Strayhorn said.
This oft-cited quote comes from her fight against the tax exemption granted to the Ethical Society of Austin, not the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church. A bit ironic when contrasted with David Weiser's statement, but clearly not an attempt to link the Unitarians to the Church of the SubGenius or some such. Still doesn't explain to me why she went off the rails with the Red River folks, though. I can't help but think that if this had been a decision made by a lower-level staffer, Strayhorn would have said so by now to deflect the heat.
Anyway, check it out. Meanwhile, Jim D reports from an actual UU service in Galveston. And life goes on.
So now that Phoenix has passed (or is on the brink of passing) Philadekphia to become America's fifth-most populous city, how long until they catch up to Houston for #4?
During the 1990s, Phoenix grew by 34 percent, or 340,000 residents, and its metropolitan area, which includes the city, grew by a phenomenal 45 percent -- adding more than 1 million people to the 2.3 million it had in 1990.In the same decade, Houston grew by 15 percent in the city and 25 percent in its metro area, adding 260,000 and 950,000 residents respectively.
Turbo-charged Phoenix has a current estimated metro population of 3.2 million to Houston's 5.2 million. If the growth rates since 1990 continue -- and they almost certainly won't -- Phoenix will surpass Houston in both city and metro area population between the 2020 and 2030 censuses, with both metro areas having a population of about 9 million when the graph lines cross.
But that's just playing with numbers. A city must add a larger number of people every year to maintain the same rate of growth, and there aren't enough people anywhere for that to continue indefinitely.
Tim Hogan, director of the Center for Business Research at Arizona State University, said state officials there predict metro Phoenix will actually grow by 2025 to about 5.2 million -- where the Houston area is now. Texas State Demographer Steve Murdock projects metro Houston will reach 5.5 million in 2010 and 6.4 million in 2020.
Huh. Guess that means we don't have to budget an edit to those "We're Number Four!" signs any time soon.
Is there another threat to worry about?
Realistically, Atlanta may offer Houston a more immediate challenge in the growth game than Phoenix. Metropolitan Atlanta grew by 1.2 million people, or nearly 40 percent, in the 1990s, partly because several more counties were added to its metro area. However, such redefining reflects genuine suburban growth.Murdock said Houston and Atlanta are "basically the same cities for all intents and purposes. Both have been growing very rapidly, both are in strong growth areas, and I'd hate to make the call as to which is likely to be greater in 20 years."
Obviously, we'll have to start annexing faster if we want to stay ahead of Atlanta. Hey, Galveston, you guys don't really need to be a separate city, do you?
Via MyDD, I see that the Libertarian Party has chosen to nominate some Texan no one has ever heard of for President instead of the charismatic and buzz-inducing Hollywood producer Aaron Russo. So much for them having an impact on this election, I guess. I love this comment from MyDD: "Is the Libertarian Party convention the one where everyone is sporting Spock ears and learning to speak in Klingon, or is it that other one where the conventioneers are somewhat less in touch with reality?" Heh.
Here's installment 3 of Bill Bishop's series on the evolution of polarization in American society (noted previously here). This one is about how gerrymandered districts reflect the self-gerrymandered tastes of its constituents by producing more extreme winners in party primaries. Nothing terribly earth-shaking here, but I found this section interesting:
Dorothy Snyder learned about the great divide first hand.A rancher and former Waco school board president, she ran this spring in the Republican primary for the 17th Congressional District, newly drawn to be almost 60 percent Republican — solid enough that incumbent Democrat Rep. Chet Edwards could lose.
Snyder ran against State Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, who campaigned as "one of the most conservative members of the Legislature." Wohlgemuth criticized Snyder for serving a year on the board of Waco's Planned Parenthood of Central Texas. The very conservative Club for Growth poured money into the district supporting Wohlgemuth — published reports say more than $400,000 — and Snyder was painted as the more moderate of the two candidates.
Snyder says she opposes abortion and is a "rock-solid, 100 percent Republican." But she clearly believes the primary played to the extreme of Republican Party beliefs.
"The process was an awakening for me," Snyder says from her ranch near Crawford. "I did not expect to be misrepresented. And I think you're right that the process perhaps forces that to happen.. . . Voters in the primaries are certainly not representative of those who vote in November. They skew to the edges." Snyder lost by 8 percentage points in the primary run-off.
There is no guarantee Wohlgemuth will beat Edwards, who has served in Congress since 1990. Sooner or later, however, the heavily Republican 17th District will elect a Republican. When it does, the Democratic Party in Congress will move to the left as it loses the moderate Edwards; and the Republican Party will nudge to the right as it gains a more conservative member.
Moderates learned a lesson in the 17th District. Primary elections in heavily partisan districts will be brutal.
Would Snyder run, knowing what she knows today? "No," she answers, laughing. "That's easy."
Dorothy Snyder's experience is becoming the norm of American politics.
Colby College political scientist L. Sandy Maisel and a team of researchers went into 200 of the nation's 435 congressional districts in the late '90s, asking labor leaders, business executives and public officials to recommend good candidates for Congress.
Maisel then interviewed these respected citizens, asking whether they would consider pursuing public office. Nine out of ten said they would never run. Their reasons varied. None liked the idea of raising money to mount a campaign. Maisel expected that complaint.
The Maine political scientist says that one of the "biggest factors" affecting those who decided not to run was homogenous districts, designed by legislatures to be unassailably Republican or Democratic.
[...]
The prospective candidates understood that a primary campaign in a homogenous district would likely be "bitter and acerbic," Maisel says. They sensed "that (the campaign) would be extreme, and most of the issues these people are concerned with are not at the extreme."
They were afraid of becoming the next Dorothy Snyder, a moderate forced to compete in a highly ideological campaign against an extreme opponent before a homogenous electorate.
I'd feel better about this bit of analysis if Bishop cited one thing about Dot Snyder, the self-described "rock-solid, 100 percent Republican", which indicated that she was in fact something of a moderate and not simply Arlene Wohlgemuth with fewer connections. Tell me more about her one year on the board of Planned Parenthood in Central Texas. How does a pro-lifer get to do that? Did it affect her opinion on the subject one way or another? I've sent an email to Bill Bishop asking him these questions - we'll see if he answers.
Here's a moving account of four soldiers wounded in Iraq, now recovering in San Antonio at Brooke Army Medical Center. No politics, just a story of four men trying to put their lives back together. For whatever reason, the article's pictures (mostly just headshots) are not reproduced here, but they did print the cover photo.
Continuing his What They Need To Do To Win series, Greg Wythe lays it out for Rep. Martin Frost. Great stuff, and I hope after he's done with the incumbents he'll do the same for the other two Texas Tuesday-supported candidates, Richard Morrison and Morris Meyer, who may finally have his campaign blog working.
Just west of the Rice University campus is the Rice Village, a collection of shops and eateries that's been there for a few decades now. It's grown in popularity, and the surrounding area has seen a lot of new high-density housing construction. End result: parking there is a bitch.
Now, the management of the Village Arcade, a shopping center in the heart of the Village, plans to start charging a fee to patrons of surrounding businesses who use the shopping center's parking garage."We've done some towing in the past, but that's not a very customer-friendly way to control your parking," said Suzanne Anderson, assistant director of property management for Weingarten Realty Management Co., which runs the shopping center.
The chronic Rice Village parking problem is not the only hassle triggered by increasing density in the Rice University area. Residents of the nearby Wessex subdivision are fighting plans for a high-rise residential building in their neighborhood, saying it would increase traffic and lower property values.
Both issues reflect Houston's lack of appropriate planning tools to cope with the impact of new development, said David Crossley, president of the Gulf Coast Institute, a nonprofit civic improvement organization.
"It illustrates problems with public policy that allows density to occur where there is no possibility of transit relief," Crossley said.
While buses run on Kirby and University, the MetroRail runs more than a mile east of the Village, and most customers get there by car.
City Councilman Mark Goldberg, who represents the area, said he is working with the city's Planning Department to develop an ordinance that would require traffic studies as part of the permitting procedure for new buildings. This would enable better planning for parking and traffic management, Goldberg said.
Parking problems in Rice Village, Goldberg said, are exacerbated by employees of Village businesses who take up the limited street parking. He said he proposed installing parking meters but that Village merchants protested that idea.
"They insisted that people wouldn't shop at their stores if they had to pay a quarter," Goldberg said.
[...]
In 1998, Weingarten filed a lawsuit that sought to require management of a nearby bar, the Ginger Man, to instruct its patrons not to park in the Village Arcade garage. Today, a sign at the garage entrance warns that patrons of seven nearby bars and restaurants, including the Ginger Man, will be towed if they park in the garage.
David Berg, the general manager of Mi Luna, one of the restaurants named in the sign, said Rice University should consider running a shuttle between its campus and the Village to help alleviate the parking shortage. He also said he would have been amenable to paying a reasonable fee to allow his diners access to the Arcade garage.
Berg said he can understand Weingarten's desire to preserve parking for patrons of the shopping center's businesses. But the restrictive, turf-conscious attitude runs counter to the open, collegial environment of the Rice Village, Berg said.
"The village is designed to walk," Berg said, noting that many diners walk to his restaurant after shopping in the Arcade just across University Boulevard. "You should be able to go wherever you want."
Even though I work near by and there are a number of good lunch places there, I avoid the Village like the plague. The parking situation is that bad.
David Berg is on the right track here, but running a shuttle from Rice University to the Village won't help, because the public can't park at Rice, and the Village is close enough for students to walk there now. What they really need is for the city to run a shuttle, much like the downtown shuttles, from the light rail line through the Village. I'm thinking from the Dryden stop down University to Kirby, then to Sunset, then back down to Main and the Hermann Park/Rice U stop (see PDF map). The retailers in the Village, especially those whose customers can't park in the Village Arcade lot, ought to be willing to help subsidize such a thing, even own it outright if Metro's bureaucracy is too thick to penetrate.
The beauty of this plan is that it would also make the light rail line more accessible to the people who live in that area, perhaps enabling some of them to take it into downtown instead of driving. Metro gets more riders, the Village gets more shoppers, and the people who still have to drive in or through the Village area get more parking and less traffic. What's not to like?
Via Tom Kirkland, a team at the University of Texas is working on a prototype computer chip that can change its function according to the task at hand and in doing so achieve incredible speed.
If the chip works as planned, it will run at a top speed of 10 gigahertz and perform one trillion operations (meaning individual computing tasks) per second. In comparison, Intel Corp.'s current top-speed Pentium 4 processor runs at 3.4 gigahertz and delivers 6.8 billion operations per second. The anticipated performance has led the design team to dub the device a "supercomputer on a chip."The UT team has nicknamed their design "Trips," for Tera-Op Reliable Intelligently Adaptive Processing System. The term tera-op refers to the targeted one trillion operations per second. The system would divide individual processing cores on the chip into tiny sections that could change automatically for several predetermined functions. The idea is that the processing cores would morph as instructions flowed in. Each chip could contain many processing core, which would enable a single chip to perform multiple functions simultaneously while optimizing for each. Conventional chips generally do only one thing at a time. Moreover, the distributed architecture of the UT team's design would reduce clock delays, which limit the performance of conventional chips.
They're still a year off from having a working chip to test, and maybe five years from a commercial product. Regardless, this is way cool.
UT law professor Mitchell Berman makes the case in this op-ed that SCOTUS will use the Texas redistricting lawsuit Jackson v. Perry to do what it chose not to do in Vieth v. Jubelirir and set a judiciable standard for partisan redistricting efforts. The key: mid-decade redistricting, which he thinks they may rule cannot be done strictly for partisan ends.
The Texas case, Jackson vs. Perry, offers just such an opportunity. Like Vieth, it presents a textbook example of partisan gerrymandering — one so egregious that the state itself admitted that maximizing electoral prospects for Republican candidates was "the single-minded purpose of the Texas Legislature." But the Texas reapportionment has a new characteristic that is potentially even more dangerous: It was adopted mid-decade to replace valid, court-approved district lines.Redistricting had always been a once-in-a-decade affair — a necessary response to population changes revealed in the decennial census. But in 2002, Colorado Republicans shocked observers by abandoning this tradition, redrawing the state's congressional districts barely a year after new districts had been adopted. Although a state court invalidated that gambit, Texas — where Republicans had just taken control of both houses of the Legislature — followed suit last year. Republicans in Georgia and Ohio have made noises about doing the same; Democrats in California, Illinois and Oklahoma have as well.
This difference between the Texas and Pennsylvania gerrymanders serves up precisely what the Vieth case didn't: a judicially manageable standard. The court should declare that mid-decade redistricting is unconstitutional when adopted by a single-party-dominated legislature, unless narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest.
True, this test would address only a piece of the partisan gerrymandering problem, leaving unanswered what courts should do about partisan gerrymanders enacted during the ordinary decennial cycle.
But it is a critical piece nevertheless. Decennial gerrymanders are self-limiting because, over a decade, voters die, move, even change political views. The mere passage of time reduces its power. But by gerrymandering more frequently, in mid-decade, legislatures restack the deck.
We'll see. Unanswered for me is what practical effect this would have in 2004. I don't see any way that the new Congressional lines can be undone now. Even if you restored them for 2006, what good would that do any incumbent who loses in the meantime? Or would the court essentially rule that the Texas GOP can get away with it this once, but no one else can? I agree that this is a good, reasonable, and easy-to-define and understand standard that SCOTUS can set, but I'm hard pressed to see what difference it'll make.
One other thing: Will we get to see this op-ed in any Texas papers? I'd love to know if the LA Times was this UT prof's first choice, or if they were just the first to have a spot open in their queue. I guess we'll see if it appears elsewhere soon enough - frankly, this looks like a Sunday piece for the Chron. Besides, they had other important articles to run today.
Thanks to reader JD for the tip.
Electablog puts the rest of the Presidential campaign in context.
How could anyone be undecided about anything or anyone at this point?The true believers were decided at birth. The believers have been decided since Florida. The sort of believers have been decided since Iraq. Even the "I caught a bit of the news while flipping between the WWE and Family Feud reruns on the Gameshow Network" have decided by now.
The handful of people left are the ones who could determine the outcome of this election.
And there's the rub. In the next several months, political insiders must figure out a way to convince the people who they can't possibly understand to see things their way. Now that should be fun to watch.
Indeed. Via Political Wire.
There are two op-eds in today's Chron doing some kind of point-counterpoint about the "science" of the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Two. Freaking. Op-eds.
People. Listen to me. This movie was written and directed by the same guy who gave us Independence Day and Godzilla. That would be one movie in which the world is saved by a computer virus written in ten minutes and magically uploaded to an alien spaceship, thus causing their entire fleet to crash and burn, and a movie in which a nuclear bomb creates a giant lizard which can alternately hollow out the Chrysler Building yet still fit inside the New York subways.
Even talking about the "science" of this movie without using scare quotes is moronic. We're all ten points of IQ dumber now because of this movie entering the sphere of public debate. Go read Julian Sanchez and Kevin Drum to put you in the right frame of mind for this movie if you insist on seeing it (Pete gave it three stars, so it must have some redeeming features). And throw those op-eds away.
Checking around the Texas blogs for (mostly) political news and notes in our state:
Greg will be looking at the electoral maps for each of the endangered Texas Democratic Congressional incumbents and from that he'll project the outcomes they'll need to win in November. That sounds like a must-read to me, so check out his initial effort on Rep. Chet Edwards and be sure to check back.
Byron reports that Rep. Martin Frost has got some mailers out and that former Secretary of State Madeline Albright will be in Dallas at a fundraiser for him. Cool.
Here's an update on how things are going in Richard Morrison's campaign. Nearly $4000 had been raised as of last night via the dKos 8 effort. And check out the story of the first Morrison House Party in Clear Lake.
Dean Terry says Dallas needs to start recycling.
The Joe Hill Dispatch found this editorial slap at Tom DeLay for his egregious hypocrisy regarding foreign interventions. Technically, that came from Oklahoma, but the JHD folks are in Forth Worth, so that counts. And they also want to invite you to hear State House candidate Ruby Woolridge speak next Wednesday.
Liberty notes some grumbling in Galveston over the Parks Board.
Writerrific notes the bad news that Texas is now number one in incarcerations, just outpacing the way-more-populous California.
Looks like there will be ideal conditions for tubing on the rivers this weekend.
NEW BRAUNFELS — With excellent tubing flows expected on both the Guadalupe and Comal rivers, tourism officials are expecting business to boom this weekend as tens of thousands of tourists flock to town to kick off the summer."Mother Nature has been good to us," New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce President Michael Meek said. "The releases from Canyon Dam will create optimum conditions all the way from Canyon Lake to New Braunfels."
Riverside campgrounds reported being booked full.
"We are looking for a big weekend," said Jerry Lara, manager at the River Haus on Farm Road 306 in Sattler. "We're blowing up new tubes and getting ready."
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Canyon Dam announced plans to cut the release rate into the Guadalupe River from 1,000 cubic feet per second to 400 cfs Thursday night and keep it there until Tuesday, when the release will jump to 2,500 cfs.
The flow for the weekend is in the prime range for tubing and rafting. The nearby Comal River is also in prime shape for tubing. The 2,500-cfs level on the Guadalupe, which will start Tuesday, is suitable only for experienced rafters and kayakers.
With Canyon Lake a couple of feet above normal and good flows into the reservoir, good tubing conditions are expected to last long into the summer this year. That should give outfitters an opportunity to continue their recovery from the disastrous 2002 season, when the July 4 flood destroyed many of the buildings and washed out business for the rest of the year, Lara said.
Meek said it would be difficult to underestimate the importance of the Memorial Day weekend to the city.
"Summer is condensed into about 10 weeks now, and the three holiday weekends (Memorial Day, July 4 and Labor Day) account for half of that business."
New Braunfels police said they will be ready for the flood of river tourists as well, with extra officers patrolling the rivers.
"Play nice, be safe and don't make waves," Meek said. "Don't leave your manners at home."
"But do leave the damn beer bongs at home," he did not add.
I'm with Ted here. I see nothing good, politically or morally, coming out of an attack on Jenna and Barbara Bush. Yes, I know, they're adults now, and they've done a few things to make themselves inviting targets. They're also in the spotlight by the circumstances of their birth, not by anything over which they had control. Cut them some slack.
Now, anything they say on the campaign trail can be legitimately attacked, and if it turns out they have the same reverence for truth as every other member of the Bush team, that can be discussed as well. Just do yourself a favor and review the definition of ad hominem before you fire up your blog editor if you feel such a post coming on.
The house in Clear Lake where Andrea Yates lived has been sold.
After being on the market for almost six months, the house where Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub has been sold.Real estate agent Mike Canary said today that the home in the 900 block of Beachcomber in the Clear Lake area was sold last week. Details about the sale price and buyer were not disclosed.
The 1,620-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home in the Camino South subdivision was listed for $109,900.
A good friend of mine who lives in the Oak Park suburb of Chicago told me once about the long and frustrating search for an affordable house in that neighborhood that he and his wife undertook. One day, he came upon a place that was not only suitable for them, but within their price range. It had recently come on the market and needed some work, but was basically in good shape. While looking at the place with the realtor, though, he noticed that there was something about it that she was reluctant to tell him. Eventually, he got the truth from her: The house had been the scene of a gruesome murder not that long before, in which a man brutally killed his wife.
My friend, being of a practical nature, was actually relieved to hear this - he had feared there was a major structural flaw with the house or something like that, for why else the low price? His wife agreed with him, and they made an offer which was ultimately rejected, as another couple was even more eager to get the house. They eventually found another place and are happy there.
Knowing nothing about that crime, I had no problems seeing things my friend's way. Knowing what I do about the Yates house, I don't think I could ever bring myself to buy it, even if it were the perfect house for me in other respects. I'm not a superstitious person, but as far as I'm concerned that place has ghosts in it. I wish the new owners well, and hope they won't have the same willies about it that I do.
Lots of good stuff out there...
Al Gore's speech. 'Nuff said.
Kash mentions a scary word from the late 70s.
Dwight Meredith pokes a hole in the Governator's proposal to tax punitive damage awards.
Ryan Lizza discovers that those 4 million evangelicals whom Karl Rove said didn't vote in 2000 may be a myth (via).
Pete eulogizes Phish.
I just knew this was going to happen. Via Oliver, who needs a little help with his Google ranking.
Have I mentioned recently that Slacktivist is a national treasure? Just read his most recent "Left Behind" posts and see for yourself why.
This is not to say that The Poor Man isn't also a treasure.
Archpundit has the last word on the story of Barack Obama's stalker.
Mark Evanier gets the last word on "Andy Kaufman's" blog.
In the end, though, nobody dumps links like Julia.
Boy, that spiffy new Westpark Tollway is something else, isn't it? Now they've had to close the exit ramp to the Southwest Freeway because it's a safety hazard.
The Harris County Toll Road Authority closed the eastbound exit from the 4-week-old highway to northbound U.S. 59 on Tuesday afternoon because of concerns that its design, combined with bad driving behavior, is a recipe for collisions.Art Storey, the county's director of public infrastructure, said he anticipates the decision will cost the authority thousands of dollars a day, and the entire tollway might have to be closed for a time to make the safety modifications.
Here's the problem: The ramp dumps fast-moving tollway traffic into a notoriously congested area where the Southwest Freeway approaches Loop 610. Tollway drivers wanting to reach the Inner Loop are placed in the freeway's right lane, which shortly becomes an exit-only lane to Chimney Rock. Because the West Loop is under construction, many motorists lately have been using Chimney Rock as a back door to the Galleria area.
As dozens of cars line up while trying to move right to reach the Chimney Rock off ramp, the entering traffic attempts to merge left, creating a hazard. Adding to the trouble: A car that's just come off the tollway then has to merge across a couple more lanes to continue on U.S. 59 because those right-hand lanes are used as exits to the Loop.
"Just envision somebody coming off our ramp at 45 mph trying to cross all that to get into the inside lanes," Storey said. "It's a difficult movement under the best of circumstances."
Wow, that's pathetic. The real problem, as I see it, is that this tollway is essentially right next to the Southwest Freeway, and there already was a spaghetti bowl of exit and entrance ramps, with lots of lanes for crossing traffic, at the 59-610 interchange. Adding in that other freeway and an extra merge just before that always-congested interchange is a recipe for disaster even without the current construction. What were they thinking?
Storey announced the ramp closure at Tuesday morning's Commissioners Court meeting. Steve Radack, whose precinct includes the tollway, blames impatient drivers for the current design's failure."It wouldn't be this huge problem if people would not break the law, if they would pay attention to the solid white stripes" that prohibit lane changes, Radack said. "Since we have a tremendous amount of people ignoring the striping, it creates a hazard."
Right. I will remember these words the next time a light rail critic blames confusing signage and not moron drivers for the car/train collisions. Between this and the flood problems, I'm really not feeling confident about all the other road work going on now.
Elsewhere, I see that Mayor White's new tow truck rules, a big part of his overall transportation package, have gone through.
The key piece of the plan divides the city's freeway network into zones and authorizes the auctioning of exclusive towing authority to one wrecker firm per zone to ensure vehicles crashed or stalled will be removed promptly.[...]
White's towing plan survived mostly intact, though he did agree to three modifications prior to the council meeting. In the next few months, the Houston Police Department will draft rules, set towing prices and begin negotiating contracts. White agreed to council's request to require its approval of those rules.
The administration blessed two other changes: Wrecker companies will not need to possess heavy-duty equipment in order to bid on the segments and separate contracts will be issued for towing large trucks.
The Police Department must consult with the industry when designing the zones.
The object of all this is to prevent a logjam of tow trucks at every fender-bender, and to remove all disabled vehicles as quickly as possible. I have some sympathy for the plan's opponents, but overall I think this is a good idea.
The weekly San Antonio Current gives a brief overview of the Bacardi/DeLay story, which in their case now has the local angle of involvement from Reps. Lamar Smith and Henry Bonilla, both of whom are just shocked that anyone would dare call them sleazy. Check it out. Thanks to AJ Garcia for the tip (story also noted by The Stakeholder).
I know, it's a silly little time-waster - then again, what on the Internet isn't? - but I enjoyed the "Republican Survivor" trailer at DTripTV, and I signed up to watch the whole thing and participate in the voting. I'm curious to see what the DCCC has in store for its band of castaways. Check it out while registration is still open - the eliminations begin on June 3.
I may have mentioned this before, but a reminder never hurts: Richard Morrison will be on TV tonight in the Houston area (checking around, I see that this was originally scheduled for last week). Here are the details, via an email from Rob Booth:
TEXAS POLITICSThe Real DealHouston Cable Televisions’ longest running political discussion broadcast. Now in its 15th year and hosted by liberal local attorney and longtime Democratic Party Activist, David Jones, and conservative attorney, editor Texas Conservative Review and former Republican Party Chair, Gary Polland.
TEXAS POLITICS – The Real Deal is broadcast exclusively in the Houston/Harris County area by Houston Media Source which is located on Time Warner Channel 17/18/66/82/96 (depending on your area), TV MAX (previously called Optel Cable) Channel 17 or 69, and Kingwood Cable Channel 98, respectively. No matter where you live, even an apartment, you should now be able to watch TEXAS POLITICS – The Real Deal on Houston Media Source.
This Week’s Guest: May 27, 2004
Richard Morrison
Democratic nominee, Congressional District 22 vs Tom DeLay
Remember, Thursday nights 6:30-7:30 p.m. on your local cable channel…..
and be ready to call in live with your questions for our guests! 713-807-1794
Check your local listings, as they say, and set the TiVo accordingly.
Strict rules set for pizza-making
ROME -- Pizza-makers beware: Italy has issued strict guidelines to protect the real Neapolitan pizza from bogus copies.The regulations touch on everything from size to ingredients to the type of oven -- and rule-abiding restaurants will receive a special label attesting that real pizza can be eaten there.
The rules, issued by the Agriculture Ministry and printed Tuesday in the country's Official Gazette, are part of Italy's efforts to protect its cuisine across the European Union, although it was not immediately clear what steps would be taken for enforcement.
Were she still with us, I'd have suggested a good stern talking-to by my grandmother as the enforcement mechanism. There'd be no concern about recidivism, that's for sure.
The standards recognize only three types of real Neapolitan pizza: Marinara, with garlic and oregano; Margherita, with basil and mozzarella from the southern Apennines; and extra-Margherita, with fresh tomatoes, basil and buffalo mozzarella from Campania, the region that includes pizza's hometown, Naples.The dough must be rolled out manually and baked in wood-burning ovens that can reach the required temperature of 905 degrees.
The regulations were approved after surveying pizza-makers in Naples and surrounding areas.
Restaurants that abide by the rules will get a label saying their pizza is a "guaranteed traditional specialty."
"These norms protect one of the most ancient and most important gastronomic traditions," said Antonio Pace, owner of one of Naples' oldest pizza restaurants and the president of a pizza-makers' association.
"We don't want the others not to make pizza, only we want them to make it as we make it -- as it should be done," he said Wednesday.
I just want to say that fresh buffalo mozzarella is quite possibly nature's perfect food. I like other stuff on my pizza too much to get hung up on what constitutues an Official Real Neapolitan pie or not, but any pizza that starts with buffalo mozzarella is going to be worth eating.
Damn. Now I'm hungry.
The Richard Morrison campaign ought to get a decent fundraising boost out of being named one of the eight highlighted races at Daily Kos. There are some interesting comments in this thread, with this one being easily the most noticeable.
Of course, all the money in the world won't help if there aren't enough voters there who are willing to push the button for change. I note with some pleasure that there's at least one new Morrison voter in the district.
So, you know that Tom Clancy is the coauthor with Gen. Anthony Zinni of the new book "Battle Ready", in which Gen. Zinni is highly critical of the Bush administration for its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Here's what Clancy has to say about one of the main architects of this miserable failure:
In discussing the Iraq war, both Clancy and Zinni singled out the Department of Defense for criticism. Clancy recalled a prewar encounter in Washington during which he "almost came to blows" with Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser at the time and a longtime advocate of the invasion."He was saying how (Secretary of State) Colin Powell was being a wuss because he was overly concerned with the lives of the troops," Clancy said. "And I said, 'Look, he's supposed to think that way!' And Perle didn't agree with me on that. People like that worry me."
"Overly concerned with the lives of the troops". Put that on one of those "We support President Bush and the troops" yard signs and smoke it.
More for the Anecdotal Evidence of Republican Disenchantment With Bush Department:
Both Clancy and Zinni praised President Bush but would not commit to voting for him. Clancy said that voting for Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' presumptive nominee, would be "a stretch for me," but wouldn't say that he was supporting Bush.Zinni, a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, said he could not support the president's re-election "if the current strategists in the Defense Department are going to be carried over."
As Big Media Matt notes, while the reluctance of Bush's wavering base to actually take the last step and embrace Kerry is a problem, just getting them to sit it out would still be a win.
In case you're wondering why so many of us have been pounding the Texas Tuesdays concept these past few weeks, check out what Charlie Cook has to say (PDF) about (among others) the Texas Congressional races. All the races highlighted there are considered tossups, but it's clear that all of them are uphill battles. That's why we're here, to do what we can to help make a difference. Via Political Wire.
UPDATE: Byron summarizes the Texas races for those who don't want to launch Adobe PDF Reader.
Thanks for another successful Texas Tuesday, featuring Rep. Max Sandlin this week. We hope you enjoy reading about the candidates and getting the chance to help them out.
We were asked in the comments yesterday about an RSS feed. This is a Movable Type site, so it creates a feed automatically - it's http://www.texastuesdays.com/index.rdf. One thing we hope to have soon is a little utility that can be added to one's sidebar which will show recent posts. We'll announce that here when it's ready.
Next week we'll be featuring Rep. Chet Edwards. You can get an early jump on helping Edwards, as well as giving one last boost to Sandlin, by voting in this Longview News-Journal poll. It's not scientific, of course, but what the heck, it's fun.
Thanks to everyone who helped promote this week's event:
The People's Republic of Seabrook
A number of blogs (which I haven't yet fully counted) have also added the TT link to their sidebar. We thank you very much for that, too!
Say what you will about the Harris County GOP, they've got a lot of money and they're not afraid to spend it.
The Harris County Republican Party took a marketing strategy successfully used by Coca-Cola and Nike to the East End on Tuesday in hopes of building inroads with Houston's Hispanic voters.Local GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill and two Hispanic Republican judges handed out about 246 bicycles to students of J.R. Harris Elementary School.
The bicycles were awarded to third-, fourth- and fifth-graders who passed all portions of this year's Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
"We hope this will encourage them to study hard and improve themselves," Woodfill said. "Of course, we would also like to see them vote Republican when the time comes."
That the Republican Party chose J.R. Harris is no coincidence. Both major parties are wooing the growing Hispanic population, and J.R. Harris is in the middle of one of the city's most heavily Hispanic neighborhoods.
Many residents are first- and second-generation immigrants who have not built the same party allegiance that often passes down from parent to child in white, black and longer-established Hispanic families.
[...]
J.R. Harris Principal Jaime Casteñeda said whatever the political implications may be, the reward spurred students to work harder with hopes of getting one of the free bicycles. Many prepared for the test after regular classes and on Saturdays.
"These kids work hard all year," Casteñeda said, "but the bikes made them work harder."
He said 78.4 percent of the 301 students who took the TAKS passed all portions.
That is a remarkable achievement, he said, since two-thirds of students who start kindergarten at the school speak only Spanish. By the time they reach fifth grade, all students take TAKS and other standardized tests only in English.
The school's population is 96 percent Hispanic, and three of every four students is considered at-risk to fail or drop out. Ninety-eight percent of the students receive free or reduced-price meals.
Woodfill said he expects to expand the program, called "Christmas in May," to five other schools in minority neighborhoods that historically have voted Democratic. The party worked out a deal with Wal-Mart to get the bicycles awarded this year for $30 each.
Later this year, the party plans to open a second headquarters in a Hispanic neighborhood.
What can I say? It's a brilliant idea, a modern twist on the old Tammany Hall playbook. Will it get a few more people to vote GOP? Probably. Your move, Democrats.
Via Byron, I'm pleased to discover a blog called the Panhandle Truth Squad, run by three liberal types out in West Texas. The Texas Political Bloggers list is pretty much dominated by Houston, Austin, and Dallas. I'd love to see some folks from out west (especially El Paso, which is in many ways unlike every other city/region in the state), in the Valley, the Hill Country, and East Texas get on the blogwagon and keep us urbanites up to date on what's going on around there. This is a good start. Check it out.
It's still Tuesday, so there's still time to participate in Texas Tuesdays and lend a hand to Rep. Max Sandlin. Check out what Gary has posted about him, and do what you can to make a difference in this tight race.
This re-interpretation of Office Space is pretty damn funny. Long, but funny. Check it out. Via The Gadflyer.
A bit of a late start today, but that's OK because today's featured candidate, Rep. Max Sandlin, is worth waiting for. He's got a spiffy new website and another cookie-cutter redistricting-abetted opponent, so hop on over, check him out, and toss him a few coins if you can. Be sure to check back later today for more info - there's been some action up in the 1st CD lately.
Man, Julia really is something else when she gets on a roll, isn't she? Marvelous.
One thing to note, from this WhiteHouseForSale post that she quotes:
The Associated Press reports that while Democratic-leaning 527 groups are receiving in large contributions, Republican-leaning 527s are having difficulty finding super-sized donors of soft money."They don't seem to exist, or they're afraid to come forward," David Keating, executive director of the Club for Growth conservative anti-tax group, said of million-dollar-plus GOP donors. "We're certainly going to work to try to change it." And a number of explanations are being offered.
Republican fundraiser Matt Keelen suggests that most Republican donors are businessmen who are inherently more conservative with their money.
And Jackson "Steve" Stephens of Arkansas says that CEOs must report to boards, whose members may not be comfortable giving big money to organizations that are independent, less well-known and, therefore, less "reputable" than an established political party.
Aren't we overlooking an obvious reason here? I'll give you a hint - it's a three-word Latin phrase that means what for what.
And I agree with Jesse. They should definitely use the Club for Growth as their spiritual guide.
UPDATE: Kevin Drum reminds us that the GOP version of the 527 is the 501(c).
As far as I'm concerned, the main thing to take away from this CBS poll is the following:
CANDIDATE SUPPORT BY PARTYJohn Kerry
Reps - Now April
11% 7%Dems - Now April
80% 80%Inds - Now April
51% 43%
George W. BushReps - Now April
84% 91%Dems - Now April
11% 11%Inds - Now April
35% 39%
Kerry now has as much support among Republicans as Bush does among Democrats (along with a sizeable lead among Independents), while Bush's support among Republicans is only a smidgeon ahead of Kerry's support among Democrats. This is finally some empirical evidence to go along with all of the anecdotal evidence that Republicans may be turning on Bush. It's still only one piece of evidence - some confirmation from other polls, as well as a continuation of the trend, would shore it up quite a bit. But at least now there's one number to support the stories.
The related story on the potential of the Libertarian Party candidate to damage Bush in some swing states is worth a read, more for the inside-baseball stuff than anything else. Two items of interest:
Nader’s endorsement this year by the Reform Party and his efforts to work with presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry has some political analysts convinced that his support may be more equally distributed between the right and left than in 2000.
First I've heard that hypothesis. Not sure I believe it, but worth keeping an eye on.
For Robert Novak, if Libertarians do not make their presence felt this election and Mr. Bush’s loses, the third-party will hold political weight in 2008.“I just had breakfast with a guy and we discussed that people are already talking, as politicians do, about the what-ifs,” said Novak. “Everybody believes if Bush loses, the Republican Party will move to the left in ’08, to the Schwarzenegger and Giuliani strain, and that is where you really get the possibility of a serious third-party movement.”
I'll believe that when I see it. I don't care what Bob Novak says, as long as Tom DeLay draws breath, the Republican Party ain't moving anywhere but rightward. This is not to say that I wouldn't be up front cheering for the scenario he paints.
Finally, the Libertarian Party here says they've collected the necessary signatures to gain access to the Presidential ballot this year, something which doesn't appear to be the case for the Reform and Green parties.
Libertarians presented about 75,000 signatures Monday to the Secretary of State's office in Austin. Election officials must validate 45,540 signatures for the Libertarians to make the November ballot. The signatures must be from registered voters who did not vote in this year's Democratic or Republican primaries.A spokeswoman for the secretary of state said the office hopes to make the determination by early July.
The two other parties that mounted petition drives -- the Green and Reform parties -- were unable to gather enough signatures.
All three parties have complained that the high hurdles Texas sets for ballot access made their petition drives difficult.
They also said voters are wary of placing additional candidates on the ballot who could serve as spoilers in close races.
Many Democrats believe that Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential candidacy in 2000 took enough votes from Al Gore to give the presidency to George W. Bush in that year's close race.
Although President Bush is expected to carry Texas easily in November, some petition prospects balked because of the lingering concern about the effects of third-party candidacies, petition-gatherers said.
"It seems like they blame the third parties for Gore losing four years ago," said Wes Benedict, ballot access chairman for the Texas Libertarian Party. "They don't want to sign petitions because they don't want Bush to win."
No comment.
Also Monday, supporters of Nader -- running this year as an independent -- turned in 80,107 signatures even though they were due two weeks ago. Nader fell about 10,000 short of the 64,076 signatures he needed to win a place on the ballot.Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign turned in the petitions as part of its court challenge to the state ballot access law, which sets stricter requirements for independents than political parties.
Jennifer Waisath, spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, said the state will keep the Nader petitions until told otherwise by the courts.
He may not make the ballot, but he'll continue to be in the news. Whoopie.
Calling all copy editors:
To get on the ballot without a petition drive, a party must receive at least 2 percent of the vote in the preceding governor's race or 5 percent in another statewide race.Green and Libertarian candidates made the 2002 ballot because at least one statewide candidate of each party drew more than 2 percent in the 2000 election. None did in 2002, so the parties had to launch petition drives this year.
2000 was not a governor's election year, so I assume they'd have needed five percent to make the ballot in 2002. Oops.
"It's extremely difficult to govern when you control all three branches of government." -- John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
Any volunteers to give these poor fellas a hand?
Via Political Wire.
Good news: Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn has gotten a clue, and her office has reversed its earlier ruling in which a Unitarian church was denied tax-exempt status for not meeting the approved definition of a religion.
Reversing an earlier decision, state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn announced Monday that a Unitarian church in Denison would get its tax-exempt status after all.The decision came after the Star-Telegram reported on May 18 that the comptroller's office had ruled the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church was not a religious organization for tax purposes.
The status was denied, the state said, because the church "does not have one system of belief."
Stunned church officials said it was the first time in U.S. history that any state had denied tax exempt status to the Unitarians because of their religious philosophy. Father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams are among past adherents of the Unitarian church.
Jesse Ancira, the comptroller's general counsel, sent a letter Monday to Dan Althoff, board president of the Denison church, informing him of the change.
"Comptroller Strayhorn asked that I review the file on your congregation's application for tax exemption," Ancira wrote. "After reviewing the submitted application ... it is my opinion that the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church is an organization created for religious purposes and should be granted the requested tax exemption."
Althoff and other members of the church could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
Strayhorn spokesman Mark Sanders said Strayhorn directed her staff to review the decision after questions were raised about it.
"She asked her general counsel to look into the matter and he overruled earlier staff decisions," Sanders said.
This story from Saturday shows the strength and breadth of the condemnation that Strayhorn brought on herself for her initial idiocy.
"She's either abysmally ignorant of the law or a religious bigot," said Robert London, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C. "She's acting like a grand inquisitor in deciding what should be a religion."Jesse Ancira, general counsel for the comptroller's office, said Strayhorn is no bigot and isn't prejudiced toward any religion. He said that other Unitarian Universalist church groups have been granted tax exemptions but that each case is evaluated separately.
"In this case, we didn't think they met the test of religious worship," he said this week. "We know they have a common belief in moral and ethical principles, but there is no one statement of faith. It's a free and open belief in several religions, including those that believe in a higher power."
So what's new about that? Unitarian Universalists take pride in their different beliefs. Unitarian Universalist congregations may have traditional Christians worshipping alongside atheists and Wiccans, who are nature-worshipping witches.
Ancira says a criterion used in determining whether a group qualifies as a church is "simply a belief in God or gods, or a higher power." That nettled some religious observers, too, since other groups, including Buddhists, do not include belief in a higher power in their principles.
"We didn't get to the point of applying the higher-power test in the Red River case," Ancira said this week. The Rev. Craig Roshaven, pastor of First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth, which has tax-exempt status, said his congregation is no less religious because of its diverse beliefs.
"We are a creedless church, but every Sunday we recite that love is the doctrine of the church and service is our prayer," Roshaven said. "If that's not a religious statement, I don't know what is."
What has shocked many is Strayhorn's challenge of a congregation that is part of one of America's oldest religious traditions: the Universalists, formally established in 1793, and Unitarians, founded in 1825. The groups merged in 1961.
Four former U.S. presidents -- John Adams, his son John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft -- were Unitarians.
There are about 200,000 Unitarian Universalists in about 1,000 churches in the United States, Canada and Mexico, including 45 congregations in Texas. Fort Worth will get a close look at the Boston-based denomination in June 2005 when the group holds its national convention here. The Unitarian Universalists also met in Fort Worth in 1994.
"The Unitarian Universalist faith has been around a long time, and if it is not a church, then we are all in jeopardy," said Brent Walker, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.
The Rev. Lillie Henley, pastor of the Westside Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth, called Strayhorn's decision a "travesty."
"The people at the Red River congregation are very religious people, many believing in God," she said. "Just because the God they believe in isn't the same as the God of the comptroller doesn't mean she can deny them their constitutional rights of freedom of religion."
Now then. In surveying the many, many blog posts and comments on the original story, one theme I saw was the belief that Strayhorn was attempting to court the fundamentalist bloc as part of her plan to challenge Rick Perry for Governor in 2006. This makes no sense to me on several levels - for one thing, Perry has that constituency very tightly locked up (why else would he have taken that secret trip to the Bahamas to discuss school finance "reform" with the likes of Grover Norquist and James Leininger?), and for another, Strayhorn has largely criticized Perry from the left as of late. Frankly, other than her public expression of distaste for strippers, I can't think of any other recent examples of her pushing a religious conservative agenda item. Finally, as Greg notes (scroll down to "The statewide shuffle continues"), there are still rumors that Strayhorn may switch parties before making her run for the Governor's mansion. It rather goes without saying that the fundamentalist bloc is rather tiny on our side of the aisle. As such, I don't have a clue why she did what she did, but I'll say it again: never attribute to malice that which can be chalked up to stupidity.
I would be remiss in closing this discussion if I didn't mention again that I was unhappy with some of the comments I saw in reaction to this piece regarding the state of Texas. One person in my comments implied that I was delusional for not seeing ignorant bigots everywhere I went. Folks, every place has its idiots, some of whom are more egregious than others (Strayhorn overall rates slightly on the decent side of medium idiot, in my view). Judging an entire population by the actions of one of these idiots is something that most of us normally consider to be bigotry in itself. I know that Texas has exported its share of high-profile losers lately, but let me assure you of one thing: if this place was anywhere near as bad as some have made it out to be lately, I wouldn't be here. OK?
(Hat tip to Southpaw for the heads-up.)
UPDATE: A little more info from the Statesman.
Scottie Johnson of Denison, the congregation's past president, said church officials were astonished when the exemption was denied."We obviously are a church and (are) meeting for religious purposes and a long established denomination," she said. "We are not just a recent player on the religious scene in any way, shape or form."
The Denison congregation was formed in 1997 and filed for tax-exempt status after affiliating with the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The church owns no property and faces little to no tax obligation.
"It was the principle of the thing," Johnson said, adding that she believes in a supreme being but knows that some of her fellow congregants do not. "Universal Unitarianism as a denomination does not require any creedal test to be a member. Every person in the church might have a slightly different idea."
The comptroller's office has said tax-exempt status cannot be granted to organizations whose members do not profess belief in "God or gods or a higher power."
Mark Sanders, Strayhorn's spokesman, said the exemption request had been denied at the staff level. He said Strayhorn asked Ancira to review the case last week after a Fort Worth Star-Telegram story examined the 17 cases in which Strayhorn's office denied tax exemptions to groups claiming to have religious affiliations.
Several of the denials were based on incomplete paperwork or because the applicant's services were not open to the public.
Sanders said Strayhorn has not asked for reviews of any of the other denials, which included requests from groups including agnostics and atheists, new age adherents and the Whispering Star Clan/Temple of Ancient Wisdom, a Copperas Cove organization of witches.
Make of that what you will.
Christians look to form "new nation" within US
Calling the approval of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts "the straw that broke the camel's back," a group of Christian activists is in the beginning stages of an effort to have one state secede from the United States to become its own sovereign nation."Our Christian republic has declined into a pagan democracy," says Cory Burnell, president of ChristianExodus.org, a non-profit corporation based in Tyler, Texas. "There are some issues people just can't take anymore, and [same-sex marriage] might finally wake up the complacent Christians."
Burnell is leading the charge for a peaceful secession of one state from the union, and after originally considering Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina due to their relatively small populations, coastal access, and the Christian nature of the electorate, Burnell says South Carolina has been selected as the target location.
If I may be so bold as to suggest it, I have a much better idea for these folks.
On a much sadder note, I'm as shocked as anyone to learn of the death of Doug Pappas, who succumbed to heat prostration while camping in Big Bend National Park this weekend. Joe Sheehan writes a lovely obituary to his friend, and the Baseball Prospectus has made all of Pappas' articles there available. This one, in which Pappas engages in a rather surreal phone call with Commissioner Beelzebud Selig, is my favorite.
Rest in peace, Doug Pappas. Your ideas will live on forever.
With two games to go, both of which were rescheduled due to rain, the Twins were tied for the lead of the Mustang division with a 12-2 record. Their penultimate game was yesterday against the co-leading Cardinals, against whom they'd split two games - the Cards whipped us in the season opener, and we nipped them in our last at-bat a week later. The winner of this game would finish first regardless of what happened afterwards.
The game was played at 4 PM, and it was suitably hot and muggy. On the plus side, as it was a Sunday afternoon, the kids' families were out in force. I think relatives of two of our players accounted for about 30 fans, but everyone was represented.
We had a bit of a scare before the game when one of our star players, who we'd slotted to pitch the late innings, was late arriving. I called his mom from my cell phone and she assured me he was on his way. He's a diabetic, and they'd checked his blood sugar as he was leaving, only to find that it was low. Having wolfed down a quick snack, he hauled ass to the field and was heading in as I was hanging up.
The game shaped up as a classic pitchers' duel. Both hurlers had their stuff working, and both of them were striking players out left and right. The Cards scraped up a run in the bottom of the second, and the score stood at 1-0 as we batted in the top of the fourth. Three base hits and a few wild pitches later, we led 3-1. I helped by showing the guys how to make rally caps, a vital aspect of their baseball education which I had inexplicably overlooked previously. The players, who usually goof around in the dugout, were on their feet cheering. It was great to see them that into the game.
After our tardy closer shut them down in the bottom of the fourth, we added two insurance runs. One of our bottom-of-the-lineup guys, who'd gotten his first hit in the prior game, drew a one-out walk and came around to score two batters later when our leadoff man, who'd gone 0 for 2 and struck out swinging at a bad pitch his last time up, doubled to center and scored himself on an errant throw back in to the infield. We were now up 5-1.
There were some tense moments in the bottom of the fifth as our closer struggled with his control. Two batters reached, on a walk and an infield hit, and both eventually scored after wild pitches. A two-out walk brought the tying run to the plate, but our guy still had something left in his tank as he got a strikeout to end the inning.
Best of all, the clock now read 5:31 PM, meaning we had reached the 90-minute game time limit. "Ball game!" shouted the umpire, as a huge whoop emanated from our side of the stands and from our guys on the field. Gloves were thrown into the air, backs were slapped, hugs were exchanged, and as we gathered to wrap things up, the realization settled over us.
The Twins were the champions of the Timbergrove Little League Mustang Division. Go Twins!
Interesting article in Salon about the falling-out of Dick Armey and Tom DeLay. Hard to believe, but I almost feel a twinge of nostalgia for Armey, puffed-up bloviating ideologue that he is. One item that caught my eye in the piece:
Armey is chairman of Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative, grass-roots, free-market advocacy organization. During travels last fall to promote his new book, "Armey's Axioms: 40 Hard-Earned Truths From Politics, Faith, and Life," the former majority leader said he found conservatives in the heartland to be discouraged by the enormous expansion of public spending and record budget deficits. "Wherever I went," Armey said, "I had people who were the natural constituency of the Republican Party say, 'Oh, the heck with it. I'll just stay home.'"In a close presidential election, such GOP disaffection could prove decisive, he argued, a bigger factor undermining Bush than Ralph Nader might be for John Kerry. "You've got the Kerry people worried sick about the possibility that Nader might take 3 percent of their vote. But I think the Bush folks need to say, 'Well, how do we survive if 3 or 4 or 5 percent of our foundation base just decides to sit out the election?"
Echoing Armey, pollster John Zogby said he has heard the same anecdotal evidence of Republican disenchantment. "Today I'm in Austin, Texas," Zogby said in a phone interview, "and my driver said, 'I've been a Republican all my life, but I can't support him [Bush].'"
Polling data is beginning to reflect the souring mood, he said. In a survey of likely voters taken May 10-13, Zogby found that President Bush had the support of 71 percent of self-described conservatives, but 19 percent were for John Kerry. "That's really intriguing to me because the president and the administration have spent the last four years shoring up their conservative base," Zogby said. "But the tide may be going back out for them."
One has to take Armey's somewhat self-serving words with a certain amount of salt, but if Zogby is correct about John Kerry getting one-fifth of the self-described conservative vote, then we've really got something. I still want to see a real shift in poll numbers before I buy into all of these disaffected-Republican anecdotes, though. Zogby says it's starting, so we'll see.
UPDATE: The LA Times connects Bush's drop in popularity with recent polls showing a sizeable lead for generic Democrats in Congressional races. Via Political Wire.
UPDATE: How could I forget Hard Sell Monday? The Stakeholder cites both of these stories.
On the one hand, I should be happy that the Chron has finally written something about Richard Morrison. I'm willing to bet that this is the longest and most in-depth article they've ever written about any challenger to Tom DeLay. Unfortunately, this article brings home again just what I hate about the Chron's candidate-profile method, which is that it spends too little time with the candidate and too much time talking to the candidate's opponent. I've complained about this before, and I'll say it again: A candidate profile should be about that candidate. Period. A half-dozen paragraphs of the candidate's opponent's spokesperson saying that the candidate is wrong, lying, and a big old poopyhead besides doesn't add to my knowledge of this person. You can achieve "balance" by having separate articles about each candidate - you can even have them side by side if you're clever enough.
What happens if a candidate, who knows that his opponent will not be quoted in his profile, lies about something? Call me crazy, but is there any reason the reporter writing the story can't do a little fact-checking and represent objective truth when needed? Maybe even call the candidate on it? I feel that has to be better than the usual he said/she said style.
Anyway. This isn't the article I wanted to see written, but at least it was written. I'll take that for now.
Some good news: the shutdown of all exits between I-10 and Loop 610 took less time than expected. Between the work on the Loop and the work on US 59, two of my main routes to many of the places I go are fubared for the foreseeable future, and there are very few good alternatives. And even when all is said and done, the eternally bottlenecked stretch of I-45 known as the Pierce Elevated, which I drive every damn day to and from work, will remain a three-lane parking lot. We can't expand the rail system in this town fast enough for me.
Which brings me to the recent news that the County Commissioners have suddenly and collectively dropped their commuter rail expansion plans like a bad habit, something for which the Chron spanked them. Thanks for nothing, guys.
How about that new Westpark Tollway, huh? Just don't drive on it when it rains.
Though the Westpark is operated by the Harris County Toll Road Authority, contractors for the Texas Department of Transportation built the Post Oak exit because it runs adjacent to new West Loop frontage roads the state is constructing. The two agencies are now trying to sort out who's to blame for the flooding trouble and what can be done to remedy it."A temporary fix was in place last week that I understand reduced the problem but evidently didn't eliminate the problem altogether," said Janelle Gbur, Transportation Department spokeswoman. "Our area engineer has asked for a design review and recommendation to permanently fix the problem."
Patricia Friese, spokeswoman for the tollway agency, said county engineers are also examining the situation but responsibility lies with the state.
"It's in TxDOT's court to figure out what the problem is and find a solution to implement it," Friese said.
Gbur, however, said the ramp "was built as designed by the consultant under contract to HCTRA."
Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy about the tollway addition to the Katy Freeway, doesn't it?
Up north, reader Rob in Humble forwarded me the following email:
Notice to everyone...Metro Route 55, designed to send busses from Greenspoint, down 1960 , left on Timber Forest, right on Upper Lake, past Oaks Elementary, left on Lake Houston Parkway to Kingwood and back. From 5 am to 11 pm, 20 minutes each during peak, 40 minutes during off hours, with stops all over the route...Just what we need.Public Hearing to protest Metro decision, Tuesday Nite (May 25), Oaks Elementary, 7 pm. Get everyone out...I mean get everyone out to let them know that no one wants a bus route through our community. Please. We need to have 200 minimum. It will affect all of Atascocita. Pass this on. If successful, this is only the beginning for Metro out here.
I can understand not wanting to have a bus route that passes right in front of your house, but...what the hell? What is this guy so upset about? I'm at a loss.
Are you aware of the 2025 Plan and what it would mean to the roads in and around Houston? There have been several opportunities already for public comment, but they've not been well publicized. The Gulf Coast Institute has a lot of info here, including PDFs that highlight proposed additions/widenings/etc in each City Council district. Check it out. And also check out this Chron op-ed in which Mayor White is challenged to deliver what he promised regarding transportation solutions.
Finally, I believe we can now declare the entire debate about light rail in Houston to be over. My mother-in-law, who according to Tiffany has never taken public transportation by herself before in her life, rode the light rail into downtown this week because she didn't want to get gouged for parking. Instead, she drove from her house down Bissonet to the Museum District and found street parking near that stop. She enjoyed the ride and was very happy to be let off a block from where she needed to be. One downside: she didn't get to go by the fountain at Main Street Square. Next time, for sure!
I'm feeling unmotivated this morning, so I'm going to take the lazy blogger's way out and link to some fellow bloggers' posts on recent news items. Please go read:
Norbizness on the state's lack of money to pay for textbooks (see this Chron op-ed for more).
Southpaw on an update to the Strayhorn/Unitarian case. Unfortunately, unless I'm just missing it, the anticipated story in the Star-Telegram ain't there. Steve Bates has more.
Steve also has a good take on this Chron story about Karl Rove protege Ken Mehlman.
Burnt Orange Report for an update on the race for State Democratic Party Chair.
Pete on stupid expense account tricks.
Jack and Ginger on Governor Perry's decision to ignore a very rare recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute a death sentence.
Hope on why the Democrats were making her crazy this week. Actually, Hope and her co-bloggers Liz and Eileen have a lot of good stuff this week, so check it all out.
Civic Dialogues excerpts a commencement address by George Soros.
The Joe Hill Dispatch is following the flareup in Congress after Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused President Bush of being incompetent. The Stakeholder has more, lots more.
Tom Kirkland on why airlines are the way they are.
Kevin on being another casualty of high gasoline prices.
StoutDem on new advances in campaign sign defense.
If you thought my world was collapsing when I realized that John Lopez was making sense, get ready for another tremor as I confront the notion that Tom Craddick is making sense.
Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick said Friday that he and the lieutenant governor will work more diligently with the education community before another special session to ensure its support for any plan to overhaul the school funding system.School groups had criticized the Legislature during the recent special session on school finance, even discouraging the session before it began in April. The session ended Monday after 28 days with no plan and no consensus among lawmakers.
Support from the education community could be an important part of getting a bill passed, Craddick said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry has vowed to call as many special sessions as necessary to overhaul the state's share-the-wealth system of school funding, which relies heavily on local property taxes. Lawmakers want to eliminate the so-called Robin Hood system, reduce property taxes and find other sources of money to pay for education.
"I feel more strongly now about a total fix than I ever have," Craddick said.
Craddick said he wants to give schools more money than they receive under the current plan, but finding new revenue sources that both legislative chambers can pass will be tricky. He believes any long-term fix must include a restructured business tax.
While Perry recommended closing loopholes in the franchise tax that allow an estimated five out of every six businesses to avoid paying, Craddick said the franchise tax should be eliminated entirely and replaced with another form of a business tax that can grow with the economy. Perry, however, has said he wouldn't support any business tax that could upset job creation in Texas.
"Businesses that I've talked to say, `We're willing to pay our share as long as it's fair and treats everybody equal,' " Craddick said.
State-taxed video slot machines at horse and dog racing tracks emerged early on as an option that could raise as much as $1.5 billion in money for schools. Perry supported the idea, but opposition in the House led to that provision being removed from the bill. The result was a school finance plan that couldn't pay for itself.
Next time around, Craddick said, he will encourage a plan that will separate video gambling from the overall bill and tie it to additional property tax relief. For instance, if the provision were approved -- which may be unlikely -- homeowners would get an additional 10-cent reduction in property taxes per $100 in appraised land value. If the measure were rejected, they would still get property tax relief, just not as much.
"That way we could still pass a bill with property tax reduction and put more money in schools," Craddick said. Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst earlier this week appointed two working groups to address the issues of education reform and revenue. Craddick said he meets with Dewhurst almost daily, hoping to forge common ground between the House and Senate. He still hopes Perry won't call another session until lawmakers agree on a replacement plan.
Actually consulting the education community before you force some half-assed "reforms" down their throats? Overhauling the tax code? Replacing the useless franchise tax with something that will actually generate revenue? Recognizing that the business community isn't monolithically anti-tax, especially when they can see a clear benefit? Tying property tax reductions to pie-in-the-sky gambling money instead of betting the whole school funding enchilada on it?
Getting...woozy...legs...wobbly...world...blurry...
swoon
CLUNK!
Quick! Smelling salts! Man down over here!
The results of the BlogAds Reader Survey are out, and they're pretty interesting. It's a self-selecting audience and all, but I'm still surprised that it's male by a 4-1 ratio. I'd love to see more detail about individual blog readership, as in "People who read this blog also read these other blogs". More results are coming Monday, according to BlogAds dude Henry Copeland.
Via David Pinto. Atrios mentions some data pertaining to his blog, so maybe we'll also get to see some individualized results.
Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney's natural facial expression a grimace?
Hmm. Maybe it's more of a sneer. What do you think?
(PS - The man on Big Time's right is running against Nick Lampson. Cheney was in town helping him raise money. You can help Lampson do the same.)
Rice University trustees today decided to keep the school's current athletic program, to stay in NCAA Division I sports, but will increase academic standards for athletes.Trustees said May 5 they favor staying in NCAA Division I sports, but they released a consultant's report whose workable options include dropping football.
It was a unanimous decision. Here is the official press release. The absolute second-best part of the whole thing is right here:
High priority should be given to building a student-faculty fitness and recreation center and convocation center, which also would serve as an improved venue for men’s and women’s basketball and other intercollegiate, club and intramural sports. Conceptual planning will begin in the near future.
Please, please, please let this mean that the Autry Court Deathwatch can begin its countdown.
They're pretty happy about this on Owlzone, where the news was broken by a News24 reporter. Outgoing President and aspiring pugilist Malcolm Gillis had already expressed his support of the athletic program. The folks at Tulane, who went through this exercise themselves recently, will be glad to hear our decision.
Let me just say it again: Woo hoo!
UPDATE: Here's the full story. One point to highlight:
The faculty report said athletes undergo a markedly different admissions process and are often "academically unprepared." It cited lower SAT scores by athletes.But [trustee chairman Bill] Barnett downplayed the importance of test scores Friday, stressing the admission process considers each person as a whole. He compared athletes' talents to those of musicians or scientists who might not do well on some tests outside their field and said Rice's first priority is to admit students who have the potential to become leaders.
That seems appropriate to me. We'll see how it translates into real life, but I agree with it in principle. Meanwhile, John Lopez thinks all this was a brilliant bit of strategizing and long-term thinking by the trustees.
Not so bad, all things considered.
The spending plan he released Thursday includes an increase of more than $47 million for the Police Department and $9 million for the Fire Department in the fiscal year that begins July 1.But even as more tax dollars are being pumped into public safety, more than 300 civilian employees in the Police Department face layoffs and workers in other departments are preparing to do more with less.
That isn't all bad, however, according to some.
"We are optimistic. We believe, (through) this exercise, we have developed ways to cut costs and streamline operations," said Issa Dadoush, director of the Building Services Department. "We defined the true number of employees needed to run this department."
[...]
Even with its austerity moves, White's $1.454 billion general fund budget represents a 3.3 percent increase from this year's budget.
And while some departments are getting fewer dollars, the budgeted numbers don't tell the whole story.
The Parks and Recreation Department, for instance, is receiving about $1.6 million less in the coming fiscal year than was budgeted for this year.
But because of cutbacks made throughout the year, the department actually spent about $6 million less than was budgeted.
"We are really very happy with the way it looks as of right now," said department spokeswoman Marene Gustin. "I don't think the average taxpayer will see any difference in park services. I would hope they might actually see an increase in the level of maintenance of parks properties."
We'll see how the Council reacts. For now, I'll note that an earlier Chron story (which, typically, I can no longer find - I wish I had some idea how their algorithm to move stuff into archives worked) reported that part of the increased spending came from expected growth in tax receipts. While I do expect economic conditions to finally start to improve around here, I just hope that the Mayor hasn't fallen prey to Perry/Strayhorn disease.
This is a bit harder to fathom.
Mayor Bill White said Thursday he will ask the state Legislature - in a special session if another is called - to draft a constitutional amendment that would let City Council reduce the state's 10 percent limit on annual increases in the taxable value of Houston Homes.Gov. Rick Perry wants a 3 percent cap statewide on appraisal values, and local elected officials, including state Rep. Martha Wong and Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, have proposed a 5 percent limit. White got on the bandwagon Wednesday, calling for a 7 percent cap.
"I'd like to get as much property tax relief as we can afford while meeting our obligations and not compromising public services," White said Thursday. "I think taking it from 10 percent to 7 percent is a good first step."
White said it is "wrong for the constitution to tie our hands to give property tax relief to the citizens."
"I don't think that the state should be telling municipalities what to do. I think we should have the local option to reduce our property taxes as the citizens of this community see fit," he said.
I don't want to debate the merits of a 10% cap versus some other cap - you all already know my feelings about property taxes. I'm just trying to figure out how you square those last two sentences with a request for an amendment to reduce the cap rate. And it ain't gonna happen for me on a Friday afternoon.
Blogs are good for business, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has said.
In a speech to an audience of chief executives, Mr Gates said the regularly updated journals, or blogs, could be a good way for firms to tell customers, staff and partners what they are doing.He said blogs had advantages over other, older ways of communicating such as e-mail and websites.
More than 700 Microsoft employees are already using blogs to keep people up to date with their projects.
[...]
Mr Gates made a point of dwelling on blogs and said that although they started in the technical community and have come to be a broader social phenomenon, businesses can use them too.
They had advantages over more traditional ways of keeping in touch such as e-mail and websites, he said.
E-mail messages could be too imposing or miss out key people who should be included, said Mr Gates.
Websites were a problem too, he added, because they demand that people visit them regularly to find out if anything has changed and require regular updating to avoid going stale.
These problems could be solved, said Mr Gates, by using blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), that lets people know when a favourite journal is updated.
"What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate," he said.
"The ultimate idea is that you should get the information you want when you want it."
All true. It's also much better for archiving and retrieval than email. Ever search an Outlook PST file for a keyword? Takes forever. I know where to look for my old stuff 99% of the time, and when I don't, my search utility finds what I need in short order.
Now for the ominous news:
Microsoft currently does not make any individual blogging tools but it is widely expected to move into this space soon. If it does the move would pitch it into even sharper competition with Google and others such as AOL.
Look on the bright side - as far as we know, they haven't attempted to buy SixApart. Yet.
Via The Agonist.
What are unusual places to hold voter-registration drives, Alex?
Strip club owners are putting a little bada-bing in the presidential campaign by asking patrons to turn their eyes away from the stage for a moment to fill out a voter registration form -- and then vote against President Bush."It's not to say our industry loves John Kerry or anything like that," said Dave Manack, associate publisher of E.D. Publications, which publishes Exotic Dancer magazine. "But George Bush, if he's re-elected, it could be very damaging to our industry."
Fearful that conservatives might turn off the colored lights for good, a trade organization for adult night clubs is asking owners to register customers and employees and then encourage them to cast their ballots against the president. Micheal Ocello, president of the Association of Club Executives, said the group believes Bush's brand of conservatism is bad for business.
"We must do everything within our power to help ensure that Bush and his ultra-conservative administration are removed from the White House," Ocello wrote in a letter to nearly 4,000 club owners.
Has anyone notified Howard Stern about this? He'd be all over it.
Heather Layman, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said she doesn't know why the businesses would consider the president unfriendly to their industry. But, speaking of the GOP's own voter-registration drive this year, she said: "I have to admit that the strip club owners are not a group we targeted."Adult night clubs rake in an estimated $15 billion annually and employ 500,000 to 750,000 people, Manack said.
We're glad that you've chosen to overlook this demographic, Heather. But if it makes you feel better, it's not all bad news for you.
In southern Wisconsin, more than 200 people have registered in the past month at the bar Diamond Jim's and the strip club Isabella Queen, both located between Janesville and Beloit. They are the first of Wisconsin's 80 strip clubs to provide voter registration services. "I'm actually fighting for my survival," said owner Jim Halbach.ACE members in Ohio have registered about 2,000 people in just a few weeks, said chapter president Luke Liakos.
In North Carolina, ACE chapter president David Baucom said he plans to distribute registration forms in his 16 clubs to encourage voting but won't be putting down the president -- his business hasn't had any problems since Bush took office. "We just want people to vote," Baucom said.
Well, OK, maybe the fact that most of the action seems to have taken place in swing states like Wisconsin and Ohio isn't so good for you, Heather. But at least they still sorta like you in North Carolina!
Greg has a long excerpt from this Governing magazine article on the latest trends in outsourcing state government functions to the private sector. Texas is now on the leading edge of this, and if the program is declared a success (not the same as actually being a success; call me cynical) it's likely to kick off a trend around the country. Check it out, it's a good read.
One point of interest: The article mentions our old friend Gregg Phillips, whose ethical and biographical questions have not been fully explored by the media here. How much of any of this do you know, and how much have you seen in the Chronicle?
We (or at least I) may not know what the financial impact of the Super Bowl really was, but here's a story about the financial impact of the NCAA Men's Final Four in San Antonio.
Before the NCAA Men's Final Four was held here in April, local officials optimistically predicted basketball fans would bring $50 million in direct economic impact to the Alamo City.On Thursday, the same officials delivered some pleasantly surprising news: They underestimated by $5 million how much cash would flow into town.
The NCAA and the San Antonio Local Organizing Committee said the $55 million figure, calculated by the same independent research firm that made the prediction, doesn't include spending by local residents and "casual" attendees who were in town on other business.
The experts concluded that 51,000 visiting fans from Duke, Georgia Tech, Connecticut and Oklahoma State universities spent an average of $229 per day during the events April 3-5, or $1,019 for the typical four-day stay.
Based on detailed surveys during and after the Final Four, cash registers were ringing at stores, restaurants and hotels, where the fans spent an average of four nights, the researchers said. When they weren't watching basketball at the Alamodome, the visitors were dining, shopping, tanking up on gas, seeking entertainment and visiting tourist attractions downtown and elsewhere.
I find this fascinating. I can only wonder if the "independent research firm" that was involved here is the same one that made the (in my mind) wildly optimistic predictions about the Super Bowl and All-Star Game. Note that in San Antonio, a tourist town with generally higher hotel room prices than Houston, the per-day spending of each visitor was $229, and this was about 10% more than originally estimated. Compare that to the $373 dollars per day that Houston Super Bowl visitors were expected to plunk down. Does that give you any more faith about that original projection? It sure doesn't for me.
One question I'd like to ask about all of these surveys is what they expect the average occupancy of hotel rooms for these visitors to be. If I were to fly into San Antonio and rent a car instead of just driving there, I could imagine spending $229 per day on the hotel, the rent car, and my meals and entertainment. (Not that I would spend that much in reality - I'm way too much of a cheapskate - but I could at least imagine it.) If I were to bring Tiffany with me, though, I surely wouldn't expect our total expenditures to be double that. We'd still only need one room and one car, so the marginal expense would be pretty much all food and entertainment. So I'd like to know: How many rooms and cars are these folks actually renting?
Where I'm going with this is a sneaking suspicion that the cost of the game tickets is being factored in to those average spending numbers. Obviously, the visitors spent those dollars, but how much of that spending wound up back in the local coffers? How much of that money was taken off the top by the NCAA and NFL, and how much was left for the Alamodome and Reliant Stadium? How much of that really trickles down to the employees where one would expect the touted "multiplier effect" to kick in? I don't know, but I bet it makes a difference to the bottom line.
Oh, and one last thing: One other possible factor involved here is our highway-robbery hotel and rental car tax rates, put in place to help finance all those nice big-event-hosting stadia. I voted for all those referenda, and I'm glad we're getting these events, but I hope we're taking those tax rates into account before totting things up, since while that is money for the state, it's not really money in the hands of local businesses and workers.
This AusChron article is about a celebration of the Ardmore exodus by House Dems, but it contains an interesting nugget about the sure-to-be-revisted battle over gambling.
Austin Rep. Dawnna Dukes echoed [Waco Rep. Jim] Dunnam's judgment of the [special] session, and said that in addition to the moral objections raised against gambling by some Republicans, there is another factor – concerns about competition with bingo game fundraising by churches and nonprofit organizations. "That's a bigger interest than you might imagine," said Dukes, "and they've all been down in the lobby." She said that the Democrats will not budge from their demand for equity in whatever funding scheme might be devised, and that enough Republicans from property-poor districts also have an interest in equity to produce the current gridlock.
You never know who's going to be in a given alliance sometimes. Just another item to file away for future reference.
Apparently spending another $1.7 million on the Special Session to Nowhere wasn't enough. We're now giving a lobbying firm for the gambling industry a cool quarter million bucks to write a slot machine law for us.
During a Sunset Advisory Commission meeting Tuesday, video lottery opponent Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, grilled Lottery Commission Executive Director Reagan Greer and agency General Counsel Kim Kipling about hiring the Las Vegas firm Lionel, Sawyer and Collins to draft the gambling legislation."Are you familiar with any other situation where someone has asked a state agency to use their resources to go out of state to hire a law firm to draft legislation and pay them $250,000 out of that agency's budget?" Nelson asked.
Greer said Lionel, Sawyer and Collins was hired because no one in Texas had the legal expertise on how to legalize video lottery terminals without expanding Indian gaming in the state.
Greer said the commission hired outside counsel at the direction of the staffs of Perry, Dewhurst and Speaker Tom Craddick after consulting with Attorney General Greg Abbott.
Kipling said there was an interest among the state leaders to make sure video lottery "would be tightly run, closely supervised and a squeaky-clean operation."
Kipling said the Las Vegas firm was chosen on the recommendation of lottery Commissioner James Cox of Austin. During the 1980s, Cox ran four hotels and casinos for the estate of Howard Hughes.
Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, asked whether the law firm drafted the exact legislation that the House voted on. Kipling said the law firm's work formed the basis for the bill, but there were some changes made by House legislators.
"This was a bill, which was a specific policy agenda, and this was for a special interests agenda that benefits very few people," Dunnam said Wednesday, referring to the racetrack owners who want video lottery legalized. "For the taxpayers to pay for that is unbelievable."
Who's responsible for this?
Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said the governor's staff wanted the agency to provide the information on how to draft the legislation, but she said no one on the governor's staff directed which law firm should be hired.Dewhurst spokesman Mark Miner said the lieutenant governor's staff was brought into the discussions after the Las Vegas firm was hired.
Craddick spokesman Bob Richter said the speaker's staff agreed to hiring the Las Vegas firm because of its expertise.
The firm so far has submitted a bill to the state of $176,743. The maximum it can be paid is $250,000.
You know, I feel a little tired. I'm gonna let Liz do the heavy lifting for me.
Let me make sure I've got this right ... the guv wants to fund schools with slots, so his office approves the expenditure of a quarter mil of public funds to an out-of-state firm by the lottery commission--who, by the way, only have the authority kindly granted them by the Lege to administer the existing lottery laws for the good people of Texas--so they can put legislation before the lawmakers that no one in Texas except the guy in the white mansion and the gambling industry wants. Carole Strayhorn should jump on this but big.
Indeed. Among other things, this would be a much better use of Strayhorn's time, and she's clearly demonstrated that she needs a useful project. Have at it, Carole.
Here's a brief update on once and possibly future candidate for statewide office Ron Kirk.
Last summer Mr. Kirk gave $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and various Senate campaigns, and $5,000 to the Democratic National Committee.He says he's also had conversations with Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat who is poised to become the third black senator elected since Reconstruction.
"He can win," Mr. Kirk said. "He's a good candidate and is very sharp. I'm committed to him lock, stock and barrel."
[...]
Mr. Kirk hopes Texas can help Mr. Obama be the second black person elected to the Senate from Illinois in 12 years. He wants to bring Mr. Obama to Texas for a fund-raising tour.
"There are a lot of Democrats here," he said. "Those of us who care have to play by electing progressive Democrats in other states."
I've heard a rumor that Obama will be in town for the state Democratic convention next month. That'd be cool.
Mr. Kirk says he doesn't know whether he will run for a public office again.He's got a list of potential 2006 Democratic Senate and gubernatorial candidates that includes Dallas Mayor Laura Miller (she says she's not interested in partisan politics); her husband, state Rep. Steve Wolens; and former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros.
Just a few more names to add to the hopper. Baggage and all, I agree with Greg, from whom I got this story, that Henry Cisneros would make a strong candidate in any race he'd choose to run.
Former managing director of investor relations for Enron Paula Rieker pleaded guilty yesterday to one felony count of insider trading, and made a deal to work with prosecutors.
Rieker, 49, pleaded guilty to one felony count and admitted she made a profit of nearly $500,000 on a July 2001 sale of stock.She traded the stock after she learned of a midyear $102 million loss in the company's Internet business, twice the expected loss for the whole year in that division.
"I was wrong to sell the stock. But I did. I knew it was wrong at the time," Rieker told U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon.
Enron Task Force prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler said Rieker sold the stock the very same day she learned about the unexpectedly high losses of the Internet division.
"Ms. Rieker breached her duties of confidentiality, trust and loyalty to Enron," Ruemmler said in court.
Rieker will forfeit the stock profit and a six-figure Enron bonus she received after the bankruptcy. She could eventually be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
But if she helps the government, prosecutors could ask for a much lighter sentence.
Rieker could be important to the government's cases. Her primary job was to prepare earnings releases and write the scripts for conference calls to analysts.
She was basically the No. 2 person in investor relations in 2001 and involved in many of the public communications that prosecutors claim were fraudulent and are key to the criminal charges already filed against former CEO Jeff Skilling.
At the end of 2001, Rieker became secretary to the board of directors, replacing Rebecca Carter, who is now married to Skilling. Thus she was present for board meetings in the last desperate weeks before Enron's bankruptcy, a time when chairman Ken Lay resumed the CEO position.
She also took particular interest in the company's Internet business. Two of the lawyers representing former Internet division officials accused of fraud attended Rieker's plea appearance Wednesday, curious about what her plea deal will mean for the broadband trial.
"She was strategically placed and will know if there were deliberate miscommunications to the investing public and who directed her to gave out such information," said Philip Hilder, who represents an array of witnesses in the Enron cases. He said she will know who in upper management insisted on a certain spin.
Other lawyers involved in the case said Skilling seems a particularly likely target of Rieker's testimony.
Another brick in the wall, Jeff. Count your days, bubbela, 'cause they're numbered.
Check out the Political State Report for a nice interview with Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Tony Knowles. Author Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins did his homework and asked some good questions. I like this trend of candidates making themselves available to bloggers. At the risk of sounding like a triumphalist, I find I've learned a lot more about them than in the usually lame meet-the-candidates stories that show up in the newspapers.
Well, now. I've had some posts picked up far and wide, but I do believe this one has gone about as far and wide as anything I've ever done. Nearly 9000 visits later, there are a few things to say.
First, for those keeping score, here's a (probably outdated by now) list of folks who linked to that post:
Dallas Morning News Daily (no permalinks, from May 17 at 4:41 PM EDT)
Fark
Kos diary
J. LeRoy Blogfest
Walk In Brain
Bird On The Moon
The Left End of the Dial
Liberty's Blog
that good night
Jusiper
Chaos dot org
The Ghost of Howard Beale
Datalounge forum
BeliefNet forum
And of course Atrios, from whom most avalanches of good traffic come.
Elsewhere, Kevin Drum picked it up from Electrolite, who'd gotten it from the same source as me, Julia. BoingBoing also picked it up from Electrolite.
As you'd expect, people reacted with all kinds of indignation, shock, outrage, what have you. I've enjoyed the comment thread on my post, which has been pretty thoughtful, but some of the posts and comments I've seen there and elsewhere have been, shall we say, a wee bit broad in their indictments of the guilty parties. (I'm not the only one who thinks this, by the way.) So let's clear up a few things.
This was the action of one person, one person who acted on the arbitrary and ill-thought out rule put in place by her predecessor (a Democrat, I might add). It's true that a lot of people voted for her, but you know, the issue of whether or not Unitarianism is a religion just didn't come up in the campaign. Maybe many of those people would agree with what she said and did, but given that they were never asked to evaluate her position on Unitarianism - as the job of Comptroller has to do with handling the state's money, most of the campaigning had to do with boring financial stuff - I find it questionable at the least to conclude that the voters are complicit in her idiocy. And I say this as someone who's never voted for Carole Keeton Strayhorn in his life, though prior to her recent attack of the stupids I admit I considered with some favor the possibility that she'd switch parties in order to make that run for Governor we all know she's lusting to do. I was never fully sold on that idea because she has a history of saying things that make me gag. But I digress.
Next, as Antinome pointed out in my comments, it's a bit hard to understand why Strayhorn is pursuing this agenda, as the courts have already slapped down her line of reasoning, and they've left little doubt as to their opinion of it.
What is not clear to me is why Strayhorn is not in contempt of Court by continuing to apply the standard she applied to the Unitartians since according to footnote 4 of the opinion:
"In addition, the trial court ruled that the denial of tax-exempt status violated the Texas Tax Code and the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and permanently enjoined the Comptroller from using "worshiping God" or "worshiping a Supreme Being" as the litmus test for determining an organization's tax-exempt status. The trial court also awarded attorney's fees to the Ethical Society."
Another interesting quote from footnote 10:
"Likewise, we reject the Comptroller's argument that our assessment of the Ethical Society's religious nature and purpose should be based on the "common understanding" of the term "religion." Although many of the definitions cited to us by the Comptroller do include the concept of a Supreme Being or a supernatural reality, e.g., Black's Law Dictionary 1292 (6th ed. 1990) (religion "in its broadest sense includes all forms of belief in the existence of superior beings exercising power over human beings. . ."), the purpose of the First Amendment is to protect dissenters from being forced to take the position favored by the majority in violation of their own religious consciences. See Everson v. Board of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 8-10 (1947). Because the scope of religious belief defies easy characterization, we believe that a constitutionally sufficient inquiry cannot be bound by this particular common understanding of religion. Otherwise, the courts would find themselves as a matter of law declaring entire belief systems that certainly qualify as religions-- such as Buddhism, Taoism, and some strains of Unitarianism--to be outside of the First Amendment's protection."
The Court considered Unitarians basically the easier, more obvious case. (I think the "some strains" refers to the fact that some strains of Unitarianism do believe in God and therefore do not fall within the example, though the note could have been written more clearly).
So this is a pointless crusade by one person who hasn't got the sense to realize that like with instant replay, the outcome ain't gonna be any different this time around. In better times, we'd have all had a good laugh at Strayhorn's expense and gone on with our lives. Have we all forgotten that one should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity?
Yes, I know, some of you are warming up your "first they came for the Unitarians" argument in the bullpen. I do agree that we ignore such things at our peril, but we ought to be sure that it is being ignored first. I for one have no intention of forgetting this incident - hell, I still rag on her for sandbagging us all on the budget deficit in 2002 - but with the courts already having ruled against her, I confess that I'll be frying some of my bigger fish first. There are plenty of more immediate things to be concerned about, and there's room for this on the back burner.
Now after all this, if you still believe that Texas is some kind of barbaric place that ought to be sawed off or given back to Mexico or whatever, well, other than pointing out that some folks have been saying the same sort of things about Cambridge, Massachussettes this week, there's not much more I can say to you. I like it here just fine, and I make no apologies for that. I'm not going to spell out why - for one thing, it'll sound too much like I doth protest too much, and for another, it's not something that can really be conveyed by words. You have to try it for yourself, and either you get it or you don't. If you don't, that's fine. This is a big country, and there's surely someplace that suits your needs. I'd just as soon you not be here if all you're gonna do is bitch about it.
Thanks for listening. Enjoy your stay, and do come back if you did.
UPDATE: Ginger is more concerned about Strayhorn's efforts to strip the tax-exempt status from the UU Church than I am. She makes a good case. Jim D is thinking along similar lines. He also left his comments in this Kos diary, where a few of us good Texans laid a little smack on a particularly nasty bigot.
UPDATE: Former Texan (and good buddy of mine) David chimes in with his Texas-to-Pittsburgh transition story.-
I'm not quite at the point of gloating as my commute costs about a buck fifty a day, but I sure have no sympathy for all those SUV drivers who are feeling the pain at the gas pump now.
Jaime Rodriguez is borrowing his brother's Nissan Xterra for his sales runs because his own Chevy Tahoe costs too much to drive.Milton Jordan is giving up those Sunday jaunts.
And while Ted Luna still cruises around in his Chevy Suburban, he's forking over $60 a pop to fill up the tank -- and struggling to pay for it.
"That means I've got to make more money somehow," Luna said.
I'm going to try and say this in a calm and rational manner. If you're not regularly hauling large quantities of cargo, you have no freaking business driving a Suburban. People who use Suburbans to drive themselves to and from office jobs are getting what they deserve. And that goes triple for Hummer owners, who don't even have the haul-stuff exception to fall back on.
There are good reasons to own an SUV. I don't like them, but they're not evil, and neither are their owners. That said, in my opinion most people have no need for them. It's fine by me if you want one, but don't expect me to commiserate when gas prices go up.
"We've experienced a lot of people trading in SUVs for passenger cars or cars with better mileage," said Nate Murphy, general sales manager for Munday Chevrolet.Nationwide, sales of the larger SUVs were down 4.7 percent in April, Wards Automotive reported.
Instead, motorists are picking smaller SUVs built on car platforms, known in the industry as "crossover utility vehicles" or CUVs. Sales of these vehicles were up 13.3 percent in April.
And car buyers are getting on waiting lists to buy the new hybrid vehicles, which -- thanks to their combination of a traditional internal combustion engine and an electric motor -- get substantially better gas mileage. Take the Toyota Prius, for example, which boasts 55 miles to the gallon for combined city and highway driving. That's four times the fuel efficiency of some of the larger SUVs.
Of course, fuel economy isn't the only reason consumers pick specific models. Many consumers find crossovers easier to drive and park than the larger SUVs, while hybrids are popular in some communities because motorists can drive them without passengers in high occupancy vehicle lanes -- although that isn't the case in Houston.
But gas mileage is certainly on Houston motorists' minds.
It's about damn time. We'd be an awful lot less dependent on foreign oil if there were fewer SUVs in this country.
Something else to consider. When I meet Tiffany at her doctor's office, I take the Metro rail. It's about a ten-mile round trip by car, so I figure at 25 MPG, which is what I average, it'd cost me about 75 cents to drive it. Throw in the minimum of two dollars it'd cost to park (the doctor is at St. Joseph's Hospital on the south edge of downtown), and the train is cheaper than driving. Maybe higher gas prices will get more people out of their cars altogether and into buses, vanpools, and the light rail trains.
Tom Kirkland has been following this news and has some good stuff, like this bit on the benefits of higher oil prices, and this one which points to this WaPo article on the strategic reserve. Check this out from that WaPo piece:
[T]he $41.55 price for oil today is much higher than the $35.50 it costs for a barrel to be delivered next year. This disparity inspired Loews chief executive Jim Tisch, whose company has extensive energy holdings and plays financial markets like a violin, to propose a trade. Let's sell oil out of the reserve, he says -- not for money, but for oil to be delivered next year. We could get seven barrels next year for six today. We're now buying 160,000 barrels a day for the reserve, which has 660 million barrels. But by trading rather than buying, we'd save taxpayer dollars, reduce the demand that's driving up prices today, and spook the speculators. I love it.
Works for me, too, though as I understand it, even 160,000 barrels per day will have only about a nickel a barrel's effect on prices. Regardless, buying back that oil on the futures market is a no-brainer.
If you're a user of MT Blacklist (and if you're not, you should be), now's your chance to tell Jay Allen what you'd like to see in the next version of his wonderful utility. My wish list item is the ability to edit an existing blacklist entry, but there's lots of other good suggestions there as well. Check it out and make your voice heard.
Tom DeLay's sham "charity" Celebrations for Children will not be used to shake down GOP Convention attendees in New York this summer.
"It has become clear New York around the time of the Republican Convention is too expensive a venue, therefore CfC will not hold the New York events and instead will pursue other less expensive locations later this year," the organization said in a statement.
Yeah, yeah, blame it on New York's high prices. Very classy of you. Too bad the Republican Love Boat got spiked - you could have had the Lido Deck for an attractive sum, I'm sure. Via Political Wire.
As noted earlier, there's been another complaint filed with the FEC over DaLay's long and lucrative relationship with Bacardi. Here's more info on that. The Daily Business Review has a longer subscriber-only article which I've reproduced beneath the More link. Note that some Democrats, including Florida Senator Bill Nelson, are also involed, and like DeLay, everyone has the lame "no quid pro quo!" excuse at the forefront. Thanks to AJ Garcia for the tips.
DeLay attended Stephen F. Austin State University's graduation this weekend, and he gave a couple of bizarre quotes to the local paper. I'll leave the commentary on the Iraq stuff to Southpaw, from whom I found this link, but I can't resist one:
On the subject of Congressional redistricting, Delay said some people are upset that the districts were changed so dramatically."We haven't been redistricted for almost 30 years," he said. "But it is mandated that state legislators do redistricting - not judges. People are starting to get into the groove, and with campaigns and upcoming elections it should all straighten out."
Haven't been redistricted for 30 years? What does he think happened in 2001, 1991 (you know, when that eeevil Martin Frost fella carved out a safe spot for himself), and 1981? I have no idea what he means by this. Anyone want to take a guess?
UPDATE: Corrected Southpaw link. Sorry about that, Bubba!
May 19, 2004
By: Dan Christensen
The political action committee of Miami-based Bacardi U.S.A. made unreported
campaign contributions to five members of Congress, including Sen. Bill
Nelson and Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, according to a complaint
filed Tuesday by a Washington, D.C., watchdog group.
Four of those members, including Nelson and the Diaz-Balart brothers, signed
on last month as cosponsors of a bill that would help Bacardi in a
longstanding trademark dispute with the Cuban government and French spirits
giant Pernod Ricard.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Federal
Election Commission to expand an ongoing inquiry of the Bacardi political
action committee and its Washington-based treasurer, Robert M. Higdon. The
investigation was opened in March when the citizens group first alleged
failures by the Bacardi PAC to properly disclose contributions.
CREW executive director Melanie Sloan said the Bacardi PAC’s contributions
were found by combing through campaign reports filed by the various elected
officials or their committees.
Sloan also said the timing of the contributions, in the weeks and months
before the legislation was introduced, “suggests a quid pro quo.”
Bacardi spokeswoman Patricia Neal called that “ludicrous.” Those who got
Bacardi contributions are longtime allies who’ve supported Bacardi before on
other issues, she said. Neal also said that Bacardi has been in constant
communication with the FEC to provide all “additional information that
they’d like.”
The complaint said campaign finance reports showed that, without reporting
the contributions properly to the FEC, the Bacardi PAC gave Nelson’s
re-election campaign $2,500, the Balart-Diaz brothers’ joint leadership PACs
$1,000 each, and the re-election campaign of Iowa Republican Sen. Charles
Grassley $1,000.
In addition, the PAC gave the leadership PAC of longtime Bacardi ally Tom
DeLay, R-Texas, the House majority leader, $2,500. And it gave Connie Mack
IV, who’s running for a U.S. House seat in Fort Lauderdale, $1,000.
Further checking by the Daily Business Review found a $1,000 contribution to
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., that Bacardi’s PAC did not report to the FEC.
According to the complaint filed by the citizens group, the Bacardi PAC
failed to file either a year-end report for 2003 or a quarterly report for
the first part of 2004.
The year-end report was deemed not filed by the FEC because the Bacardi PAC
filed only a paper report, not an electronic report as now required by the
FEC. The paper report only disclosed that the PAC took in $37,000 in 2003
and contributed $8,500, but did not identify the sources of that money or
lists of candidates who received contributions.
The group’s allegations come at a time when corporations and labor unions
are struggling to find ways to continue funneling contributions to members
of Congress in the wake of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law.
With the new law outlawing huge, unregulated soft money contributions to
political parties, corporations and unions looking to buy influence on
Capitol Hill have returned to the idea of using PACs to raise so-called hard
money for specific candidates. To do that legally, though, PACs must comply
with federal election laws that require them to disclose how much they
raised, who gave it, and who got it.
Bacardi U.S.A. is a subsidiary of Bermuda-based Bacardi Ltd.
U.S. law as interpreted in 1999 by the FEC, in a case brought by Bacardi,
allows U.S. subsidiaries of foreign corporations to collect and bundle
campaign contributions from officers, managers and stockholders of the
corporation.
CREW is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public accountability group. It says in its
four-page complaint that the Bacardi PAC also made an undisclosed
contribution in January to DeLay’s leadership PAC.
Bill to help Bacardi
Nelson, the Diaz-Balarts and Grassley all are co-sponsors of controversial
legislation that would benefit Bacardi.
The bill would change U.S. trademark law to help Bacardi in its decade long
war with the Cuban government and French spirits giant Pernod Ricard over
the rights to the Havana Club rum label. The legislation appears to help no
one else.
“What’s so interesting is that every other corporation out there, like
Caterpillar and DuPont and General Motors, hate this legislation,” said CREW
executive director Sloan, a former federal prosecutor. “Only Bacardi likes
it, and, amazingly, people who are pushing it are getting money, which
suggests a quid pro quo.”
A spokesman for Nelson, Dan McLaughlin, disagreed.
“Of course it’s not a quid pro quo,” he said. “It’s a case in which Bill’s
sticking up for a business that’s getting a raw deal.”
Jill Kozeny, a spokeswoman for Sen. Grassley, said he has long had a “policy
of accepting contributions as long as they are legal and there are no
strings attached.” She added that Bacardi’s opponents on the trademark
battle have given to him, too.
Representatives for the Diaz-Balart brothers said the congressmen were
unavailable for comment. Press spokesmen for Rep. DeLay and Sen. Reid did
not return phone messages before deadline.
Bacardi wants to alter Section 211 of U.S. trademark law. That section was
enacted to prevent foreign companies from registering in U.S. courts
trademarks linked to property confiscated by foreign governments.
But in October 2000, the European Union filed suit challenging the law on
behalf of France. The World Trade Organization subsequently held that
Section 211 violated international intellectual property protections by
denying certain trademark owners the opportunity to register and renew their
trademarks in the U.S.
The bills pending in the Senate and House, S 2373 and HR 4225, seek to
modify the law to comply with the WTO ruling and preserve U.S. legal
protections for Bacardi that, among other things, have allowed it to block
Pernod Ricard from obtaining the U.S. trademark registration to the Havana
Club label. Those bills were co-sponsored by Sen. Nelson, Reps. Lincoln and
Mario Diaz-Balart, and Sens. Grassley and Reid after Bacardi made its
unreported contributions to them.
DeLay is not a cosponsor of the legislation sought by Bacardi. But he was
Bacardi’s chief ally last year in a failed attempt to get similar
legislation passed.
CREW’s complaint also identifies Connie Mack IV as a recipient of secret
campaign money from Bacardi’s PAC. Mack is the son of former U.S. Sen.
Connie Mack. In 2000, shortly before retiring from the Senate, the elder
Mack sponsored trademark legislation that helped Bacardi in its Havana Club
battle. He’s currently a Capitol Hill lobbyist for Bacardi. Nelson spokesman
McLaughlin said Mack has lobbied Nelson on Bacardi’s behalf.
CREW investigated and found that the Bacardi PAC made unreported campaign
contributions to the Democracy Believers Political Action Committee, a
leadership PAC jointly sponsored by the Diaz-Balart brothers, and the
Grassley Committee Inc., the Iowa senator’s main campaign committee.
Leadership PACs are established by members of Congress, who use them to
increase their power and influence by, among other things, raising money for
fellow members of Congress.
“There could be a lot more money, but this is all I found going [randomly]
through FEC filings,” Sloan said in an interview. “By Bacardi failing to
file, we can’t know what’s actually going on.”
In October, CREW asked the Internal Revenue Service to audit ARMPAC, DeLay’s
leadership PAC, for allegedly failing to disclose that Bacardi provided free
liquor and merchandise to members of Congress and lobbyists who attended an
ARMPAC fund-raiser at a golf resort in Puerto Rico in February 2002.
Federal law requires such reporting, but Sloan said that the IRS has not
said whether it was looking into the matter.
Congratulations to Randy Johnson for throwing a perfect game last night against the Braves. It's his second career no-hitter (the 14-year span between his first no-no and this game is the longest ever), and the 17th perfecto in major league history. I will dispute anyone who calls this the "icing" on his Hall of Fame career, though. Johnson's enshrinement has been a sure thing for a couple of years now, and he didn't need this to make his case. Call this the chocolate-dipped strawberries on top of the icing.
By the way, for those who think there's no pitching any more in MLB, yesterday also featured a one-hitter by Jason Schmidt of the Giants, and an 11-inning 1-0 win by the Angels over the Yankees. It's just as well that Schmidt was a near-miss - wouldn't it suck to throw a no-hitter and be overshadowed by a perfect game on the same day?
If the numbers are mixed for President Bush, they're awful for Governor Perry:
1. How would you rate the job Rick Perry is doing as governor?
Spring '04 Fall '03 Spring '03
Excellent 6% 10% 10%
Good 31% 36% 40%
Only fair 32% 24% 32%
Poor 20% 20% 12%
DK/NA 11% 10% 6%
Perspective:
Perry's disapproval rating in the winter and spring Texas Poll surveys has been the highest of any Texas governor since Bill Clements was enmeshed in a pay-for-play football scandal at Southern Methodist University in 1987.But the biggest sign that Perry's re-election may be in jeopardy is how his job approval among Republicans sank like a stone during the past three months.
Among Republicans, 66 percent said Perry was doing a good job in the winter poll. Now, 51 percent of Republicans approve of Perry's job performance -- a 15 percentage point drop.
More perspective:
"He is in trouble," Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said of Mr. Perry. "He's seen as more partisan than thoughtful."
The index page also adds that Perry's negatives "compares to Ann Richards' negative reviews in November 1994, when 48 percent gave a thumbs-down to the governor who had just been defeated."
Now, if you read all of these stories, no one in Austin has good numbers right now, something that's surely a by-product of the useless, do-nothing special session that just ended. Comptroller Strayhorn has the best ratings, with Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, Speaker Craddick, and the Lege overall all following Perry. Most people will forget about this stuff over time. 2006 is a long way away, and only a handful of legislators really have to worry about their seats this year. But I do believe that this is an opening, and it's one that could be forced wider if the Democrats are smart about it (standard disclaimer: that's never a good bet). The next legislative session, whether another "special" session or next January's regular session, ought to be a doozy if these numbers haven't improved by then.
UPDATE: Andrew D adds a few thoughts.
Here are the results of the most recent Scripps Howard Texas Poll, which mostly asked approve/disapprove questions about various politicians. We'll start with the best news for President Bush, which is that he leads John Kerry in Texas by a 58-29 margin (4% "other", 9% "don't know/no answer"). That's up from 54-36 earlier this year. Not that anyone expected Texas to even remotely resemble a swing state, but we all know that Bush is going to depend heavily on his base in November, and Texas is very much his base. If he ever dips to 50% here, he's going to be in real trouble everywhere else.
Not so good for him: As with the national polls, Bush's overall approval and will-vote-for numbers are better than his numbers on specific issues. Here's the breakdown:
2. How would you rate the job George W. Bush is doing as president -- excellent, good, only fair or poor?
Spring '04 Fall '03 Spring '03
Excellent 25% 30% 43%
Good 34% 28% 28%
Only fair 20% 21% 16%
Poor 19% 20% 27%
DK/NA 2% 1% 2%
(Note: Just noticed that the Spring 03 numbers make no sense. I presume the Poor rating is supposed to be much lower.)
3. How would you rate the job President Bush is doing in handling the economy –excellent, good, only fair or poor?
Spring '04 Spring '03
Excellent 18% 13%
Good 31% 37%
Only fair 25% 24%
Poor 25% 23%
DK/NA 1% 3%
4. How would you rate the job President Bush is doing in handling the war in Iraq?
Spring '04 Fall '03 Spring '03
Excellent 21% 24% 50%
Good 29% 27% 28%
Fair 19% 19% 13%
Poor 29% 27% 8%
DK/NA 2% 3% 1%
(Note: the Chron story says that Bush's "overall approval rating of 59 percent is a slight uptick from March, when 55 percent said he was doing an 'excellent' or 'good' job", but this looks to me like it was 58% last time the question was asked, not 55%. Either one is more likely to be margin of error variation than real movement, but I'm still curious if this was a math boo-boo on the Chron's part or if they're looking at different numbers.)
What this suggests to me is that maybe President Bush won't have such great coattails for the Republicans who are trying to knock off incumbent Democratic Congressmen. I've long believed that a successful strategy for the Democratic incumbents will be to express a certain amount of admiration for and agreement with the President while stressing their independence and willingness to oppose him when he's clearly wrong. With his ratings essentially in negative territory on these issues, that gives a lot of room for such positioning. From what I can tell, it's what they've all been doing. We'll see how it goes.
Thanks once again to everyone who participated in this week's Texas Tuesday for Rep. Nick Lampson. We're still trying to get some kind of interview with him up on the Texas Tuesdays site - this is still an experiment, and there are still a few bugs in the system, so we appreciate your patience. Greg did post a news roundup yesterday afternoon, so check that out. And if you're still looking for a reason to make a donation to the Lampson campaign, consider this:
Vice President Dick Cheney plans to visit Houston on Friday to provide fund-raising muscle for Ted Poe, the Republican candidate for the 2nd Congressional District.The breakfast fund-raiser should provide a needed shot in the arm for Poe, a former state district judge from Houston who is running against U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont.
Poe's campaign war chest was almost drained during his March GOP primary against five other Republicans.
As of March 31, Poe had a cash balance of $34,691. Lampson -- who was unopposed in the Democratic primary -- had $490,029.
Organizers said Friday's event at the Houstonian featuring Cheney is expected to raise $150,000 to $200,000.
Poe said he expects to have more than $250,000 by the next reporting deadline, June 30.
"It is great encouragement to have Vice President Cheney and the White House supporting our congressional race," Poe said. "We're honored and humbled."
[...]
After leaving Houston on Friday, he is expected to attend similar events in Texas for two other Republicans challenging Democratic U.S. House incumbents. They are state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth of Burleson, who faces U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco, and former appeals court Judge Louis Gohmert of Tyler, who faces U.S. Rep. Max Sandlin of Marshall.
Chet Edwards and Max Sandlin will be our next two featured candidates.
Anyway, here are the citations from yesterday:
The People's Republic of Seabrook
And special thanks to The Stakeholder for adding Texas Tuesdays to their sidebar.
Please let me know if I missed anyone!
I'm at a loss to describe this.
Unitarian Universalists have for decades presided over births, marriages and memorials. The church operates in every state, with more than 5,000 members in Texas alone.But according to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn't really a religious organization -- at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization "does not have one system of belief."
Never before -- not in this state or any other -- has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group's religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn's ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller's office.
"I was surprised -- surprised and shocked -- because the Unitarian church in the United States has a very long history," said Althoff, who notes that father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians.
His church is just one of several Unitarian congregations in North Texas, including churches in Fort Worth, Arlington and Southlake.
Strayhorn's ruling, as well as a similar decision by former Comptroller John Sharp, has left the comptroller's office straddling a sometimes murky gulf separating church and state.
What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office.
Questions about the issue were referred to Jesse Ancira, the comptroller's top lawyer, who said Strayhorn has applied a consistent standard -- and then stuck to it. For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have "simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power," he said.
"We have got to apply a test, and use some objective standards," Ancira said. "We're not using the test to deny the exemptions for a particular group because we like them or don't like them."
The courts have ruled against this "test", and I must say I'm a little disappointed with John Sharp for creating it. That was bad enough, but Strayhorn is vowing to keep fighting it, for reasons unclear to me. Doesn't she have better things to do, like throw rocks at Governor Perry?
Via Julia, whose news aggregator is clearly mightier than mine.
I highly recommend reading Arianna Huffington's Contract for a Better America. Now is the time for big ideas, clearly and simply expressed, and Huffington has some good ones. And yes, her choice of title is deliberately reminiscent of 1994's Contract With America. There's evidence in the polls that Democrats are gaining a lead in the generic Congressional ballot, and if so, that could make control of the House a possibility. For sure, clearly articulating a vision of how things could and should be is a necessary step towards that goal.
Via Kos, who talks about brand identity, something I addressed on a smaller scale awhile back for Harris County. The New Democrat Network is also thinking along these lines.
SixApart is requesting feedback from MT users about how they use the product. In particular, they're looking for data from people like Ginger who run multiple and multi-author non-commercial blogs. If that describes you, speak up!
My situation is easy - I'm a sole author of a single blog. I do now participate in two group blogs, but I have no authority over the former, and the latter is unlikely to need an MT upgrade any time soon. All that said, I can foresee a day where I might want a second blog or a second author - I've been trying to persuade Tiffany that blogging software will make posting baby pictures for family and friends to see much easier than a commercial package plus FTP would. So, while I've got no problem with the concept of paying for a new version of MT, I'd just as soon not have to worry about per-seat licensing. One non-commercial-use install should mean one license, in my opinion.
Regardless, I'm not the one who's going to be greatly affected by all this. I may never be more than a one-blog shop. I do appreciate SixApart's efforts to hear their customers out (which, let's face it, they should have done first). Make sure your voice is heard, too.
Greg is your tour guide for Texas Tuesdays today, and as we celebrate the launch of the new site, be sure to check out today's featured pol, Rep. Nick Lampson.
Nick Lampson is the first politician I ever gave money to, back in 1996 when he was running against the execrable nutball Steve Stockman, who had ousted 40-year incumbent Jack Brooks in the purge of 1994. He's been an effective and moderate voice for his constituents, and his success in getting reelected in his mostly-Republican district made him a marked man during last year's redistricting travesty. I have no doubt that he'll run as good and tough a campaign as one can run against eccentric former judge Ted Poe, but he's going to need all the help he can get. Please consider chipping in to make his victory possible.
Get ready to see Texas quarters in your change soon.
The U.S. Mint's commemorative Texas state quarter will be distributed and officially unveiled next month.U.S. Mint spokesman Michael White said production began May 3. The Federal Reserve will distribute the quarters, which feature a Lone Star over a relief map of Texas, to banks beginning in June.
An unveiling is scheduled for June 10 at the Bob Bullock Texas State Historical Museum in Austin.
Arlington artist Daniel Miller designed the quarter. It was selected in 2002 from 2,700 suggestions.
The center of the Lone Star is west of Waco and south of Stephenville. The five points extend to about Marshall on the northeast, Bay City to the southeast, Del Rio to the southwest, Lamesa to the northwest and into Oklahoma north of Wichita Falls.
At the bottom is the year 2004 and "E Pluribus Unum," the Latin phrase meaning "From many, one." The rim of the quarter is encircled by a lariat.
The U.S. Mint made the lariat slightly larger than Miller's original design.
The coin is the 28th in the series of state quarters. Texas was the 28th state to join the union in 1845. Millions will be minted and circulated, White said.
Texas proof coins, minted for collectors, already are for sale as part of a five-state quarters package.
The U.S. Mint began its decade-long program in 1999 to honor the 50 states.
"This program's been more popular than anyone had anticipated, and the quarters have earned about $4 billion for the general fund of the Treasury," White said. "More than 130 million Americans collect them."
OK, I admit it - I received one of those 50-state coin maps for collecting these quarters as a Christmas present a couple of years back. I've fallen a bit behind on filling it up, though, and we just took a bunch of coin rolls to the bank for deposit. Ah well, it's not like they're gonna run out any time soon.
Your attention, please. We do have names picked out for the baby (one of each, since there's always that chance that the sonograms may have misrepresented certain crucial data). Though we are not currently releasing the names that are under consideration, I can state unequivocally that the newest Kuffner-to-be will NOT be named Apple. That is all.
Another day, another complaint about campaign law violations involving Tom DeLay and Bacardi. Anyone know what that makes the total so far? I've lost count. Thanks to AJ Garcia for the tip.
UPDATE: URL fixed. Thanks to Charles M in the comments.
Somebody cue up Don Meredith singing When The Party's Over:
AUSTIN -- The Texas Legislature signaled the full-scale failure of the special session on school finance today by taking final adjournment with two days remaining in the 30-day session.The House adjourned first today, followed by the Senate.
Gov. Rick Perry called the session to cut property taxes, eliminate the so-called "Robin Hood" school finance system and restructure public education funding in Texas. He has indicated he will call another session to deal with the issue but has not said when.
The session was marred from the beginning by a lack of consensus and disagreement between Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst on how to pay for public schools.
Perry had wanted to pay for property tax cuts mostly by legalizing video slot machines at race tracks and expanding some sin taxes.
House members opposed the expansion of gambling and sought to pay for tax cuts with a new business payroll tax. But Perry torpedoed the new business tax by calling it a "job killer."
The House voted overwhelmingly to reject Perry's proposal after dropping the business tax. What passed the House was legislation with public education financial incentives, but its property tax cuts were small and it lacked the revenue-raising measures to pay for itself.
The Senate gave up the quest for a school finance package last Friday, lacking any clear idea of what tax increases might pass the House and be signed into law by the governor.
Blah blah blah consensus blah blah blah priorities blah blah blah leadership. You know the words, fill in the blanks yourself.
It's my opinion that this session didn't have to fail. Bearing in mind that I disagree with the Governor's stated goals, I'd have done a few things differently if I were interested in enacting them. On the assumption that everyone, even Grover Norquist, agrees that we can't slash property taxes and pay for the schools without finding alternate sources of revenue, this is how I'd have approached it. Let's start with the franchise tax, the one thing that an all-Republican lawmaking machine should have been able to do without tying itself in knots.
Nothing raises the business lobby's defenses like talk of higher taxes, and the business lobby has been out in force, trying to smother one proposed tax after another."You've got too many things that people can be against," said [spokesman for Speaker Craddick Bob] Richter.
Noting the lobby opposition to most proposals for higher taxes affecting businesses, he added: "Nobody wants to give. They say this is for the children, but when it comes down to it, it's for 'me.' "
Given the overwhelming public desire to "reform" Robin Hood, and the extreme capriciousness of our existing franchise tax, this should have been a no-brainer. Bob Richter is on the right track here - frame the issue as being about the interest of parents, students, and teachers versus that of the business lobby. How much of that pressure, coming from a united front, would they have withstood? In the end, a tax that was equally applied to all at a lower rate than before is something that would have been easy to accept. All it would have taken was some leadership and the balls to pull on one's leash. Needless to say, our Governor was not up to the task.
Once that is in place, you can then fix the sales tax. Again, if you accept the idea that the basic flaw is that it's not applied fairly to all stakeholders, you can build a coalition to apply it to services like legal consultations, home improvement, barber/beauty services, and so on. Doing so might even let you leave it at the same rate, maybe even consider a small cut. To repeat, this is not the approach I'd take, but if it's the road that I must travel, that's how I'd do it.
Once you've convinced everyone that you're paying for schools via a genuine repair and upgrade of the tax system, then maybe trying to tack on gambling isn't such a travesty. As the Lottery was originally sold, it could be positioned as an enhancement to education funding, maybe to pay for those precious teacher incentive awards that Perry wanted. Yeah, I know, it's a load of bull, but selling slots as a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have would I believe have removed one of the major objections to them.
That's how I would have done it had I temporarily possessed the body and well-coiffed head of Governor Perry. Given that his actual approach was a total flop, will it cost him politically?
"No question that Perry is the one that is already suffering the most and will take the biggest hit" if the effort ultimately falls short, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.Dr. Jillson said Mr. Perry's poll numbers have been slipping for 18 months and noted that a failure on school finance could underscore a perception that the governor is "more partisan than thoughtful."
According to the latest Texas Poll, 50 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the job Mr. Perry is doing – his lowest approval rating as governor. Only 40 percent give him positive marks, the survey indicates.
Dr. Jillson said House Speaker Tom Craddick, by contrast, is "invisible" to voters and elected from a "safe" district to a body where he was chosen by a solid majority of members. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has overcome low, early expectations to show himself "solid, thoughtful and predictable," the professor said.
[...]
"The House showed him they wanted to do their own thing by giving him a reverse consensus," said Tony Proffitt, a lobbyist who has worked for GOP Gov. Bill Clements and Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock.
"But Perry will get credit for trying. If he had not tried, there would have been some heartburn," he said.
Others said that Mr. Perry is on sound footing and that the public recognizes that school finance is a complex issue, one that deserves deliberate attention.
"This is a first good swipe at the issue. You get credit if something great happens," said Mike Baselice, a GOP pollster whose clients include Mr. Perry. "If not, there's certainly points gained for leadership, opening up debate on the issue."
School finance will not be Mr. Perry's Waterloo, he said.
"He's shown leadership in a number of different areas: insurance reform, the economy, bringing major employers to the state. There are a number of great things happening in the state."
Nice talking points there, but let's face it - way more people would have been affected by lower property taxes and more money for schools. I think he's gonna regret this, and if he calls an encore without at least having Dewhurst and Craddick on the same page, he's gonna look like a clown. We shall see.
Hopefully by tomorrow, the world's DNS servers will have told your ISP about the new site for Texas Tuesdays, which is http://www.texastuesdays.com and which is where we'll be doing our publicity for the various Democratic campaigns through November. For now, if all else fails, you can get there vie this slightly longer but perfectly viable URL.
Another page to mark is Free State Standard, the brainchild of Vince Leibowitz. It aims to cover all 254 counties, so give it a look and drop Vince a note if you want to help.
Well, as Andrew D notes, State Rep. David Swinford is running for Ag Commissioner in hopes of replacing Susan Combs, who has announced that she's running for Comptroller. The current Comptroller, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, has all but drooled over the possibility of running for Governor, and if so she'll have at least one GOP primary opponent, namely the current Governor, who either doesn't think that Senator Hutchison will want to come home to Austin or isn't worried about the possibility. Got all that?
Sheesh. Am I gonna have to create an Election 2006 category already?
Anyway. Greg and I were batting around different scenarios on Friday, and if Perry's announcement that he's staying put (for now) means that KBH is either retiring or running for reelection, then Strayhorn may well find herself on the sidelines in 2006, as I think she's enough of a black sheep now that she'd lose to either Combs or Perry. If KBH retires, Strayhorn's best hope is that one of Perry and Dewhurst abandons his office for a shot at the Senate, and she goes for that seat. It'd be interesting to see who she'd draw in those scenarios - I think Harris County Judge Robert Eckels would make a stronger cadidate for Lt. Gov. than Governor, for what it's worth - but I am certain that she'd be challenged wherever she runs.
UPDATE: Great minds think alike. With more detail over there.
So, did you hear about the staffer for Colin Powell who tried to yank him off the air on Meet the Press yesterday because Tim Russert was asking him hard questions? Turns out she used to work for Tom DeLay, which is clearly where she honed her people skills. The Stakeholder has more.
Allow me to join Atrios, John Scalzi and no doubt many others in congratulating those who've queued up like American Idol wannabees in front of city hall in Cambridge in order to get married. Mazel tov, y'all!
Here are a few quotes to give you the full feel of their depraved, society-destroying, wrath-of-God-inducing sentiment:
"It was really important to us to just be married. We want to be married as soon as we possibly can.""I feel really overwhelmed. I could collapse at this point."
"This is the most important day of my life."
That's just beautiful. I think Kevin Drum hit the nail on the head when he said the reason that this hasn't been the big galvanizing issue for the Christian right that many thought it would be is that the newlyweds we've all seen in the pictures have been so gosh-darned happy and sincere and next-door-neighbor-like that you can't help but feel happy for them.
Of course, that doesn't apply to everybody:
About 15 protesters, most from Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, stood near City Hall carrying signs with anti-gay slogans. The group, led by the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., travels around the country protesting homosexuality.Ray McNulty, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Family Institute, one of the leading organizers of opposition to same-sex marriage, criticized some of the protesters, saying there was no need for hateful speech.
"What's going on down there is legal, and as far as I'm concerned, give those people their happiness for the day," McNulty said.
Good for you, Ray McNulty. I don't agree with what you stand for, but you've got my respect.
Nice article in the Sunday Chron on David Adickes, the sculptor who created all those giant Presidential heads as well as the humongo Sam Houston statue in Huntsville. The good news, if you're not a hoity-toity art critic, is that he's got big concrete plans for Houston's highways.
[B]eginning this summer he plans to erect a string of giant concrete artworks along Interstate 10 to combat the city's notorious billboard blight.Among them will be a cluster of 30-foot-tall cubist statues of the Beatles on a 4,800-square-foot site he owns just east of the freeway's intersection with Shepherd Drive.
Others will include the heads of Sam Houston and two U.S. presidents, an upturned hand supporting the word "ART" and a statue of silent-screen comic Charlie Chaplin.
"My hope is this will lend a certain panache to Houston," Adickes says. "The endless road through Houston is filled with a lot of junk on both ends. This will offer a little relief."
In Houston's art world, though, Adickes' plans -- meant to be a grand artistic statement from a sculptor in his twilight years -- have met with a chilly reception.
"Who gave him the right to do this?" sputters longtime cultural critic Ann Holmes, who is writing a history of Houston's fine-arts scene for Texas A&M University Press. "It's like putting Mount Rushmore on Main Street. Large works like this intrude on your life. You can't ignore them."
For critic Susie Kalil, Adickes' statues fall far short of Rushmore's grandeur.
"They don't have that kind of iconic quality," she says. "Adickes' work isn't funky enough. It's not hard-hitting enough. It's not surprising enough. There are absolutely no political, aesthetic or social issues. What is its purpose?"
Adickes takes such criticism in stride, likening himself to Liberace, the king of keyboard kitsch, who, he suggests, "laughed all the way to the bank."
"I personally think my art is as good as that by X, Y or Z," he says. "But we'll let history sort that out."
First of all, to Ann Holmes: Who gave you the right to criticize him for doing this? If it's on his private property and it doesn't violate any deed restrictions or zoning laws (hah!), then I'd say he's got as much right to do his thing as you do to hang wind chimes on your front porch. As one who drives this stretch of I-10 often, I'm looking forward to seeing the work come to life.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an art expert. I'm strictly from the I-know-what-I-like school, and I have to say, I really like Adickes' stuff. It's cool to look at, it's fun to talk about, and I think his planned additions to our landscape will make Houston a better place. Let the critics sputter all they want. I see this as essentially folk art, and I'm glad to see more of it.
[I]n 1991, Adickes found a receptive audience for his concrete concepts in Huntsville, where community leaders wanted a way to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sam Houston, the town's patron statesman."Thirty people came to the meeting," Adickes recalls. "They said, `Let's do a cookbook.' Another wanted to create a rose species, another to improve lighting around Sam Houston's home, another wanted to get bales of hay and tell stories. Then I said, `Let's do something big.' "
Adickes' proposal to raise a 67-foot-tall steel and concrete statue of Houston in a copse of pines just south of town became a reality in late 1994, a year after the bicentennial of Houston's birth. Standing just east of Interstate 45, the statue, affectionately known as "Big Sam," became an immediate sensation among the motoring public.
Rhonda Ellisor, director of Huntsville's convention and visitors bureau, reported that tax receipts from travel spending have increased 50 percent since the statue was completed. Almost 500,000 people have signed the guest book in Big Sam's adjoining visitors center.
"The biggest impact of Big Sam," she says, "is that it has helped people recognize Huntsville as something other than a prison town. Sam Houston lived here. He died here, and he's buried here. The statue has brought that to the forefront of people's minds."
Art critic Kalil likens Big Sam to the giant lobsters, crabs and other funky concrete artworks that dot the state.
"Early on, I didn't think much of it," she says. "It was kind of an art elitist snobbery: This isn't really art. ... Now I've gotten used to it. It's kind of like a beacon. ... It's kind of comforting, reassuring. I know it's always going to be there. Now when I'm on Interstate 45, I find myself looking for Sam."
That's exactly how I feel when I drive north on I-45. Seeing the statue of Sam is the best part about driving back from Dallas because it lets me know I'm almost there. If that doesn't qualify it as Good Art, then I say the term has no meaning.
Got a little free time over the Memorial Day weekend? Consider taking a road trip to South Dakota to help get out the vote for Stephanie Herseth in the June 1 special election there. 'Fraid I can't make it - too bad, since SDak is one of the few states I've never visited - but if you can, by all means please do so.
The Stakeholder has a bit more on this rapidly approaching race.
Snarkout has a typically entertaining and link-filled look at the history of oil production. Check it out.
Missed this Southpaw post on Thursday, which discusses the real reason to hold the line on clean air standards: dirty air has a negative effect on public health, and that negative effect costs us all money. Funny how advocates of relaxing clean air standards like Smokey Joe Barton always gloss over those costs when they make their case, isn't it? You know the deal - Morris Meyer is the better choice if you like to breathe.
I found this CJR article about the Texas press' relationship with President Bush awhile back, via Amblongus and Easter Lemming. It's the end of the piece that interests me the most, where some of the editorial board members are asked about their endorsement plans for this fall.
In 2000 all of the state’s major newspapers endorsed George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore. Despite that fact, Rich Oppel Sr., the editor of the Austin American-Statesman, told CJR that “there’s no guarantee that Bush will get our endorsement again.” In particular, Oppel said, the editorial board at his paper “will look very hard” at Bush’s fiscal policies.While it’s far too early to predict what the major papers will do, The Dallas Morning News will probably back him again. “It’s safe to say that we’ll start out favoring the former governor of Texas,” said [Keven Ann Willey, vice president and editorial page editor at the Morning News]. It appears that he’ll also get the vote of Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, who concluded his February story on Bush by writing, “If I end up voting for him — and I probably will — it will really be Governor Bush who gets my vote.”
Governor Bush or President Bush, the president will always be a Texan. And come endorsement time, that fact will likely outweigh all other considerations. As Bob Rivard, the editor of the San Antonio Express-News, told CJR, “I’d bet my salary against a Starbucks that we endorse Bush.”
This was, of course, all written before anyone here had heard of Abu Ghraib. Will any of them hold Bush accountable for that? Will any of them hold Bush accountable for not holding anyone else accountable, such as our most superb ever Secretary of Defense? If I had five minutes alone in a room with Paul Burka, the first thing I'd do is ask him what he thought Governor Bush would have done about Abu Ghraib. If I had six uninterrupted hours and access to Lexis-Nexis, I'd do a little research to see how many times the editorial boards of Texas' major dailies called for a member of the Clinton cabinet to resign or be fired and for what reasons. (David Neiwert examines one such case.) What more do they need to start making the same noises here?
You and I, of course, don't need to depend on these stalwarts of public morality to express our opinions about responsibility and accountability. But it sure would be interesting to do a little followup on that article now, wouldn't it?
Via Kevin comes this WaPo story about the Texas Congressional situation one year after the Ardmore exodus. It's more pessimistic than I am about the Democratic incumbents's chances, and as Kevin says it doesn't really break any new ground, but it's a useful primer if you're getting up to speed. Check it out.
Not surprisingly, City Prop 1 passed by a wide margin, though wider than I'd have thought. Mayor Bill White has been handed the keys to fix this problem along with the trust of the voters to do so. He's also gained the bitterness and possibly the enmity of city employees. In short, we'll see if he winds up being sorry he got what he wanted. If he really does fix this to most people's satisfaction, he'll be a juggernaut by the time his terms are over.
You know, if SixApart had had Jay Allen make the announcement about the MT 3.0 developer edition and various changes to the licensing agreements in the first place, I daresay they wouldn't have had all these problems.
There's now an update posted regarding the situation, which should also help. There are still questions to be answered, though, and Michael is asking some of them.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst surrounded himself with a bipartisan group of senators on the Capitol's south steps Friday as he announced the special session on property tax relief and public school finance has apparently failed."We've made real progress, but we've still got much work to do," Dewhurst said. "We need some more time in order to do a good job."
Gov. Rick Perry has said he would call another special session if this one failed, but a statement he released Friday was unclear on whether he planned to do that.
"Funding our public schools is likely the most complex and important issue that state leaders face, as evidenced by the fact that no Legislature has ever solved the matter in 30 days," Perry said.
"From the outset, I have said that I am committed to spending whatever time it takes to address the issue. Our children and taxpayers deserve no less than our full commitment."
To announce the apparent collapse of the school finance session, Dewhurst took the unusual step of moving his news conference from the Senate chamber to the Capitol steps.
Several hundred business lobbyists crowded the steps straining to hear what Dewhurst said. Most had clients at risk of paying higher taxes to finance property tax reductions, while others represented gambling interests that want to legalize video slot machine terminals at racetracks.
The special session is scheduled to end Wednesday. Dewhurst said that meant the only way a school finance package could pass would be to have an agreed-to plan passed by the Senate and adopted in whole by the House.
Dewhurst indicated that was unlikely but that he planned to continue negotiations with Perry and House Speaker Tom Craddick to reach a consensus.
"When that consensus is reached, I would expect the governor to call another special session," Dewhurst said.
Craddick, who saw a House school finance package all but completely self-destruct during debate last week, offered words of condolence to Dewhurst.
"Believe me, I understand the Senate's problem in reaching a consensus. The House has nearly five times as many members," said Craddick.
Dewhurst said the House had problems "due to some external circumstances," which he explained as Perry's comments against a business tax at a press conference on the eve of House debate on a school finance plan.
Those comments prompted Craddick to remove a business payroll tax from the House plan. He also took video gambling off the table because of opposition from some Republican House members.
That left the House with an underfunded plan that offered slight property tax relief and no new money for education.
"We didn't have much to work with when it came over," said Dewhurst.
So then. The special session failed because there was never a consensus on how to succeed, which was supposed to happen before the session was called so that a bunch of legislators weren't sitting around Austin collecting taxpayer-funded per diems while the same studies were reviewed, the same testimony was heard, and the same fruitless closed-room discussions occurred. The special session failed because a key component needed to generate the revenue for equitable school funding as well as to offset the desired property tax cuts drew strong opposition. Who is responsible for both of these failings? Governor Rick Perry. Write that down and remember it in 2006. Whatever you wanted out of this session, even if another one eventually gets called, you didn't get it because of Governor Rick Perry.
I'm glad to see this.
Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry today collected the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, a police union that backed President Bush in the 2000 election."After three and a half years of disappointing leadership under George Bush, we need to change course in November and elect a president with a real record of supporting police officers and a lifetime of standing with law enforcement," IBPO President David Holway said in a statement provided by the Kerry campaign.
The union endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Kerry scheduled a round-table discussion with members of the group today to talk about law enforcement issues.
MeteorBlades notes this Washington Monthly story that provides some context to this. Did you know that crime has been creeping upward lately after years of decline in the 90s? Think the cuts in local police forces brought about by universal budget squeezes might have anything to do with that? The cops understand, and that's why they're backing Kerry. Good for them.
Today we vote on City Proposition 1, which is leading by a 14-point margin in a recent poll. I have decided after a lot of back and forth on the issue to vote against it, but I have no criticism of anyone who votes in favor. It's a tough call and there are good arguments on each side, but in the end I believe that we can resolve this issue without imperiling the promises that were made to city employees. There are also elections in various Houston suburbs, so check your County Clerk's webpage for details.
In addition, there are municipal elections in San Antonio, Dallas and surrounding areas, and Austin. Byron has some endorsements for Austin, while Sarah focuses on one race in particular. Expect both of these elections to have fairly low turnout, so your vote will count for more than usual. Don't waste the chance to have your say.
At the time I published the Morris Meyer interview as part of this week's Texas Tuesdays, I didn't have URLs for the various newspaper stories that he cited - the HTML got munched somewhere between his mail program and mine. It's fixed now, so if you want to go back and check his sources, you can. If you click on only one story, read A fresh face, his intro to Waxahachie voters from their hometown paper. And remember, when it comes to supporting good candidates like Morris Meyer, it may not be Tuesday, but it can always be Texas Tuesday.
Jerome Armstrong points out that the Libertarian Party will have a dynamic and potentially very attractive candidate for President this year in Aaron Russo. Their anti-war, anti-PATRIOT Act, anti-big government message ought to be compelling and may allow some disgruntled Republicans an opportunity to cast a protest vote. Luis thinks the effect will be more of a wash in his state of Colorado, but in my anecdotal experience, the libertarian types I know tend to vote more Republican than Democrat. Take that for what it's worth, which is to say, not all that much.
Here's a better question: Given that the Libertarian candidate is all but guaranteed to be on most states' ballots (unlike a certain other hopeful I could name - for the record, I agree with Oliver that his support in these polls is way overstated), will any major polling outfit include him in any of their survey questions? I'd love to know what, if any, effect his presence might have on the numbers. Imagine the reaction if Gallup or Zogby found that with Aaron Russo included, Bush winds up trailing in Arizona or Nevada. How likely is that? Well, we won't know until they ask, will we?
Ginger explains clearly and thoroughly why those who are now defending Movable Type's ill-received announcement about its new licensing scheme are wrong to simply say "why don’t you people want to pay for your software?" Read it all and you'll see.
Ginger and Michael are the ones who got me started on Movable Type. (They got me started blogging in the first place, too, but that's a different story.) I've evangelized for MT myself many times since then. I admit that unlike them, I never made a donation to SixApart for my usage of their software, but I have done my share to help support the user community - my posts on getting started and configuring categories have helped numerous people, according to the feedback I've gotten. I wouldn't object to paying something for version 3.0, but I do think the price is rather steep for an upgrade that doesn't promise a lot of new features, and the terms of use scare me.
I think SixApart still has a chance to make things right with its disgruntled base, but it's gotta start with an admission that they misjudged. Nobody's perfect, after all. But do give us something to work with here, OK?
Who said this?
"Gerrymandered congressional districts are an affront to democracy and an insult to the voters. We oppose that and any other attempt to rig the electoral process."
I'll give you a hint: They've apparently changed their minds about this since they said it.
They're pretty happy about how things are going right now over at the Richard Morrison campaign. I've reproduced a press release that I received this morning, which you can find under the More link, that gives some of the details. Word I'm hearing is that Tom DeLay has actually opened a campaign office in Sugar Land for the first time since 1986 and that they've started making some anti-Morrison phone calls. Nice to know Morrison has his attention - remember, the more time, effort, and money Tom DeLay is spending at home, the less he has to spend on other candidates. Let's hope the good news keeps coming. Go Morrison!
The Richard Morrison for Congress campaign today announced strong support within the district and across the country in their challenge to GOP power Tom DeLay. Campaign staffers revealed that their list of in-district supporters has exceeded 3,000 and that over 1,000 people from 45 states have contributed money to the campaign.
Morrison has raised more than $40,000 on the Internet since April 28th when surprising poll numbers came to light showing that DeLay had surprisingly high negatives in the very Republican district.
Since then Morrison has appeared on Air America Radio, been named one of the "Dean Dozen" by Democracy for America, and met with the DCCC and the Texas Democratic delegation, who pledged strong support to the campaign.
"It was inspiring to travel to DC and meet personal heroes of mine, traditional conservative Democrats like Martin Frost, Charlie Stenholm, Chet Edwards and Nick Lampson," Morrison said. "I feel honored and inspired to be part of their team in fighting against a bunch of bullying power-mongers like DeLay's and his Washington, DC gang.
"The outpouring of support all around the country has been very energizing for me and all of the members of my campaign team who are already working so hard to win. I was very excited to be on the air with Janeane Garofolo on Majority Report," Morrison continued "but I certainly have no illusions that all these folks are supporting me for any other reason than they're afraid of the damage Tom DeLay will do to the country if he's given another decade of right-wing rule in Washington DC."
"And it sure is a big day when Howard Dean singles us out and says we're one of twelve campaigns in the entire United States that he sees as 'representing the spirit of grassroots democracy,'" Morrison said "I'll tell you, when I see all these folks out at the Cinco de Mayo parade in Texas City wearing Richard Morrison t-shirts I know that the folks of this district are sure going to show the country what grassroots campaigning is all about."
One year ago Wednesday, fifty Democratic state legislators caused a political earthquake by breaking quorum in an attempt to derail a redistricting bill that had suddenly been fast-tracked. One day after the anniversary of that event, an appellate court has ruled that the issue of whether the Department of Public Safety illegally destroyed records pertaining to their search for those legislators is still an open question which must be decided by a lower court.
Also up for review is whether the Department of Public Safety has the power to arrest members of the Texas Legislature who defy their leaders and break a quorum, as the "Killer Ds" did a year ago.[...]
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed last year by state Rep. Lon Burnam of Fort Worth, one of the Democrats who went to Ardmore, Okla., last May. Burnam sued after the DPS disclosed that it had destroyed records gathered during its attempts to arrest the Democrats at the direction of state Republican leaders.
The appeals court said DPS' assertion that it had not improperly destroyed records was "self-serving and remains an open fact question." That sends the issue back to the trial court, which had ruled that part of the lawsuit moot on the grounds that the destruction had ceased after judicial remedies were sought.
"The big point we're trying to make is the government can't destroy records and get away with it," said Catherine Mauzy, Burnam's attorney. "Just because you don't like what's in government documents doesn't mean the department can destroy them."
[...]
The seeds of the controversy were planted soon after the Democrats boycotted the House and temporarily prevented action on a congressional redistricting plan. The new Republican-friendly map has since become law.
Hours after Republican leaders decided to call off the search for the Democrats -- a search that involved some 300 troopers and Texas Rangers -- top DPS officials ordered subordinates to destroy records.
A DPS e-mail obtained by the Star-Telegram last year, addressed to "Captains," said: "Any notes, correspondence, photos, etc. that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representative members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept ..."
Burnam, who filed a request for DPS records under open government laws, later went to court seeking an injunction against further document destruction, which the department denied it was doing.
Destroying records subject to such a request or tampering with the availability of government records is a crime.
A Travis County grand jury that met to consider whether the DPS broke the law by destroying the records decided not to issue any indictments last year.
The only real civil remedy the trial court could issue at this point -- besides telling DPS it erred -- would be awarding legal fees to Burnam, Mauzy said.
In another ruling, the appeals court said the lower court erred on procedural grounds when it ruled that the DPS did not have the power to arrest the wayward lawmakers, as Burnam argued. That issue, too, was sent back to the lower court for review.
This all seems right to me. It's clear that we shouldn't take any branch of the government's word for it when they say they've not covered something up, and it's not clear to me that the DPS shouldn't have the power to arrest legislators who deliberatley break quorum - all I ask for here is that we settle this issue one way or another before the need to know arises again. I look forward to see if any new information about who ordered DPS' document destruction comes to light.
No real news coming out of the Senate. Even these two articles in the AusChron have no new insights, though they do predict no action by the 19th - in fact, if the Quorum Report is to be believed, they may have already passed a deadline for action by session's end.
And you know what? That makes me happy. After all the trashing of Robin Hood, it's started to dawn on people that 88% of the schoolchildren in Texas live in districts that benefit from it. Why should we be going out of our way to make things worse for them?
I am officially glad that our Governor wouldn't know what "consensus" is if it mussed his hair. Let's hear it for inaction and disarray!
Wow. Michael isn't kidding when he says that the trackback pings on SixLog's announcement about the licensing scheme for MovableType 3.0 are hugely negative - I think Gigli got better reviews. Now, I'm a sole author of a single blog, so this doesn't affect me much (I do participate in a MT group blog elsewhere), but I've been trying to convince Tiffany that blog publishing will be the easiest way to share baby pictures and stuff like that. Will having a second blog with a different author mean I've gotta shell out?
If Burningbird is correct about needing the register with TypeKey to get 3.0, and if this really does mean that there's no upgrade path for a casual user like myself, well, my options are to stay put (which I would anyway for awhile, until the bugs get worked out) or to look for alternatives. As it happens, I'm good friends with the guy who did the MT Import code for WordPress, so alternatives do exist for me. If I have a choice, though, I'd rather not have to take that path - migrations make me grumpy. I'm gonna wait and see, and hopefully things will work out.
Buried in this article on cracks in GOP discipline regarding Iraq is this bit of strategizing:
But talk to some House staffers who are privy to the thoughts and concerns of their congressmen and sometimes surprising expressions of anger and frustration come forth.These so far fall into two categories: The first is that the czar, in this case the president, is still wise and good and just, and that it is his pesky advisors who are to blame. A remarkable amount of anger appears to be spreading in GOP House staff circles against Rumsfeld and the supposedly brilliant group of neoconservative intellectuals around him, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith -- those who pushed the conquest and occupation of Iraq so remorselessly yet now appear to have not the slightest clue what to do next.
The second reaction is found less commonly among House staffers but is even more remarkable. That is the expressed belief of Republican conservatives that to retain the power that really matters (their majority in the House, with continuing control over its committees and fiscal powers), they may have to sacrifice the power that they regard as more superficial and transient: Bush's holding on to the White House.
According to this line of thought (and I have been unable to ascertain from staffers how many Republican congressmen hold such a view), Bush, Rumsfeld and their hawks have already made such a mess out of Iraq that the next president, be it Bush or John Kerry, is certain to be on a hiding to nothing as he struggles with the war's consequences next year. Indeed, it is inevitable that there will be a massive popular backlash against the sitting president, Republican or Democrat, come the midterm elections of 2006. Far better, therefore, that Kerry win in November and still be hemmed in on the domestic front by a Republican House majority that is then free of the albatross of Iraq. If Bush wins in November, according to this belief, there is a very real danger that after 12 years the GOP will lose the jewel in its crown -- control of the House -- in 2006.
While the prospect of throwing the Presidential election in order to solidify a hold on the House is a bit fantastic, I do agree that there will be a great danger of backlash against the President's party in 2006 thanks to the monumental and systemic screwups that will have to be undone. Of course, it would be bad form of the Democrats to blame their troubles on the previous occupant of the White House, wouldn't it? Bad manners, really. What kind of craven cowards blame all their problems on someone who's no longer in power, right?
Via Jack, I too enjoyed this article by Rob Neyer on the quirky ground rules at some of Major League Baseball's stadia. One thing I'd point out is that the well-known "ground rule double" has some history to it that belies the simplicity of a ball bouncing over the fence. Originally, any fair batted ball that exited the field of play was a home run (in 1926, a minimum distance of 250 feet for a home run was established). In 1931, when the rule was changed so that a ball had to leave the field on the fly to be a homer, it encompassed balls the went under or even through an outfield fence. (See Rule 6.09, sections d and e.) Since this was only possible at certain venues, this came to be thought of as a ground rule. Alas, with stadium construction being what it is now, it's pretty much only bouncing over the fence, plus the oddball examples Neyer lists.
Stop me if you've heard this one before.
Major League Baseball's summer All-Star Game and related events in Houston will give Texas an $85.6 million boost, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn predicted Wednesday."The 2004 All-Star Week events in Houston will be a home run for the city and for Texas," Strayhorn said.
"America's favorite pastime will bring nearly 29,000 out-of-state baseball fans to Texas, who will spend an average of $316 per day during their stay," she added.
Total visitors are expected to number 67,000.
[...]
Strayhorn estimated that support spending associated with the game plus spending by visitors from out of state will total $36.8 million. Secondary or "multiplier" effects on visitor-related industries, local earnings and extra household spending will bring the total economic impact to $85.6 million, she said.
We've been down this road before. Maybe I missed it in all the excitement, but I don't recall offhand seeing any post-Super Bowl stories that indicated whether the rosy revenue projections were anywhere near the target. Note here that Strayhorn is using the same 2.3 multiplier that had previously caused respectable economists to giggle and twitch uncontrollably. Maybe this all came true last time around, but boy, wouldn't it have been nice to see that referenced in this story? Even in passing?
The relevance here is that the city is expected to shell out a certain amount to "defray the costs of the game", whatever that means, with the state kicking in a proportionally larger amount. I'm sure there are valid reasons for spending this money, and it's not that huge an amount anyway, but given pro sports' affinity for sucking up public funds - this is the one true talent that MLB Commissioner Beelzebud Selig has - we should be proceeding with a healthy amount of skepticism.
One last thing:
Strayhorn predicted that visitor spending will include $9.1 million for lodging, $6.2 million for restaurants, $7.7 million for merchandise and retail sales, $5.7 million for bars and entertainment, and $1.8 million for local transportation.
"Bars and entertainment", eh? How much of that do you think is going to be spent in strip clubs, Carole?
I've updated the Texas Political Bloggers page - cleaned out some 404 links and blogs that hadn't been updated this year, added a few new blogs, fixed some URLs. Check it out, and please let me know if there's a blog that should be on there but isn't. Many of these blogs can also be found in my Bloglines subscriptions - if yours isn't, it may be because you have no RSS feed (psst! Alex! this means you!). Again, please let me know if this needs to be remedied. Meantime, read and enjoy.
Some action from one of the many class action lawsuits filed in the wake of the Enron collapse. This one seeks to benefit the retirement fund of current and former Enron employees.
The settlement is at the level of the expected insurance payout from several insurance policies at Enron. But lawyers say it is a victory to get an agreement that the lump sum be given to victims rather than wait and see some or potentially all of $85 million used for defense lawyers for the outside Enron directors and officers who are part of this settlement.Lynn Sarko, a Seattle-based lawyer for the employees, said this morning that a good piece of the lawsuit will still proceed against ex-Chairman Ken Lay, ex-CEO Jeff Skilling, Enron itself in the bankruptcy court and Northern Trust Co., a bank that worked specifically on the plan and could still be seen as a deep pocket in the case.
"This will be a small piece of the ultimate recovery," Sarko said.
Houston-based lawyer Robin Harrison said the benefit for employees even from this partial settlement "should be something significantly better than the coupons" that plaintiffs sometimes receive in class action style lawsuits like this one.
Also announced today is a Department of Labor $1.5 million settlement with outside directors. About 20 percent of that sum will go to the U.S. Treasury and the rest will also be put in retirement fund of the employees.
The lawsuit is by no means over. Remaining as defendants in the lawsuit are ex-Chairman Ken Lay, ex-CEO Jeff Skilling, former auditor Arthur Andersen, Enron itself in the bankruptcy court, and Northern Trust Co. The plaintiffs complain the defendants breached their fiduciary duty owed to employees under pension laws.
The Labor Department action, filed in June 2003, mirrors the employee lawsuit filed in late 2001. The department charged that Lay, Skilling and others misled employees about the value of Enron 's stock and did not properly monitor the committee appointed to manage Enron 's retirement plans.
The employee lawsuit goes under the name of ex-Enron employee Pamela Tittle, who was in one of the first groups to sue.
Hope that helps. On a side note, former Enron director Wendy "wife of Phil" Gramm thinks that boards of directors like the one she served on are doing a peachy job as things stand. But then of course she would. On the plus side, as Houstonian Tom Kirkendall notes, what she's saying will likely be noted by the various plaintiffs' attorneys in these cases.
Will they or won't they take action in the Senate on school finance reform?
The Texas Senate continued drifting like an iceberg Tuesday, taking a long time to do very little in public while nine-tenths of the school finance and taxation action occurred below the surface.What is likely to emerge, perhaps as soon as today or Thursday, is a revamped school finance system, a deep property tax cut, slot machines with a second lease on life and a state franchise tax with a wider reach. And the plan stands at least a chance of getting gubernatorial approval.
Note that the three proposals - statewide property tax, slot machines, and a revamped corporate franchise tax - were all rejected by the House. Never let it be said that the Senate is intimidated by such things.
A key senator on Tuesday forecast doom for the special session on school finance, saying that half of the Senate favors letting time run out on the 30-day session.Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, said the Senate is "pretty well evenly divided" between those who want to pass a plan regardless of its future in the House and those who believe that "maybe we just need to run out the clock."
"That's the central issue right now politically in what's going on," said Ogden, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. "I don't know when we're going to move off the dime."
Maybe.
Senate leaders on Tuesday outlined a proposed school finance formula that would be based on a new state property tax of $1 per $100 valuation and a guaranteed funding increase of at least 2 percent for all districts.The plan also includes a reduction in school property taxes that would trim the average property tax bill about a third, or 50 cents off the current maximum rate of $1.50 for school operating expenses. The total property tax cut would be about $5.25 billion.
Maybe not.
Even as two of the state's three top elected leaders met privately Tuesday in search of common ground on public school finance, senators hearing expert testimony on the issue were concluding that no measure will be adopted before the special session ends next week.Several legislators indicated privately that since there appears to be no consensus on how to fund Texas' public schools while also providing property tax relief, the Legislature should wait until the next regular session convenes in January to take up the measure.
And just for variety, maybe later.
As lawmakers head into the final week of the 30-day special legislative session on school finance, a key state senator said Tuesday that he is more concerned with crafting a sound system to pay for public education than completing work before the Legislature adjourns May 19."The 19th is a hard-and-fast deadline, but it doesn't compel me to say, 'Well, just throw something together just because we're running out of time,' " said Bryan Republican Steve Ogden, who leads the budget-writing school-finance committee.
I'm sorry to report that the first casualty of all this dithering in the Senate will be Speaker Craddick's vacation plans. Hey, if we have to suffer through the summer here, he may as well have to as well.
Of course, all of this could change tomorrow. Hell, it could already have changed. I still don't think anything will be adopted before the May 19th end of this session. I don't know if there will be any momentum at that time for a positive result by the end of a second session, or if the long-awaited consensus will be that it's all a massive waste of time. We'll see.
One can only wonder how the mind of Tom DeLay works.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) continued his ferocious counter-offensive against Democrats yesterday, accusing them of trying to gain political advantage from the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.[...]
He lambasted Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and the Democrats’ fundraising committees for posting a petition on Kerry’s website calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ouster and using it to raise money. Kerry’s website claims 320,000 people have signed the petition, but there is no direct link to contribute money.
[...]
When asked why President Bush’s advertisements invoking Sept. 11 were not performing the same function as Kerry’s petition, DeLay said, “Bush’s ads were done tastefully … [Democrats] are raising money [from] a horrible and embarrassing event.”
Got that? It's OK to raise money from a horrible and embarrassing event as long as it's done "tastefully". Perhaps we ought to amend McCain-Feingold to cover offenses against tastefulness in the future.
Now since DeLay already thinks you're a nasty partisan for not agreeing with him about all of these things, you may as well act like one and give a little love to Richard Morrison. Or just tell Kos that you'd like to see him choose the Morrison campaign as one to support in his upcoming fundraising drive. Go ahead, you'll be glad you did.
(BTW, for those in the Houston area, you can see Morrison on TV next Thursday.)
One last thing:
DeLay also said he had not read the report issued by Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who conducted the investigation into the Iraqi prisoner abuses.
Nice to know he's on top of these things, right? Thanks to the Joe Hill Dispatch for the catch.
Julia suggests a way to help an acquaintance of hers in Afghanistan help some kids over there. Check it out.
Great article in the Press about Arrowfest, the local classic rock's all-day nostalgia show, and the enduring appeal of the mucis it features, which I'm somewhat surprised to learn, cuts across age groups.
This year's Arrowfest, the crown jewel of Houston's live classic rock calendar, has easily the best lineup ever: Styx, Peter Frampton, Kansas, Blue Öyster Cult, America, Grand Funk Railroad and, um, Nelson (don't ask). Among them, these acts are responsible for about a gazillion hits, from "Come Sail Away," "Do You Feel Like We Do?" and "Carry On Wayward Son," to "Godzilla," "Horse with No Name" and "We're an American Band."And the classic rock era, which roughly encompasses the years 1967 to 1977, is seeing a resurgence in popularity -- and not just from the usual aging hippies and mulletheads. Now, their kids have discovered that Mom and Dad's music isn't so bad after all. Teens today are embracing classic rock as an antidote to vacuous Top 40 pop, bling-bling rap and overwrought, angsty nü-metal.
"The music is more genuine than what's coming out today. And they just seem more original," says 16-year-old Justin Anders of Spring High School, whose favorite groups include Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Grateful Dead, Aerosmith and the Steve Miller Band. "And the music is strange -- that's cool."
Joshua Hart, 15, of Clear Lake High, adds that "the music just sounds better, and I like a lot of the guitar solos." The fan of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones learned about these groups from his father's record collection. "He'd play it all the time, so that's the music I grew up with."
That tendency extends even to the offspring of classic rockers, or so says Frampton himself. "Last year, my 16-year-old son listened to nothing but Limp Bizkit and Blink-182, and now he loves Pink Floyd. There is hope!" laughs the man behind one of the era's biggest records, Frampton Comes Alive! "Sometimes I'll see three generations of one family at my show, and it's the younger ones who know all the words."
Well, I'll be. There's hope for this generation yet. I confess, I was tempted by the lineup this year - one of the best rock shows I've ever seen was Blue Oyster Cult at the late, lamented venue Rockefeller's in the early 90s - but a family wedding put the kibosh on it. It pains me to put money in Clear Channel's pockets, but even I must admit that the Woodlands Pavillion is a great place to catch a show.
The rest of the article touches on any number of hobby horses that I've been flogging here lately:
USA Today recently ran a feature detailing the trend. Even some of today's bigger contemporary acts like the White Stripes, Jet, the Darkness and Kings of Leon pay homage to Almost Famous-era music while putting a contemporary twist on it.
Which of course you'll never hear on any station that features the music they're paying homage to.
Classic rock bands also tend to have seemingly bottomless wells of "unheard" material. Roark, the single-monikered host of KPFT's Friday-afternoon show Uncastrated Classic Rock, loves to plumb these hidden depths. You'll never hear Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" on his show, but you'll hear their "Flight of the Rat.""Think of an album that had a couple of hits off of it. There are still eight other songs that [most people today] have never heard," he says. "I love finding that stuff, and I'm running into more young folks on the street who like classic rock now."
KKRW has been doing all-request Mondays, and I've got to say, the listeners do a pretty good job of picking music that hasn't been played to death. They sometimes pick stuff that I haven't heard on the radio in years, and once in awhile request something totally new to me. It's amazing, and I often find myself saying "why don't they put this in the rotation once in awhile so they can give Freebird and Stairway to Heaven a rest?"
A lot of the credit for spreading the history and music of classic rock bands goes to the Internet. It's something that Frampton feels the record companies were wrong to ignore, then slow to respond to, which cost them. "I have to say, I credit Steve Jobs and iTunes with single-handedly saving the songwriter's way to live, and I'm not talking about me," he says. "Because of legal downloading, things [might] change in the industry now.""The Internet is the main way that I find out about these bands and get their music," says Cody Fritter, 17, of Cy-Fair High School. His divergent tastes include David Bowie, Parliament-Funkadelic, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Jimi Hendrix.
Do I even have to go there?
The downside for the artists is that often the festival crowds want to hear the hits and just the hits. Nothing will send the audience to the bathroom or beer line quicker than hearing this announcement from the stage: "Thank you! And now, here's something from our new record."And that's a shame, because many of them still make extremely viable music. Frampton's fine recent release Now is a case in point. "You start off underground, and you end up underground," Frampton laughs.
OK, that's a strike against my wished-for formula of playing stuff we might like alongside stuff we're known to like. But all I'm asking is that some new stuff get a tryout, maybe even during a fixed time of the day. If listeners like it, the stations will hear about it, and if not, it's no great loss.
The "classic rock" radio format debuted nationally in the mid-'80s, and Z107 out of Lake Jackson was Houston's first station, a mantle picked up today by 93.7 The Arrow. Of course, we wanted to get some comments about Arrowfest from Arrow DJs, and morning team Dean and Rog agreed to an interview. However, the idea was nixed by the Arrow's rock programming director Vince Richards, who was apparently upset about criticism of Clear Channel Radio that has appeared previously in this paper in an opinion column (see "Racket," February 12).
Somehow, it does my heart good to know that in the end, Clear Channel will still be the villain.
Note the addition on the sidebar of the Rumsfeld Wire, courtesy of the DCCC, which will give you updated blog commentary on our "superb" "best ever" SecDef and his status. You can still sign the petition calling for Rumsfeld's removal and you can get the feed yourself, it's pretty easy. My only regret is that they didn't manage to incorporate any of Rummy's fighting styles in the picture. Maybe next time.
Thanks once again to everyone who participated in Texas Tuesdays, this week on behalf of Morris Meyer. We're continuing to define and refine the process, and as we go along we hope to get the message of our many excellent candidates out to supporters everywhere. More people participated this week, and as we go forward we hope to keep building on what we've done before. We may even have a few surprises for you in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
A big thank you to the following bloggers for helping spread the word:
Skeptical Notion (soon to be on its own domain)
The People's Republic of Seabrook
I don't write about Iraq issues very often because I often find that I just don't have the words to adequately express how I feel about the whole situation, and because there are some many other voices out there that address it better than I could. I do want to take a moment today to offer my deepest condolences to the family of Nick Berg. May you all someday find peace and healing, and may no other family ever have to deal with the horrors that have been visited on you.
I'd also like to take a moment to address Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who according to news accounts and transcripts seems to think that the real problem in Iraq is "so many humanitarian do-gooders" who are hampering our efforts to properly question prisoners by "looking for human rights violations" all over the place. Senator, I can appreciate that a civilized country has to occasionally engage in the rape and torture of mostly innocent noncombatants in order to further the aims of peace and democracy, and I recognize you as a worthy spokesman for those efforts. If you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you'd clarify something for me, which is what the appropriate amount of rape and torture is. Obviously, you believe that having seven prison guards engage in rape and torture is within the bounds of acceptable behavior, but I need to understand how much is too much. It would also help to know if the quality of the confessions that we extract from these mostly innocent detainees has any effect on your answer. Thanks very much.
(I refer you to Josh Marshall, among many others, for more on Sen. Inhofe.)
Well, what do you know - Google has a blog, with the first post written by Blogger author Evan Williams. The most recent entry points to this explanation of why Googling the word "Jew" had given a hate site as its first result. As the Technology Review blog (from whom I found this) says, blogging is a bit of a departure for Google. This ought to be interesting to watch. And yes, they have an RSS feed - three of them, in fact, all Atom feeds. Check it out.
And for the third leg of our Texas Tuesday trilogy, I present to you a guest post by Morris Meyer. He's working hard to help us send "Smokey Joe" Barton back home to Ellis County where he can breathe the air that he's helped make it easy to pollute. If you like what you see and want to give him a hand, click on this handy contributions link and as always add in an extra $0.36 to tag it as being from the blogs. Click on the More link to read Morris Meyer's guest post.
I am running for Congress today because my pediatrician warned me two years ago that my daughter was at risk for asthma, and the cause was our air quality here in north Texas. My concern for the air Grace breathes led me to "Smokey" Joe Barton and his 20-year campaign to allow the Ellis county polluters free reign to scorch our children's lungs.
This immoral patronage of special interests goes beyond the Ellis County emitters, to kickbacks for pharmaceutical companies, tax breaks for corporations and billionaires, and the wholesale dismantling of the American Dream for middle class families.
Together we can win in November. Joe Barton will be defeated because:
- His attempts to shield the polluters in Ellis County from regulation have gained him widespread national attention and scorn. His very public opposition to the Dallas, Tarrant, Collin and Denton County judges to include Ellis County in the EPA clean air plan is costing our area good jobs.
- His positions on pharmaceutical drugs and Social Security make him unelectable among the largest proven group of voters - senior citizens.
- Joe Barton's negatives in two recent polls taken among likely Republican women voters are running in excess of 70%.
- Joe Barton has never been on the ballot in 55% of the new 6th District.
- Joe Barton's popularity has reached an all time low. In the recent March 9th, 2004 primary, where twice as many Republicans voted than Democrats, I received 74 more votes across the 6th Congressional District.
"Smokey" Joe Barton has taken over $800,000 from polluters and turned his back on the people of Texas, giving Ellis County industries a free ride to pollute our skies. The air quality in the region has gone from 45th to 10th worst in the country in past three years, asthma hospitalizations are skyrocketing and kids cannot play outside on ozone alert days. On March 3rd, 2003 a Dallas Morning News editorial stated that Joe Barton "is plotting to use his influence as chairman of the U.S. House subcommittee on air quality to extend the region's terrible decades-long record of noncompliance with the clean-air laws." Our children and our country cannot take two more years of Congressman Barton.
Right now the Meyer for Congress campaign needs your support to take on one of the most corrupt politicians in Texas' history. We have campaign offices in Tarrant and Ellis counties and we have recruited over 500 volunteers. We need the financial resources necessary to keep pace with my opponent and spread my message throughout the district. Texans deserve an honest, hard-working representative in Congress and with your help, energy and your financial support we can take back Texas for our children and our grandchildren. Please help us out.
Via email from a reader at Rice, there will be a town hall meeting at Rice University on Wednesday, led by State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, to discuss school finance reform. Click the More link for time, place, and details.
School Finance Town Hall Meeting
The Texas Legislature is currently in a special session on school finance. Senator Eliot Shapleigh will present his proposal to create a 21st Century Texas Education Excellence Fund to improve the quality of Texas schools in the Houston area. The presentation includes an overview of the current school finance "Robin Hood" system and other school finance options in Texas. Following the presentation there will be a 45 minute discussion, question and answer period.
EVENT:
School Finance Town Hall Meeting
WHERE:
Baker Hall
International Conference Facility
6100 Main Street
Houston, Texas
Parking: Entrance 13, underground parking available at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management
DATE:
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
TIME:
6:00 p.m.
Under Senator Shapleigh's proposed plan, the 21st Century Texas Education Excellence Fund will be created by a popular vote as set forth in Article 24 of the Texas Constitution and will include a 5 percent flat tax, 2/3rds of which will be dedicated to cutting property taxes and the remaining 1/3 dedicated to creating quality schools. Any increase to this fund must be decided by the Texas voters.
A Scripps Howard Texas Poll conducted in May 2003, found that 52 percent of those surveyed would vote for a 21st Century Texas Education Excellence Fund supported by an income tax, if it met these conditions. As part of the presentation that he has given numerous times across the state, Senator Shapleigh asks the audience to vote on the tax options to raise revenue needed for education. Despite current belief among some state politicians that Texans will not vote for an Education Excellence Fund based on a 5 percent income tax, audiences in El Paso, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas have overwhelmingly voted in favor of the plan.
Please contact Brie Franco at (512) 463-0129 if you have any questions regarding this event.
This may be the last nail in Rep. Ciro Rodriguez' electoral coffin, though an appeal has been filed.
LAREDO — Democratic congressional hopeful Henry Cuellar prevailed today in a lawsuit against him alleging voter fraud in his primary election victory over U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez.No evidence was presented in the trial, which lasted less than an hour and took place mostly in the judge's chambers.
Attorneys for Rodriguez, who trailed by 58 votes out of 50,000 cast after a recount in the March primary, had asked for more time to count ballots.
After retired state Judge Joseph Hart ruled there had been sufficient time to count the ballots in Webb and Zapata counties, Rodriguez attorney Buck Wood rested his case.
Hart then ruled in favor of Cuellar, whose attorney Steve Bickerstaff opposed further delay.
Rodriguez spokesman John Puder said Rodriguez will file an appeal with the state's 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio as early as Wednesday.
[...]
The Rodriguez camp perked up Friday after a second recount of ballots in Webb County, where Cuellar lives. Cuellar had an overall lead of 203 votes going in, but that margin shrunk by 145 votes by day's end.
According to the Texas Election Code, any ruling by the appeals court is not reviewable by the state Supreme Court. But it could be appealed to federal court if constitutional or voting rights issues are raised.
At this point, I will be very surprised if this is not the final result.
I believe it's a natural law that whenever one discusses Ralph Nader, the subject of Instant Runoff Voting must be brought up (I believe a plague of frogs is the penalty for failure). Putting aside the fact that IRV will always be a fantasy as long as two political parties are dominant, I'm not convinced that IRV would really be a boon to third parties and/or iconoclastic independents. Let me suggest a different alternative, as outlined by Mark Schmitt, namely fusion voting.
In New York, the only state where fusion is both legal and commonplace, Kerry and Kerry's slate will appear on both the Democratic Party line and the line of the Working Families Party, a party formed with union and community organization support that is considerably more liberal and creative than the Democratic establishment. Likewise, Bush and his slate will appear on the line of the state's long-standing Conservative Party, and votes for the two Kerry and the two Bush slates will be aggregated. Often, as in the case of Senator Clinton's election in 2000, the votes on the Working Families Party line exceed the margin of victory, giving the party considerable and constructive influence over elected officials. Every so often, when a Democrat is objectionable or to provide an alternative to a corrupt process such as the selection of judicial candidates in Brooklyn, the WFP will run its own candidates or even endorse a Republican, an option which strengthens its influence.
I presume things are a bit different in NY since I was living there, as I recall a "Liberal" party rather than a "Working Families Party", but the rest sounds like what I remember. What appeals to me about this is that successful politics is about building coalitions, and with fusion voting, you can be sure that your coalition gets the credit it deserves for its hand in the results.
Continuing with Texas Tuesdays, here's a brief interview with our featured candidate, Morris Meyer from CD06. Remember, the goal here is to help him in his battle against Smokey Joe Barton, so please help us help him by kicking in a few bucks to his coffers, remembering as always to add on that $0.36 extra as a "from the blogs" tag. Click on the More link to read the interview with Morris Meyer.
How much traction have you gotten in your campaign against "Smokey Joe" Barton so far?
We've received extensive press coverage for our campaign regarding our environmental stand against "Smokey Joe".
Here is a sampling of some of the press coverage:
Dallas Morning News, March 20, 2004, Donors have stake in smog move
Dallas Morning News, March 23, 2004, Barton's talk on Ellis' pollution turns contentious
Waxahachie Daily Light, March 25, 2004, Barton explains clean air stance
Waxahachie Daily Light, April 4, 2004, Politics heat air debate; Democrat calls foul
Waxahachie Daily Light, April 8, 2004, Cement plants could get public funds
Waxahachie Daily Light, April 16, 2004, EPA: Ellis County on non-attainment list
Waxahachie Daily Light, April 29, 2004, Video slots proposal raises ire
Environment and Energy Daily, May 4, 2004, Barton faces challenge on air quality issues
Do you find that the people in the new 6th CD are receptive to your message?
We received an early near endorsement from the leading conservative publisher of the Waxahachie Daily Light in Barton's home county: Waxahachie Daily Light, April 9, 2004, A fresh face.
I had lunch with the leader of an 80 family moderate Republican activist group who fought Joe Barton and his cement plant patrons TXI on a bond issue that would have given tax breaks to a profitable industry at the expense of the public school system in Midlothian. He and I discussed a wide range of issues and he told me that "I've never voted for a Democrat in my life, but our organization is going to work for you".
How concerned are the voters in your district about pollution and clean-air regulations?
Joe Barton's negatives in two recent polls taken among likely Republican women voters are running in excess of 70%. The Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram have written extensively about Barton's decades-long stance catering to the polluters over the health of the people of north Texas.
You've interacted quite a bit with the blog community - BlogAds, a guest post on Eschaton, etc. How has this benefitted you?
As a software engineer, we have been working on a strong technical campaign and were the first Texas campaign to embrace BlogAds. We received national attention from our early run and raised the early seed capital necessary to fund our fundraising efforts and establish offices in Tarrant and Ellis counties.
What is your strategy from this point on?
First, build an e-mail list of at least 50,000 voters in the 6th CD. Second, raise at least $500,000 by the first of October. Third, attract and train at least 3,000 campaign volunteers to work block by block every precinct in the district.
What three things would you most like to see happen in your race, and what are you doing to make them happen?
Get Joe Barton to debate me in all eight counties - we are in discussions with media outlets in these counties and are putting pressure on Barton's camp to participate.
Get the mainstream media to cover this race before September. We are putting out press releases on breaking news issues and have received good coverage thus far.
Build a community driven movement behind our campaign emphasizing the issues that concern moderate and swing voters - healthcare, good jobs, a clean environment and education.
What one thing would you like the voters in the 6th CD to know about you and about your opponent when they go to cast their votes in November?
Joe Barton represents no one but himself and the special interests that line his pockets. Morris Meyer will represent all the citizens of this district without regard to financial contributions or partisan labels.
I suppose no idea is ever truly dead as long as Lege is still in session. What else can you say about the revived and expanded slot machine proposals now working their way through the Senate?
Sen. Ken Armbrister, D-Victoria, said he is willing to revise his proposed constitutional amendment to allow video lottery terminals at other venues to gain more support. Sen. Jon Lindsay, R-Houston, said he might support the plan if the change is made.The gambling proposal is part of the Senate's effort to overhaul the school finance system by finding ways to offset any cut in local school property taxes. A similar proposal was killed by the House last week when it passed its school finance bill.
[...]
Armbrister said he would support video slot machines at the Astrodome and Reunion Arena in Dallas because taxpayers are paying to keep both facilities open for very few events. He said the Astrodome is mainly used for high school football games and monster truck demonstrations.
Armbrister said Lindsay told him he would vote for the gambling measure only if it includes the Astrodome. He said other senators have made the same demand for their local economies, including a new horse track in Amarillo and sections of Galveston and South Padre islands.
Lindsay said he is prepared to vote against the plan being supported by Perry for slot machines at six tracks and three Indian reservations. But he said he "might come around" if the proposal would be aimed at convention centers such as Houston and Galveston Island.
"Then you give the local convention business a shot in the arm, allow them to lower their room tax, making them more competitive in developing convention business and creating jobs," said Lindsay.
He said Harris County officials he has talked to love the idea but "know the chances are slim to none."
Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said he had not read the bill, so could not comment on the details.
"There has not been a lot of support for video gambling at any location," said Eckels. "I think it is unlikely that it will survive the process."
Last year, Rep. Ron Wilson,D-Houston, proposed transforming the Astrodome into the world's largest luxury casino. But his bill died.
Yes, Rep. Ron Wilson made this wacky proposal back in 2002, and it got the reception it deserved. You might want to check and see what Judge Eckels said about this idea back then, Sen. Lindsay, before you claim support from Harris County officials.
By the way, I notice that estimates of how much those slot machines will rake in are back in the stories about them, though they vary - $1.4 billion here, $1.2 billion here, $1.5 billion here. But what's a few hundred million bucks among friends? It's not as if these numbers mean anything, anyway.
There is one bit of good news, from the DMN story:
Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, filed the amendment to overhaul the business franchise tax, explaining there is widespread support in the Legislature and in the business community for making the tax more equitable.His proposal would address the large number of businesses that are avoiding the franchise tax because of loopholes and exemptions. Experts estimate that only one in six businesses is paying the tax.
"Business leaders I've talked to favor reform of the way we tax business," Mr. Duncan said. The idea is to extend the business tax to partnerships, proprietorships and other entities that now avoid the tax.
"We're looking for a system that is designed to prevent tax avoidance," he said. "This is a better way to treat business as opposed to the current gaming system we have."
That is, by far, the most sensible thing anyone has said since this madness began. Kudos to you, Sen. Duncan. Now don't let any of your lily-livered colleagues in the House mess with this bill.
The other big news from the Senate is a new teacher incentive package.
Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, has become the public face of what is reportedly a feverish private process involving her, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and other leaders of both chambers. On Monday, Shapiro laid out her 26-page "educational excellence and school reform" proposal as a partial substitute for House Bill 1, the legislation narrowly passed by the other chamber.It contains a $300 million-a-year teacher incentive package -- equal to about $1,000 per teacher -- that differs from the incentive approach in the House bill.
The House plan laid out a statewide blueprint for how teachers would earn monetary rewards. Shapiro instead would let each district create its own "student performance plan," subject to approval by the state education commissioner, that would set goals for teacher bonuses.
Her bill also includes a much smaller incentive plan for charter schools -- something absent from the House proposal -- that could be used only to build or buy facilities. And it would have the state pay students' fees to take the SAT or ACT, as well as two years' worth of preparation exams.
Today, Shapiro will unveil the "distribution" elements of her legislation: the guts of school finance, from educators' point of view. That language will set the formulas and broad rules for how districts get state money and determine whether the state will retain any of the current system, dubbed Robin Hood by critics, in which districts with greater property wealth share with poorer ones.
Shapiro said most of the 31 members have agreed informally on the first two elements. When taxes come into play, it gets sticky.
Right now, schools' operations and maintenance costs are covered mostly by local property taxes, whose rate is capped at $1.50 per $100 of assessed property value. More than half the state's school systems are at or near that cap. The Senate legislation will almost certainly include a significant cut in that rate, probably even lower than the $1.20 per $100 passed by the House.
The prime candidate for making up the lost revenue, Shapiro said, is a broadening of the franchise tax on corporations. Shapiro and Armbrister said that would mean extending the tax to more than just corporations; many businesses evade it legally now by changing their structure.
I'll wait and see on this, but do note again the importance of fixing the franchise tax, something which could and should have been done in the regular session last year. Sen. Duncan's proposal to extend it would also allow for its rate to be reduced, which really ought to stifle the usual bitching (though of course it won't) and more importantly is in line with the general philosophy of having as shallow a tax on as broad a base as possible. If this can get done, then the Lege can claim a real accomplishment. Let's see if they get any support from the Governor this time around.
Our featured candidate in this week's edition of Texas Tuesdays is Morris Meyer, running against incumbent "Smokey Joe" Barton in the 6th CD. If you're a blog reader, you've probably come across Meyer one place or another, through his guest post on Atrios last month and fire-breathing blog ads. Meyer's been at work on the campaign for awhile now, during which he's been quick to embrace bloggers and the potential of this new audience - only fitting for a software engineer by trade - and he's been generating some good press for himself in CD06. As with last week, we'll be bringing you a short interview and a guest post from the man himself, so stay tuned through the day, and take a moment to help Morris Meyer out with a donation or two. Please add on an extra $0.36 to let him know that it came from the Texas Tuesday effort. And we're off!
Ralph Nader has filed suit after failing to collect enough signatures to secure a spot on the Texas ballot in November.
Nader filed a federal lawsuit in Austin challenging Texas ballot access rules as the deadline passed for him to gather enough signatures to get on the state ballot this year as an independent.He needed 64,076 signatures of registered voters who didn't vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary this spring. He missed that mark by about 10,000, according to the lawsuit.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the lawsuit challenges as unconstitutional state law that gives independent candidates less time to amass petitions than alternative political parties.
Independent candidates have a 60-day window to gather petitions with signatures equal to one percent of the number of Texans who voted in the last presidential election.
Alternative parties have two weeks longer to get 20,000 fewer signatures. The Green, Libertarian and Reform parties have mounted petition drives to get on the Texas ballot.
"Democracy is under assault in Texas," Nader said in a prepared statement. "Through unconstitutional laws and denial of access to public places, Texas voters are being denied more voices and more choices.
"One of the goals of this campaign is to open up the ballot in Texas not only for this campaign but for future campaigns by other candidates."
Secretary of State Geoff Connor, defendant in Nader's suit as the state's top election official, said that the state's courts have upheld the Texas law that determines how independent and alternative party candidates get on the ballot.
Conner said that other independent presidential candidates have made the ballot in Texas -- Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Pat Buchanan in 2000.
"Repeat litigation is regrettable, but we will certainly defend state election law," Connor said in a statement.
Right offhand, I'll simply note that Nader could have run as a Green again and taken advantage of their status as a party to gain access to the ballot more easily. Of course, he wasn't a real Green in 2000, at least according to their respective platforms, and he did nothing for them in terms of party building. He's a lone wolf in this election, and he failed to fulfill the requirements.
I don't really have a problem with those requirements, either. They are a bit steep, but so what? Running for President is not a triviality. I could live with more lenient rules, and I could live with less lenient rules, but I don't see any good reason to invalidate the rules as they are. I'm willing to bet the courts will see it that way as well, though of course you never know.
One more thing:
Zeese said that in 2000, Nader challenged ballot application laws in eight states. He was on the ballot in 43 states and the District of Columbia.
And I daresay that he failed in those challenges, for otherwise his spokesperson would have trumpeted his wins against The Man. Thanks for playing, Ralph.
Got an email today about a new site called VotersUnite!, which calls itself a "non-partisan national grassroots network for fair and accurate elections". They've got a lot of info about Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, the Help America Vote Act, and their goal is to deliver information about these issues to local election officials around the country. It's pretty ambitious, but they look like they've got their act together. Check it out.
YDB brings us the news that former Sen. Max Cleland will be in San Antonio on Wednesday to announce the formation of Texas Veterans for Kerry.
Speaking in support of fellow veteran John Kerry will be Max Cleland, a former US Senator, secretary for Veterans Affairs, and Army Captain, who lost three limbs in Vietnam. Alongside will be the Bolanos brothers— Louis, Ben, Bill and Rick— who were personally cited by President Lyndon Johnson for their patriotism, as the only four brothers to serve in Vietnam.These veterans and many others will be organizing behind John Kerry’s comprehensive plan for raising the standards of life for veterans around the country. His proposals include eliminating the “Disabled Veterans Tax” and supporting mandatory funding for veterans health care.
“America's veterans and military families come first. Our soldiers deserve more than broken promises. I promise to fight for mandatory funding and keep the faith with America’s veterans,” John Kerry said. "We must do our part to care for those who have borne the burdens of battle. This is about keeping America's promise. And it is about love of country and the help and honor we owe to those who defend it."
Event details are on the YDB page. If you're in the area, drop by and check it out.
The History Channel has run and will run again a documentary called Breaking Vegas, based on a book called Bringing Down the House about a group of MIT students who learned card-counting techniques and won a ton of money at the casinos. I'm gonna have to set the TiVo to record the next showing of this, not because there's anything revolutionary to me about card counting but because I'd like to know how they kept house security from figuring out who they were and what they were doing. I mean, casinos have known about card counters for years and won the right to bar them in 1981. These guys apparently got caught some of the time, according to that Chron story, but not often enough to prevent them from raking in a tidy sum. I want to know how they did it.
I have to say, my favorite story about beating the casinos is chronicled in a book called The Eudaemonic Pie, and it involves a bunch of counterculture engineers who figured out a way to beat roulette by creating a mathematical model to predict roughly where the ball would land, designing and building tiny computers which were kept in their shoes to do the math at the roulette table, and working out a system where one player did the work and signalled another how to bet. Bear in mind, all of this was done in the late 70s/early 80s, well before the micro revolution. It's pretty damn amazing.
Today is the deadline for getting on the Presidential ballot in Texas, and it's not clear if Ralph Nader will have enough petition signatures to make it.
Monday is the deadline for Nader to submit to the Texas secretary of state the 64,076 signatures of registered voters required to list him on the ballot for the November election.Texas has been a focus of the longtime consumer advocate, who has visited the state repeatedly since announcing his second bid for the White House in February.
[...]
Campaign organizers said Sunday that it was uncertain whether they would make the deadline for Nader, who is not yet on the ballot in any state.
"It's going to be close," Jason Kafoury, national field coordinator for the Nader campaign, told The Dallas Morning News in Monday's editions. "Tens of thousands of petitions are pouring in, and we just don't know how it will go."
One Nader spokesman said supporters had about 40,000 signatures in hand as the weekend began.
Texas is one of the states with the most difficult requirements. Nader, 70, failed in April to get on the ballot in Oregon. That state's law permits a one-day convention of 1,000 for a candidate to get on the ballot, but Nader drew fewer than 750 people then.
[...]
Nader's entire organization has focused on President Bush's stronghold state, sending six of the campaign's field staff to Texas. Hundreds of volunteers have also fanned out, hitting as many festivals, concerts and college campuses as possible.
Nader has said he was confident he would get the signatures required in Texas. But he said that giving independents in the state only 60 days -- from March 10 to May 10 -- to collect nearly 65,000 signatures is "onerous and arbitrary."
To be valid, signatures must be from registered Texas voters who did not vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary.
Nader has promised to sue if he doesn't make it on the ballot.
Boy, doesn't that last sentence just fill your heart with song? I don't have any particular warmth for third parties and their candidates, but I'll admit that each states' procedures can fairly be called arbitrary. Whether they're somehow illegal is a much deeper question, and I for one wouldn't bank on the courts seeing it that way. Star-Telegram link via the Joe Hill Dispatch.
More from the Morning News:
Greg Kafoury knew he was in trouble when he started encountering folks he had already approached in hopes they would sign petitions to get Ralph Nader on Texas' presidential ballot.But even that beat getting kicked out of a local library and a potential Nader stronghold, the University of Texas campus, where he and others were herded to less visible zones reserved for free speech.
"A lot of people are saying they have already signed," Mr. Kafoury said after being rejected by a man rounding the corner of Sixth Street and Congress Avenue on two walking sticks. "We're hitting the same people."
In some cities, Nader supporters have had to get letters from city lawyers to collect signatures at various sites.
"We find ourselves on street corners," he said.
Dammit. I really, really hate having to waste any sympathy on these jokers, but shunting them off into "free speech zones" is just plain wrong. The whole country is a free speech zone, OK? Let them peddle their petitions anyplace where they're not actively disturbing the peace or trespassing. It's messy, it's annoying, it's inconvenient for most of us, and it's 100% the American way. And it shuts down a line of complaint when they fail to achieve their objective.
Anyway. I'm not sure if we'll know tomorrow what Nader's fate here will be - he may have enough raw signatures but get disqualified later because too many of them were invalid. I'll keep an eye on this.
Just a few campaign-related stories from recent days: Via BOR comes this Roll Call article in which the NRCC expresses some fear about Rep. Pete Sessions' chances against Martin Frost.
Tom DeLay and the National Republican Congressional Committee yesterday acknowledged that Pete Sessions' campaign is in trouble and that he is one of the most vulnerable Republican Members in the entire House. Sessions has been enrolled in a special GOP program to prop-up endangered candidates by allowing them to introduce legislative proposals conceived and drafted by the GOP leadership as their own. It is not unusual for party leaders to provide legislative help to freshmen Members or non-incumbent candidates, but it is extraordinary that the Republican Leadership must go to such lengths to build a resume for a Member like Sessions who has served in the House since 1997.
According to Robert Novak (quoted on Frost's site), some national Republicans think Sessions erred in signing a "no outside advertisers" pledge with Frost. Interesting...
Greg expresses concern about the possibility of Howard Dean campaigning in Sugar Land for Richard Morrison.
Dean wants to target the 22nd District of Texas, where little-known attorney Richard Morrison is challenging DeLay, one of the most powerful Republicans on Capitol Hill.The cash-strapped Morrison is excited about the prospect of Dean’s help but is less enthusiastic about Dean’s actually showing up in the majority-Republican district, on the outskirts of Houston.
“I don’t know that Dean coming to the district is as important for us as calling on his network of supporters nationwide” for help, said Nathan Wilcox, a spokesman for Morrison’s campaign. “His fundraising power is ultimately where he’s really helpful.”
“There’s a strong Dean community in the district, but it is a pretty small but active minority,” Wilcox added. “But we also have to reach across to Republicans, particularly Republican women, and I don’t know how helpful Dean can be with that.”
Wilcox cited a poll from October by Harstad Strategic Research, a Colorado-based polling firm, that showed 48 percent of those surveyed in DeLay’s district rated his performance as fair to poor, while 44 percent rated it excellent to good.
Morrison's campaign page now contains this note:
"Today's story in The Hill attempts to create a controversy by implying that I do not welcome the support of Howard Dean and other strong Democrats. This is not the case.I was proud to introduce Howard Dean to over 2,000 Houstonians in October, and will be proud to welcome him back any time.
In the future, I believe people will look back on Governor Dean and thank him for reviving the Democratic Party."
Morrison appeared last week on Air America's Majority Report show (you listen to an MP3 of his appearance here). This feels like a change in strategy to me, as Morrison will still certainly need some crossover Republican and lots of independent support to win. I've no doubt it'll help in fundraising, but we'll see how it translates into votes.
Max Sandlin continues to lead in fundraising in CD01.
As of March 31, [former district judge Louie] Gohmert's campaign had raised $450,370, according to the fecinfo.com Web site, which uses information from the Federal Election Commission. Of that, $441,770 was from contributions from individuals. Most of that — $409,516 — came from individuals in Texas. The rest came from contributors in Virginia, Massachusetts and the Virgin Islands.Gohmert received $5,000 from a health care PAC, $3,500 from manufacturing PACs and $1,000 from a law PAC, according to the site. Through the end of March, Gohmert’s campaign had spent $330,929, leaving him with cash on hand of $119,438.
Now in his fourth term, Sandlin was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996. In addition to serving on the House Ways and Means Committee and as the Chief Deputy Whip, Sandlin sits on the Democrats' task forces for children and health. He is also a member of the "Blue Dog" Coalition, a group of 33 moderate Democrats.
As of March 31, Sandlin's campaign had raised $745,208 in contributions. That amount included $235,987 in individual donations and $509,044 from political action committees. Topping the list of PACs that contributed to Sandlin were organized labor, $181,250; finance and insurance, $51,159; energy and natural resources, $47,738; single-issue groups, $38,000; and transportation, $31,000.
Sandlin's war chest also includes $31,000 from other politicians' PACs and $46,250 in donations from other candidates or incumbents.
Through March 31, the Sandlin campaign had spent $374,604. Taking into account a debt of $2,500, that leaves an available cash total of $374,852.
Twelve percent, or $28,550, of Sandlin's individual contributions came from people living in states other than Texas, including California, Virginia, Maryland, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana and Washington, D.C.
We'll be gearing up for our second Texas Tuesday tomorrow, so stay tuned for more. In the meantime, today is another Hard Sell Monday at The Stakeholder, so check them out as well.
Remember those anonymous attack mailers from late in the 2003 municipal elections, the ones from a group calling itself "Citizens for a Better America" (not this group, mind you)? I wrote about their sleazy mailers, in which those who funded them hid their tracks very effectively several times, starting here. After getting a tip about these mailers (two days before I received one myself), I called Tim Fleck, then still at the Houston Press, to tell him about them. Unfortunately, he never wrote anything about this before he left the Press, so I was very pleasantly surprised to see John Williams pick up the ball and advance it forward today.
This is a whodunit about a political consultant scrutinizing clues left last year at the scene of some political skulduggery.The consultant -- Marc Campos -- is investigating without the help of state law, which aids and abets the very activities he's probing.
[...]
A check of the postal permit on the ads against Adrian Garcia lead Campos to a mailing service in the Timbergrove neighborhood. The mailing service directed him to a print shop near Interstate 45 North and West Gulf Bank.
The print shop said a "Spencer" was its contact and that a graphics arts company in Meyerland prepared the ad.
Campos checked the campaign finance reports of those who opposed Adrian Garcia. He learned that Hector Longoria, one of Adrian Garcia's opponents, had hired political consultant Spencer Neumann and the graphic arts company.
Campos then reviewed the campaign finance reports of an opponent of Herlinda Garcia. Neumann was there, too.
And so we have a suspect, though of course he denies everything later on in the piece. The evidence against him is suggestive but not conclusive. Perhaps the best we'll be able to do is to keep an eye on him in the future and hope he gives a stronger clue next time around.
The district attorney's office investigated and determined that the ads for Citizens for a Better America were prepared by Jamestown Associates. Jamestown Associates and Citizens for a Better America share the same New Jersey address.But the DA's investigators determined that no law had been broken because Citizens for a Better America is a nonprofit corporation that can take part in issue advocacy.
Issue advocacy means that voters are not urged to vote for or against a particular candidate or position. The advocate, in this case a nonprofit group that promotes Republican causes, was merely telling voters its thoughts on Adrian Garcia.
Such ads don't require the same financial disclosure that Texas law requires of direct campaign advocacy, which specifically urges a vote for or against a particular candidate or position.
Assistant District Attorney Don Smyth said Citizens for a Better America did the same thing as Texans for True Mobility did during the fall rail referendum.
That nonprofit group spent more than $1 million on information explaining its belief that light rail cost too much and did too little. The corporation has not disclosed its contributors.
"They are putting out information, not directly asking for a vote," Smyth said.
This really makes me mad, and I will continue to be mad until something is done about this. I cannot believe for a minute that any sentient being could have looked at those anti-Garcia mailers and concluded that they were anything but a strong advocation to vote against him. If our state laws are too vague or our district attorneys are too candy-assed to address them, then we need a better law. My fear is that there is no law which can adequately balance the needs of public interest and free speech, and as such what we saw here will just be business as usual before you know it.
One last thing:
Neumann says he has been wrongly accused."This is a ridiculous and absurd claim," he said. "I had nothing to do with it. We need to get Marc some work so he can concentrate on business rather than this stuff."
Neumann may be guilty, and he may be innocent. I don't know. What I do know is that if our laws were properly written and enforced, we wouldn't have to speculate - there'd have been a real name and address on those mailers. Wouldn't that be better?
With all the recent hoo-hah about productive outs and the poo-pooing by ESPN talking heads Harold Reynolds and John Kruk about "lumbering sluggers" who "clog up the basepaths" (Kruk, at least, should know a thing or two about that), it's nice to see someone actually dive into a pile of game data to see what real effect baserunning speed can have on one's ability to score. Danil is your man for that, having kicked off a multi-part series to investigate the question. His entries so far are here, here, here, and here. I'm definitely looking forward to more. I do feel pretty comfortable in predicting that a slow OBP machine like Mike Hargrove will always be a better leadoff man/run producer than an impatient speedie like Omar "The Outmaker" Moreno, but I could be persuaded that there's some tradeoff and overlap involved.
The vote for City Proposition 1, which will determine whether or not Houston opts out of the constitutional amendment ratified last year to outlaw reducing pension benefits for a public employee, even if the employee was retired, is this Saturday, with early voting going on through the week. I still haven't made up my mind about this. I've heard the arguments on both sides, and whichever one I hear last sounds the most convincing to me.
This article didn't do anything to help reduce my ambivalence.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle last week, [Houston Mayor Bill] White said he has no intention of taking money from retirees or reducing what current employees have compiled from years gone by.He said he only wants to reduce the pension benefit going forward, to save the city from a serious financial crisis, and that he feels no guilt about it because the most generous pension changes were approved only three years ago. It's not as if someone had counted on them for an entire career, he said.
Couldn't White cut future benefits without opting out on Saturday? Pension officials overwhelmingly say yes, that nothing in the law forbids the city from negotiating for lower benefits going forward. In fact, they are prepared to do that.
But White says legal experts have told him the amendment is vague and could be challenged in court.
"I don't intend to take away any benefit that is accrued in the accounting sense," White said. "But could it mean future benefits of those already vested?"
In other words, could an employee halfway to retirement demand that his accrual rate stay the same?
Even if voters approve the opt-out, White won't be able to change pension benefits on his own. He must negotiate an agreement with the pension boards and may also need approval of the Legislature.
He may try to reduce the accrual rates going forward, rein in the returns on drop accounts and reduce cost-of-living adjustments.
If nothing is done, actuaries predict two city pension plans -- those for police and civilian employees -- will be significantly underfunded unless the city increases its contribution markedly.
Reading that closely, I can see Kevin's viewpoint. Why is Prop 1 necessary if we're only talking about future pensioners? The Mayor's point about vagueness and judiciary uncertainty does give me pause, though. How risk averse are we here? And which risk is greater, busted budgets or busted mayoral promises? I'm still working on it.
Am I the only one who finds it interesting that City Controller Annise Parker's op-ed on the pension situation never mentions Prop 1? I think all of her suggestions are reasonable, and I daresay all of them can be implemented whichever way the vote goes, but still. You'd think she'd mention the words "Proposition One" at least in passing, and I wonder what if anything is meant by their omission.
Am I a bad person for admitting that I find this funny?
A federal judge on Friday ordered former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling to stop drinking alcohol, find a job or volunteer work and obey a curfew -- one month after a drunken scuffle on the streets of New York.U.S. District Judge Frances Stacy added restrictions to Skilling's $5 million bond at the request of prosecutors.
The details of the Manhattan incident were not discussed in the 30-minute hearing. The government has previously said that after the incident, when New York police took Skilling to a hospital around 4 a.m. April 9, his blood alcohol level was 0.19 percent, more than twice the legal driving limit of 0.08 in Texas.
Prosecutors have said Skilling violated his bond by being intoxicated, trying to lift a woman's blouse in search of an FBI wiretap and attempting to steal a car's license plate outside an Manhattan cigar bar.
But defense attorneys contend the government has gotten its facts wrong about the incident and Skilling -- though he had been drinking -- was a victim.
Stacy, who said she conferred with U.S. District Judge Sim Lake, who will be trying Skilling's case, said she wants the curfew to be a term of his bond because it could aid him in meeting his no-alcohol requirements.
"Personally, I can't imagine what good thing can happen outside of your home between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m.," the judge said.
I'm still mesmerized by the order that Skilling get a job or do volunteer work. What kind of job do you think he's qualified for? Would you hire him? The mind boggles.
The latest Houston Area Survey shows that more people are moving back to the city and away from the suburbs compared to recent years.
This increased interest in urban living is being driven in large part by Anglos, Republicans and families with children at home -- groups traditionally regarded as firmly entrenched in suburban lifestyles, the survey shows. In all, 38 percent of the Harris County suburban residents interviewed said they were interested in moving into the city, up from 27 percent last year."This is a dramatic reversal from all the past years," said Stephen Klineberg, the Rice University sociology professor who has directed the survey of local attitudes and demographic characteristics since 1982. "In one year, the psyche of the people living in the suburbs has changed."
[...]
Klineberg said the timing of the survey may have influenced the results this year. The telephone survey of 650 randomly selected Harris County adults, with an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, was conducted Feb. 16 through March 1, in the aftermath of the Jan. 1 opening of the Main Street rail line and the Feb. 1 Super Bowl.
Klineberg and others said these events may have given many suburban residents their first taste of the nightlife, dining and other diversions along the Main Street corridor from downtown to Reliant Park.
In earlier surveys that included the urban-suburban questions, the proportion of city residents interested in moving to the suburbs has been almost twice as great as the reverse. This year, the numbers are much closer, with 42 percent of city residents saying they are very or somewhat interested in moving to the suburbs.
Over the years, suburban migration has made Houston "the most spread-out major city in America," Klineberg said. "But now, for the first time ever, there is as great an interest in moving into the city as there is in moving out to the suburbs."
In analyzing the suburban residents' results, Klineberg found that increased interest in urban living was more pronounced among Anglos than among blacks or Hispanics. Among the Anglos, the change was greatest among those ages 30 to 44, married and with children living at home. Interest grew more among those who identified themselves as Republicans.
These findings suggest a shift in the tradition of the suburbs as a haven for conservative young families who want to raise their children in a big house with a yard and enroll them in well-funded suburban public schools.
Realtor Eileen Hartman of Greenwood-King Properties said many of her and her colleagues' clients are approaching the school question differently than parents have in the past.
"Families for a time were moving out for the suburban schools, but now time -- and family time -- is more important," Hartman said via e-mail. "They don't want that one to one-and-a-half-hour commute each way. If theyaren't pleased with their local school or if their children don't make the cut into a magnet or Vanguard school, they are opting for private schools instead of moving out."
That makes a lot of sense to me, but of course I had that hour and a half commute each way in high school. When I got to college and discovered how much more time in the day there was when one is a five-minute walk away from class, I swore I'd never engage in a long commute again. I've never understood the willingness to commit two hours plus to driving.
I have a minor nit to pick with the sidebar story about willingness to use Metro instead of one's car. People were asked if they'd consider not driving to work if the mass transit system were more "efficient". It's not a question of efficiency to me, it's a question of coverage. If I can get where I'm going in no more than two hops, I'll at least consider it. The proposed commuter rail line along US 290 passes not far from my house once it enters the Loop, while the future rail line along I-10 would be even closer to me. Assuming they'd both connect to the Main Street line, I'd have a viable alternative. But not until one of them happens.
April was my best month ever, with about 41,000 hits. A couple of referrals from Kevin Drum's new Political Animal site was a big part of the boost. Things have tapered off a bit so far in May, but my weekly running average continues to remain at or above 1200, which is as high as it's ever been on a regular basis. As always, thanks to everyone for reading and for returning. Top referrers are beneath the More link.
Though this will be a very busy summer, with the state Democratic convention, who knows how many special sessions, Texas Tuesdays, and of course that big election in November, I expect things to slow down for awhile here soon, as my posting schedule will be greatly curtailed after the baby arrives. I don't know how long it'll take me to figure things out, so please bear with me. We're still 2-3 weeks away from the due date, but with babies you never know for sure.
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Steven Pearlstein explains what the problem is with the horse racing industry.
Even as interest in horse racing has increased thanks to "Seabiscuit," satellite broadcasts and Internet betting, attendance continues to decline. Most tracks barely break even, and many, like Pimlico, are distinctly down at the heels. And in Maryland, so many patrons and horsemen are going elsewhere that the state is in danger of losing the Preakness along with its storied reputation as a center for thoroughbred racing and breeding.You'll hear all sorts of complicated explanations for why this is so and who is to blame. But the reason is pretty simple: This is the kind of mess you get when 50 state governments all try to micromanage an industry.
It started decades ago when politicians discovered they could raise revenue without raising taxes by legalizing a relatively harmless form of gambling. As part of the deal, legislators and governors took it upon themselves to decide how many tracks there would be, who would own them, how many days or nights they could race and how the betting pot would be divided.
In time, however, these arrangements proved so useful to the states that there were too many tracks, too many racing dates and too many horsemen for any to operate profitably.
Tracks had no choice but to cut back on marketing and modernizing their facilities, leading to a cycle of declining quality and falling attendance.
And a number of states, facing the prospects that their money-losing tracks might actually have to close, came up with the brilliant idea of subsidizing them with the proceeds from yet another form of state-sponsored gambling -- slot machines.
As a result of this fiscal shell game, states such as Delaware and West Virginia are now funneling millions of dollars they could use for schools or health care to second-class tracks so they can fatten purses and lure the best horses and jockeys. The better horses and jockeys, in turn, steal away tens of millions in bets from gamblers in other states, who either drive across the border or place their wagers electronically. The gambit has been so successful that Pennsylvania is now threatening to join in the game with its own slots plan. And that has led even die-hard opponents in Annapolis to acknowledge that Maryland slots won't be far behind.
This is nothing more than a fool's game that, in the end, will have no winners other than a handful of top jockeys and the manufacturers of slot machines. The higher, taxpayer-subsidized purses will induce more breeding and even higher stud fees. And the industry will continue to suffer from endemic overcapacity and anemic profitability.
Just a little something to keep in your back pocket if the original proposals to add slots at the tracks gets revived. Via Off Wing Opinion.
Just finished upgrading to version 2.661 of Movable Type. I'm hoping this will fix the Atom bugs that people have reported. I'll see what the Feed Validator says after I rebuild all my index files. Let me know if you're still seeing a problem with your RSS aggregator. Thanks.
UPDATE: The Feed Validator gives it a passing grade. Hallelujah!
ObCanOfWorms: Anyone think I need an RSS 2.0 feed?
The Senate is saying they'll probably need another session to come up with a plan that can be passed by both chambers.
"We are not under any time constraints. We don't feel May 19 is forcing us to make a hasty decision," said Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, the Senate sponsor of the tax-cut measure. "We want to be deliberative ... and if we go beyond May 19 into another special, then so be it."Gov. Rick Perry has said he will call as many special sessions as it takes to obtain property tax cuts for homeowners and to eliminate the "Robin Hood" redistribution of taxes from wealthy school districts to less wealthy districts.
The current special session took a blow this week when efforts to pay for property tax cuts with new state taxes collapsed in the Texas House. The House passed some property tax cuts and school incentive measures but did not pay for them.
"We have pretty much decided the House proposal is hard to work off of. It would be very difficult to start with their proposal and try to craft something," Shapiro said. "So we're starting from scratch."
[...]
Numerous senators spent much of Friday huddling with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in his office discussing not only what could pass the Senate but what could pass the House. Many said they were optimistic about reaching agreement in the Senate but felt uncomfortable with what might happen in the House.
"We're far apart from the House in where we want to go. We've got a long ways to go," said Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands. "We've got a pretty good idea where we'd like to go, but we have to figure out what we can get through over there on the other side."
Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, said the odds are no better than "50-50" that anything can be accomplished before the session ends. He said senators are concerned that they will vote for a tax increase to pay for a property tax cut and then have the measure fail in the House.
Wentworth said a vote on a failed bill could be used politically against an incumbent. He said if a bill passed, an incumbent could justify a tax-increase vote because it provided tax relief.
"Then you could say we gave you a 33 percent or a 50 percent tax break, and they will understand it because they will have felt it by that time," Wentworth said.
Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, said some senators are concerned that they could reach an agreement on a tax plan and then the House could force a change in conference committee. She noted it takes a two-thirds vote of the senators to pass a bill in the Senate but only a simple majority to approve a conference committee report.
"The lieutenant governor has pledged to us that no conference committee report would be adopted without a super-majority," Zaffirini said.
I'm not surprised, though I have to wonder if Governor Perry will ever call a special session for which all of his ducks are in line beforehand. I remain convinced that if Special Session 2 expires without anything happening, a third session won't accomplish anything, either.
John Lopez (yes! again! I can't believe it either!) notes that my alma mater Trinity is a good comparison for Rice as it decides what to do with its athletics. Trinity was a Division I school - in fact, it was an original invitee to the Southwest Conference, though it declined to join - and produced a number of notable pro athletes before dropping to Division III about 30 years ago (they remained in Div I for tennis until 1990). It's a good read, and it's food for thought, but as a Trinity alum and Rice fan, there are a few points I'd like to mention:
1. Trinity is a Division III powerhouse now, but to put it bluntly, they stunk at sports when I was there. The football team won a grand total of seven games during my four years, and there was some talk about dropping football altogether after the team went 0-8 in 1986. I believe, though I can't say for sure, that all of the other sports I followed (men's and women's basketball, basesball, and women's volleyball) were not much more successful. I don't know what they did to turn things around, but I do want to make clear that you can be a good program or a lousy program at any level.
2. Division III is just different than Division I. It's hard to describe, but even at a mostly-indifferent campus like Rice, there's more of an atmosphere, a feel, about the sports programs that never existed at Trinity. Our varsity teams just didn't register on anyone's consciousness when I was an undergrad. It may be different now, I don't know. The McKinsey report on Rice says that an average of 500 students attend each football game. At Trinity, the whole stadium seldom had as many as 500 in attendance. We sold off more than half of our stadium seating to a local high school after my sophomore year, and it made little difference. Bear in mind, there was and is essentially no competition from pro teams, at least for football, in San Antonio. I don't even think any of the other local colleges (Incarnate Word, Saint Mary's, and UTSA) had football teams. It was just a void. Again, with strong programs now, it may be different. I still doubt that anyone outside of the campus pays much attention, though.
3. Getting rid of athletic scholarships does not mean that athletes will seamlessly fit in with the rest of the student population. Most of the varsity athletes at Trinity were in fraternities (one frat in particular) and sororities, which comprised about 20% of the total enrollment. I generally interacted with athletes only through my role as a sports reporter for the school paper, and occasionally via intramurals. Most of them majored in professional programs like business, education (including phys ed), and communications - as a math major, I took almost no classes with most of them. Rice of course has no Greek system, but my point is simply that birds of a feather will, to some degree, always flock together. Once again, this is how it was when I was there - it may be different now.
4. There's no delicate way to put this: Trinity was a lily-white school when I was there - I can count on both hands the number of black students who were there when I was, and I'd have fingers left over. I assume it's less so now, but I'd bet it's still whiter than Rice is. We can discuss recruiting strategies and everything else as long as we like - and we did back then, believe me - but the plain uncomfortable truth is that Rice will not be as diverse a place as it is now if it drops Division I sports, with dropping football being the biggest part of that.
I don't want to give them impression that I think Rice's way is superior to Trinity's. Sportswriter or not, I attended a lot of games at Trinity because I liked sports and I liked my school, and I felt I could support my school that way. I never did understand why my friends and classmates weren't as enthusiastic about it as I was. I've been extremely proud of Trinity's renaissance on the field, court, and diamond, and I've been thoroughly impressed with their commitment to their ideals, even when it costs them. What I believe is that each school's approach works for them, and that for one school to alter its approach to be like the other's would be a big change that would take several years to adjust to, a point which Lopez made as well. All I hope is that the trustees at Rice think long and hard before they embark on a new path.
(I'd love to know if my impressions jibe with those of my fellow Tigers. Patrick? CrispyShot? FHC? Anyone else? Please leave a comment!)
Little League game this morning (we won - we're back on a two-game win streak after Monday's loss), Art Car Parade this afternoon. Life is good.
UPDATE: Here's Mayor White enjoying the parade:
UPDATE: Pete and the Chron have some good pictures.
Here's an interesting look at the dynamics of the swing states this time around, taking into account population changes and how they benefit each party. Good reading, and more evidence that this will be a close election. Via Political Wire.
Rafe Colburn is keeping track of who knew what about Abu Ghraib and when they knew it. The Stakeholder has a similar list. None of the items on those lists support the conclusion that the pictures we've seen are from an "isolated incident" involving a few "bad apples".
Max makes a good point about "politicizing" something like this, which seems to be the line of attack now.
Somebody has to walk the plank on this, no matter what your politics are. Somebody important -- not some waif from Cumberland, Md. (Why does her name keep coming up? There were guys in the pictures too.) Rummy evidently knew but didn't want to know and found other things with which to concern himself. This was a miserable failure.Politics is the way we are supposed to make decisions in this democracy of ours. Public opinion, acting through the instrumentality of elections, among other devices, chooses leadership based on performance. Aspiring leaders compete in the political arena by attacking each other. Politicization is precisely what is required for problems to be addressed.
Politicization can be founded on false, stupid, or trivial premises. For instance, the nation's business was significantly absorbed in the practice of oral sex, not too long ago. Making something out of nothing would merit scorn. The prison practices are not nothing. I seem to recall that Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson was attacked for stuff going on several layers below him at nuclear labs in the desert.
We cannot begin to undo the damage that we have wrought here until we make people accountable for causing it. Donald Rumsfeld is one of those people (he is by far not the only one, make no mistake about that), and as long as he's still in a position of power, we're saying to the world that we'd rather scapegoat than stand up. President Bush, acting more and more like a bad CEO, does not understand that. Maybe if enough of us tell him this, by signing the petition or other means, he'll come to understand it.
UPDATE: Greg Morrow provides more evidence that Rumsfeld should be held accountable.
Now that the Senate is trying to figure out what to do with the dead raccoon the House left on its doorstep, the question must be asked: Will there be a second session if nothing happens in this one?
The Senate will try to construct a new school finance plan before the special session ends May 19, but it will be difficult to do since the House dismantled most of its school package, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Thursday.Gov. Rick Perry, meanwhile, repeated his earlier threat to keep lawmakers in Austin for another 30-day session if this one ends in failure.
Several senators said there is strong support in the Senate for legalizing video lottery terminals, or slot machines, at racetracks, despite the House's rejection of that revenue source.
Dewhurst said senators are still determined to cut school property taxes by as much as one-third or one-half and that a number of options for replacing the lost revenue are still being considered.
Among them, he said, are an expanded business franchise tax and higher or expanded sales taxes, as well as the gambling idea.
"I cannot understate how difficult this is going to be," he said, blaming "this week's events," which began when Perry, on the eve of House debate, announced his opposition to a business payroll tax, a cornerstone of the House plan.
Dewhurst met privately with senators on Thursday before the Senate adjourned until Monday afternoon, when senators hope to begin deliberations on a draft of legislation.
Dewhurst said he will continue private meetings with groups of senators today to "try to move the ball forward."
Monday is the 10th. The session will expire on the following Wednesday the 19th. That ain't a lot of time.
Dewhurst said that despite the setback, Speaker Tom Craddick had assured him that he still wanted a "permanent and comprehensive" replacement for the present school finance system, which relies heavily on local property taxes and requires wealthy school districts to share revenue with poor schools.But many senators now are reluctant to vote for a major tax increase -- which would carry potential political risk -- for fear the House will reject it.
Dewhurst didn't rule out the possibility that some of the Senate's education goals may have to wait for the next regular legislative session, which convenes next January. But he added, "We're trying to do all of it here in the special session."
"I will keep calling lawmakers back until we have found the right mix of revenue options to improve our schools, eliminate Robin Hood (the present law), maintain equity, cut property taxes and preserve Texas' strong job-creation climate," Perry said.
Perry's saber-rattling aside, I don't think he'll be able to call session after session this time around. Unlike the redistricting fiasco, there's no clear end goal in mind, and there are sharp divisions on pretty much all of the major proposals. The most likely thing to get enough of a consensus to pass, in my mind, is something small and incremental that can be built on for the future, but this is not what the Lege wants, and I don't think any Republican sees that as a win for them, at least not after all the talk and grand plans.
Last time around, Perry had a basically unified Party and a lot of support from the national GOP, as well as some political capital to spend in the wake of the regular session, where he could claim victory on his "no new taxes" pledge. He has none of that now, and I think there's a decent chance he'll have a revolt on his hands if he tries to call more sessions when there's no consensus in sight. He could get away with one more, on grounds of running out of time, but beyond that I think he needs to see this as a hung jury that has no hope of returning a verdict and declare a mistrial. It'll be his failure of leadership if that happens, of course, but that doesn't mean he can't try to blame it on the Lege for not doing his bidding. Who knows, the voters might even buy it.
On a side note, this article and its sidebar about how each local legislator will do under the proposed property tax rollback is worth reading. Must be nice to have a $2 million house, right, Rep. Woolley?
Kevin Drum and Nick Confessore discuss paper receipts for electronic voting machines. I've said this before and I'll say it again: I think that the various e-voting machines should be the interface, and the paper receipts should be the actual ballots that get counted. Combined with optical scan readers, they should be highly accurate, and will provide defenses against fraud and tampering that are already well known and well understood. Best of all, their ease of use would eliminate any concerns about accessibility for the disabled - in the specific case of the visually impaired, as cited by Kevin, the came principle would apply: use the fancy electronics as the interface, then print it out for the official record.
I really don't see what's wrong with this idea. It solves the problems that we faced in 2000, and it's only marginally more expensive than the electronic-only solution we have now. What do you think?
Schlitterbahn Galveston - Full speed ahead!
The planning commission on Tuesday gave the New Braunfels-based company the green light to break ground. Officials say the $30 million water park will be constructed on 25 acres at the Galveston airport.Construction could begin as early as this summer and the goal is to have it finished within a year.
Woo hoo! The original park in New Braunfels will always be the best, and will continue to be an annual pilgrimage for me, but having another version of it nearby is a Very Good Thing, especially if as Pete notes, they make it year-round. I can't wait to see what it looks like.
Somebody slap me - this is now twice that I've favorably cited John Lopez.
The passionate fight you want to wage in order to keep sports at Rice, especially football, is shared by many. By me.But it is emotion talking. It is the raw, guttural reaction to someone daring to suggest that Rice athletics be scaled back, played at a diminished level or even vaporized.
We are sports fans. Houston sports fans to boot. To be unemotional about it, specifically a drop from Division I-A football, would be akin to turning down half-price beer at Reliant Stadium. Or free barbecue at Rice Stadium.
Who here would actually want to see Rice athletics remade into something less than top shelf? I wouldn't. You wouldn't. No one would.
But knee-jerk emotions do not pay bills that stack $10 million deep every year and will not change significantly with a move to the more geographically friendly Conference USA.
Raw emotions do not change consumer trends. Demographics will not suddenly reroute a path that was set long ago -- before, even, the breakup of the Southwest Conference, which many Owls supporters consider the beginning of this talk about an end.
The truth, in fact, is that Rice long ago began losing its appeal to its most significant potential audience -- us, the beer-and-barbecue crowd. The interested but uninvolved parties.
He's right. There just aren't enough people in Houston, whether affiliated with Rice or not, who care to pay for the privilege of watching Rice football games. Rice can keep its head above the current Division IA requirement of a 15,000 per game minimum home attendance average, but it has to rely on opponents who travel well and an annual Operation Sellout to do it. And though it's Rice who is navel-gazing about its future in football, it's not just Rice with this problem - the Cougars suffer from a similar infection of indifference.
I don't know what the trustees will eventually do. My personal choice would be to make a real commitment to excellence in athletics, at the same level of standard as they have in academics. That would necessarily mean spending a ton of money, from improvements on Rice Stadium and building a real basketball court to doing some actual marketing. We all know how likely that'll be.
There is one thing that I do know, and that's what will not happen:
[W]hy not form a "Southern Ivy League"? Rice, SMU, Texas Christian, Tulane, Vanderbilt ... no football scholarships ... real students playing football for fun, instead of for money.
This little fantasy comes up all the time on the Owlzone fan forum. I'm just going to say this once, so please pay attention: The "Southern Ivy League" is never going to happen. Put aside the fact that Vanderbilt is a member of a BCS conference, and that TCU has now abandoned two conferences with Rice in them in order to position itself as a national football powerhouse. No other school in this wish list (which sometimes includes Baylor) is considering a change in their status as Division IA football teams. Why should they? What benefit would they get from it? What makes you think that Rice could convince them to abandon their current paths and play non-scholarship football in a league of their own? And finally, why do you say that the 80+% of Rice football players who graduated are not "real students"? What exactly would you call them?
I'm not really sure who came up with this Spider-Man on the bases idea, but I'm glad it didn't fly.
A day after announcing a novel promotion to put advertisements on bases next month, Major League Baseball reversed course Thursday and eliminated that part of its marketing deal for Spider-Man 2."It isn't worth, frankly, having a debate about," commissioner Bud Selig said.
Boy, I sure can't argue with that. Let's not go all NASCAR here, OK? Leave the ads off the field of play and let's get on with our lives.
The state GOP has filed an ethics complaint against Democratic State Rep and former House Speaker Pete Laney, alleging that he used campaign contributions improperly as reimbursement for his personal plane.
Republicans have repeatedly attacked Laney on the issue since 1996, but this is the first known time the party has filed a formal complaint against him.Laney, who still represents his Hale Center district in the House, said he has never done anything illegal in paying for his airplane with campaign donations.
"My political opponents made this same attack against me in 1996 and 2001, and there was no substance to their claims then or now," Laney said. "My campaign funds have always been handled in total compliance with the laws and rules of our state."
The formal complaint, filed with the Texas Ethics Commission, centers on Laney's use of nearly $1.7 million in campaign funds since 1995 to operate and maintain his private airplane.
"These outrageous sums simply don't pass the smell test," said Texas GOP Chairman Tina Benkiser.
Karen Lundquist, executive director of the Texas Ethics Commission, said state law requires that she neither confirm nor deny that such a complaint has been filed.
A search of the commission's Web site found no record of the commission ever acting on a complaint against Laney since 1996.
"If the commission finds credible evidence of a violation, the order would be on the Web site," Lundquist said.
Whatever. Seems to me that if they've been complaining since 1996, either there's no evidence of any wrongdoing or he's really really good at covering it up. One wonders, if the Ethic Commission finds Laney to be in violation, if there will suddenly be a Republican clamor to give it some actual enforcement capabilities. Needless to say, I won't be holding my breath in anticipation. Lastly, you'll forgive me, I trust, if I guffaw indelicately at Ms. Benkhiser's shock at the incredibly large sum of $1.7 million. We all know how uncomfortable the state GOP is around money, after all.
Fifty years ago today, Roger Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes.
Fascination endures with the four-minute mark, which many at the time believed was physically impossible."It still seems strange to me that the intrinsically simple and unimportant act of placing one foot in front of the other as fast as possible for 1,760 yards was heralded as such an important athletic achievement," Bannister wrote in his book, "The First Four Minutes."
"I suppose the appeal lies in its very simplicity, four laps in four minutes — it needs no money, no equipment and, in a world of increasingly complex technology, it stands out as a naive statement about our nature."
Bannister was the favorite at 1,500 meters entering the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland. His goal was to win gold and retire to pursue his medical career.
Instead, he finished fourth, thrown off when Olympic officials inserted an extra round of heats, forcing him run three straight days.
The failure prompted him to shelve retirement and pursue the record, which was being chased by many, including American Wes Santee and Australian John Landy.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Bannister recalled: "I thought, 'Well, I can't leave on this sour note, feeling failure, disappointment, letting people down — letting the country down.'
"I thought, 'I can just go on somehow, combining medicine with my running until '54, two years.'"
Bannister chose the first meet of the 1954 season — Oxford vs. the Amateur Athletic Union — to attempt to break the record with friends Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway as pacemakers.
The weather was typically English: rainy, cool and blustery. He nearly abandoned the attempt, but around 6 p.m. the wind subsided.
"I calculated there's a 50-50 chance of my doing it," Bannister said. "I said, 'If there's a 50-50 chance and I don't take it, I may never get another chance to beat Landy to it.' So I said, 'Let's do it.'"
Bannister's record stood for 46 days before Landy ran 3:57.9 in Turku, Finland, on June 21.
The current record is a hair over 3:43. For comparison, I note that the fastest marathoners run at a pace slightly faster than five minutes per mile.
Meanwhile, Kevin remembers the USFL, which had its heyday 20 years ago. I was a fan of the USFL, and I think it could have been a threat to the NFL given enough time and money. They certainly had some great players - check out the All USFL team at the end of the piece.
The San Antonio Gunslingers played in the 20,000-seat high school stadium right across the street from the Trinity campus (sorry, can't remember the stadium's name). They weren't much of a team, or much of a draw - I have no memories of any crowds or crowd noise from games. I do recall that a redheaded Trinity coed, who later became a weather reporter for one of the local Happy Talk newscasts, got some attention on campus for being a Gunslingers cheerleader. Hey, at least I remember something about the team.
Bush takes Rumsfeld off the hook
President Bush said today that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "will stay in my Cabinet" despite Democratic calls for his departure over abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American military guards."Secretary Rumsfeld has served our nation well," Bush told reporters in an appearance in the White House Rose Garden. Speaking slowly for emphasis, he added, "Secretary Rumsfeld has been the secretary during two wars, and he is an important part of my Cabinet."
Bush coupled his remarks with his first outright apology for the mistreatment suffered by Iraqis at the hands of Americans. He said he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families."
Bush spoke as his administration sought to counter a worldwide wave of revulsion over photographs showing Iraqi prisoners, some of them hooded, naked and in sexually humiliating poses, in an American-run prison in the Baghdad area.
Some of the images show American captors mugging and gloating amid the misery of the Iraqis. One, published today on the front page of The Washington Post, showed a naked man on the ground, his neck on a leash, the other end of which was in the hand of a female American GI.
For the second straight day, Bush vowed that those responsible would be brought to justice.
Well, that's lovely, Mister President, but first I want to know: Who, exactly, is responsible? Oh, I know, a few bad apple GIs and all that, but who's responsible for them? Who's responsible for running Abu Ghraib? Who's in charge here?
While I'm asking questions, who's responsible for the fact that you're only finding out about this now? The Taguba Report came out in what, February? What have those responsible been doing about it since then?
If you are unwilling to hold anyone responsible for this, Mister President, then I believe we the people ought to hold you responsible for it. That said, I agree with Nancy Pelosi that we really should start with Donald Rumsfeld. He does serve at your pleasure, after all. Why is it that you're still pleased with his service?
For the rest of us, here's a petition calling for Rumsfeld's dismissal. Do feel free to express your own opinion on the subject.
UPDATE: Damn straight.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday if he were president he would not be "the last to know what is going on in my command," a criticism of the Bush administration's handling of reports of abuse of prisoners held by U.S. forces in Iraq."These despicable actions have endangered the lives of our soldiers and, frankly, have made their mission harder to accomplish," Kerry said during a campaign appearance at a California high school. "We cannot succeed in Iraq by abandoning the values that define America."
[...]
"As president, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command," Kerry said. "I will demand accountability for those who serve and I will take responsibility for their actions. And I will do everything that I can in my power to repair the damage that this has caused to America to our standing in the world and to the ideals for which we stand."
I say again: Damn straight!
Lea Fastow will get one year in Club Fed after pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor charge.
"I've made an error in judgment that I will always regret for the rest of my life," she told U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who overruled prosecutors' request for five months in prison and five months of supervision.Surrounded by tearful family and friends, the 42-year-old mother, one-time socialite and former assistant treasurer for Enron dissolved into tears after the judge left the courtroom. She was not immediately put behind bars but will turn herself in to a federal prison when the Bureau of Prisons decides where she will go. Fastow's attorney, Mike DeGeurin, said she's been anxious all along to go sooner rather than later, "to get this behind us, get on with our lives."
Lea Fastow pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of willfully delivering a joint 2000 tax form reporting more than $48 million in income to the Internal Revenue Service, even though she knew it to be fraudulent.
[...]
Unlike a previous plea bargain rejected by Hittner last month, today's misdemeanor conviction means Fastow, a finance expert who plans to obtain a nursing degree, will not be barred from jobs that ban convicted felons. In her original plea bargain, she pleaded guilty to a tax felony.
Hittner chastised prosecutors for vascillating between an original indictment of six felonies and a final indictment of just one misdemeanor, suggesting that justice may not have been served in either instance.
"Such maneuvering as is present in this case might be seen as a blatant manipulation of the justice system," Hittner said.
It is very unusual for federal prosecutors to knock six felony counts down to one misdemeanor charge, several legal experts said. They said this deal suggests that those who believed Lea Fastow was charged just to help prosecutors get her husband were right.
Andrew Fastow, originally charged with 98 counts, pleaded guilty to two felony charges on Jan. 14 -- the same day that his wife did the first time around -- and faces a maximum 10-year prison term for his role in fraud at scandal-ridden Enron. His cooperation with the government has already bolstered cases against ex-Chief Executive Officer Jeff Skilling and ex-top accounting officer Rick Causey.
Indeed, in maintaining that the reduced charges were within the discretion of prosecutors, government attorney Linda Lacewell told the judge there were many reasons to back off, including saving resources and "enabling us to go up the chain in the company."
"We do not do this lightly," Lacewell said. "We do it rarely. We believe what we have done is appropriate and that it is just."
I'm not going to gripe. Sure, in an ideal world, Lea Fastow would get a meaningful sentence along with the rest of the Enron miscreants. However, she wasn't responsible for Enron's collapse, and in the grand scheme of things I'd rather see those who were responsible held to account for it. If slapping Lea's wrist helps Andy Fastow cooperate more fully against Jeff Skilling and maybe eventually Kenny Boy Lay, then I commend the prosecutors for playing their hand as they did.
Somehow in the midst of all the school finance madness, a Senate committee is looking at the state's antiquated insanity laws.
A legislative panel is conducting its first hearing on the standard that requires a defendant seeking to be found not guilty by reason of insanity to prove he suffers from a severe mental disease or defect and didn't know his actions were wrong.Attorneys and mental health experts were among those expected to address the Senate Jurisprudence Committee, which plans to look at the current law, treatment options, procedural issues and possibly changing the current plea of "not guilty by reason of insanity" to "guilty, but insane."
The legal debate has raged for years and has gained momentum through the high-profile cases of Andrea Yates, the Houston woman convicted in 2002 of capital murder for drowning her children, and Deanna Laney, found not guilty by reason of insanity last month in the stoning deaths of two of her sons.
"Andrea, because of the notoriety, was the lightning rod for public concern about how our system treats the mentally ill," Yates' attorney, George Parnham, said Wednesday.
The Harris County district attorney's office would like to see the Texas standard remain the same, but have stronger commitment conditions for those acquitted based on insanity.
Others, like Parnham, would like mental illness to be "decriminalized."
Kevin Keating, an assistant prosecutor in Harris County, said people who are found not guilty by reason of insanity are often released quickly from state hospitals. They are required to be committed for at least 90 days, with annual hearings into their case if the commitment period continues beyond three months.
"We want court supervision over you until such time as you are no longer mentally ill or no longer need medication to control it," he said. "From our perspective, the standard works. The post-acquittal monitoring does not work."
Keating cited a recent example: the case of Kenneth Pierott, a Beaumont man charged with murder for allegedly placing his girlfriend's 6-year-old son in an oven last month. Pierott was acquitted by reason of insanity for the 1996 killing of his sister, was released from a state hospital within six months of his 1998 acquittal and later was placed on probation for forgery and assaulting his girlfriend.
"The possibility certainly exists that they get out and they hurt people," Keating said. "There have been suggestions that a `guilty, but insane' verdict may be a way to solve this problem. If someone is found guilty, then the criminal justice resources may be available to deal with them."
But prosecutors believe they can solve the problem without changing the verdict -- by altering the criteria for inpatient commitment, Keating said.
You know, I can recall "guilty but mentally ill" being a hobbyhorse on the old TV show "Quincy". I have a hard time taking it seriously because of that, but I'll try. As long as the idea is that the person is ill and thus in need of treatment so he or she can get better, then I think we're on the right path. I agree with prosecutor Keating that the Pierott case was a failure of the system, but I'm willing to bet it's a far less common occurrance than what happened to Andrea Yates is. If we can handle the Andrea Yateses of the world properly while ensuring that the Kenneth Pierotts are not released prematurely, then we'll have truly improved things.
All right, it appears that my Atom feed fails to validate (thanks to Danil for pointing me to the Feed Validator). I'm not really sure how to fix it, but I have verified that the current version of MovableType does indeed have Atom support built in, so what I'm going to do is to upgrade to that version over the weekend and hope this does the trick. I'm guessing I'll have to remove my existing Atom.xml file first, but we'll see - I'll probably ask the question on the Support Forum before I proceed. In any event, I'll post an update when I believe my Atom feed is all better. Thanks for the feedback!
Now that the House has punted, the Senate is trying to figure out what to do with the mess they've inherited.
"They didn't leave us much to work with. They may as well have sent us a piece of paper saying, `Howdy,' " said Sen. Kyle Janek,R-Houston."The Senate is basically torn between two possibilities. We go ahead and write a comprehensive plan with high likelihood the House will kill it, or we do nothing," said Sen. Steve Ogden,R-Bryan. "I don't know what we're going to do."
I'm already on record endorsing the latter option, as long as that means that no bill passes. Given the relatively minimal effects of the House bill anyway, especially as far as the schools are concerned (remember them?), it would be no big loss from a practical perspective.
Seems the House is a little touchy about its role so far.
Rep. Kent Grusendorf, author of House Bill 1, told representatives he "misspoke" on Tuesday when he called the measure a "shell bill" after key revenue provisions were removed."HB 1 is not a shell bill. HB 1 has not been gutted," said Grusendorf, R-Arlington. "We're not punting to the Senate. We're moving the process forward."
"And my manhood is just fine, so quit asking about it!" Grusendorf did not add.
I have no idea what the Senate will do, though I suggest keeping a close eye on what Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst says and does. As I've expected, Dewhurst has been a critic of Perry's approach all along, though he's kept his mouth shut during the House's flailings. He can take several paths, including a revisit of the sweeping plan from last year that Perry pissed on, declaring the problem intractable given the restrictions placed on any legislation by Perry, or do his best to make lemonade. I'd kinda like to see him choose Door #1, just to see how Perry spins it to his advantage, but again, at this point I think doing nothing is the best answer. We'll see.
Andrew D at BOR has some more details, including a few choice bits from the Quorum Report.
Archpundit takes a look at some Illinois Congressional races over at the Stakeholder. Good news - the Democrats have a shot at winning the seat once held by Don Rumsfeld. Check it out.
Were you looking for just the right excuse to get a Blackberry or video-enabled cellphone? Wait no more.
Naked News anchors have already stripped down to bring news in the buff to the Internet and the television in more than 172 nations; now Naked News producers are looking to conquer the world of wireless.The Naked Broadcasting Network, which offers daily news read by all-nude female broadcasters, already has its broadcast beamed to more than 1.4 million hotel rooms in North America, the Caribbean and Europe and on passenger cruise ships. The network has struck its first wireless deal. A partnership with Icemobile BV in the Netherlands calls for the delivery of Naked News content to wireless phones and handhelds.
"Wireless is the next great frontier," says Naked News executive producer David Warga. "Our product is perfect for this medium because it provides short clips of relevant information in a most entertaining package."
Naked News says it is in discussions with other wireless companies to distribute its content, but further details were skimpy.
No pun intended, I'm sure. Here's their press release. Via the Dave Barry blog.
Well, it appears that I now have a full-post Atom feed, which should be located at this address: http://www.offthekuff.com/mt/atom.xml. I've subscribed to it myself in Bloglines so I'll know when it's working or not. You can see it for yourself if you click on the My Bloglines subscriptions link. Actually, I subbed to both my XML feeds - the Atom feed is the top one.
I could swear that I saw a post about newly-added Atom support on the SixLog earlier today, but either I hallucinated it or it's been deleted/moved. Not that I apparently need it - I found a basic template for Atom here, and though the link I'd created didn't seem to work right away, it's working now. So subscribe away, and drop me a note if you feel the need to add something similar to your MT blog.
So now I'm curious. I see that I have four subscribers besides myself to my standard feed. How do you read this site? Bookmark, blogroll, other RSS aggregator, no set method, other? I'd be interested to know.
UPDATE: I've gotten some feedback that my Atom feed is generating invalid XML - in particular, that there's a MovableType closing tag which is visible. I don't see that when I view my Atom feed in Bloglines, so is anyone else seeing something like this? I'm going to poke around the template that I've created to see if I can figure this out, but any other info I can get would help. Thanks.
Get ready for another recount in CD28.
U.S. Rep. Ciro Rodriguez's legal case against challenger Henry Cuellar was severely hobbled Tuesday when a judge denied his attempt to raise the issue of possible illegal votes cast in Webb County in the disputed Congressional District 28 race.But the blow was tempered by visiting District Court Judge Joseph Hart's ruling to order another recount of the nearly 15,000 Democratic primary ballots cast here — a process that will take place Thursday and, if necessary, Friday.
The recount could bring the issue of who won the Democratic nomination nearer to resolution, although Rodriguez's attorney, Buck Wood, said he still plans to appeal the issue of illegal voting to the 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio.
"I'm not pleased with (Hart's) ruling of not being able to plead the issue of those illegal votes," Wood said. "I'm not sure how to plead it more specifically than I did."
A trial still is slated to begin Tuesday in Laredo, although the substance of the case will depend on what happens during the recount, lawyers for both sides said.
[...]
Wood filed a lawsuit after the recount, alleging there were inexplicable vote swings during the Webb and Zapata recounts.
He later amended his lawsuit to include allegations of potential voting irregularities, including people who were registered to vote at addresses where they do not reside.
Hart threw out Wood's amended lawsuit Tuesday, saying it raised concerns that weren't included in the initial petition.
Although Wood presented to Cuellar's attorneys a list of 262 Webb County voters he claimed might have voted illegally, he never submitted any names to the court.
This may be a death blow to Ciro Rodriguez' hopes. His problem wasn't dangling chads or mismarked ballots, it was the discovery that some ballots hadn't been counted at all the first time around. I certainly agree that it's highly suspicious that those ballots broke heavily for Henry Cuellar, especially the 177-0 split in Webb County, but unless he can show evidence that there's a Box 13 situation going on, I think he's toast. His attorneys have put a happy face on this ruling, but I'm not seeing a winning path for him right now, at least not without a save from a higher court.
From Patrick in the comments to this post:
I bet Dennis Franchione is breathing a little easier now the Gov. Perry has set the new standard for the worst shutout ever laid on an Aggie.
Dude. We are not worthy.
For what it's worth, this score reminded me of the usual result of games involving Charlie Brown's baseball team, which was 123-0. I just couldn't think of a clever way to work it in. You da man, Patrick!
OK, I take it back. I'm not going to bother analyzing the current House bill, which was originally supposed to be on school finance reform but which is an unrecognizable mass of tax tradeoffs that no one likes and everyone knows won't do squat to help schools. The House has passed the buck to the Senate and taken its shot at Governor Perry for his utter lack of leadership, and yet still passed this completely useless bill, though it took two votes and a lot of arm-twisting to do it. No, I'm just going to boil it all down to its essence, which is captured nicely in this quote:
State Rep. John Smithee,R-Amarillo, said the bill, if it became law in its present form, would be "disastrous for the people of Texas." But he and other Republican leaders said there wasn't enough time remaining in the session, which must end May 19, to send the bill back to committee for a rewrite."I'm convinced this is the only way to move the process along," Smithee said.
So it's better to pass a "disastrous" bill in the name of process than it is to take no action at this time. Tell me again why it is that the Republican Party is associated with people who call themselves "conservatives". I don't recognize anything conservative in that statement.
The Quorum Report is a gold mine of info on this session, and of course one can read the various newspaper accounts (here, here, here, here, here, and here). And one can wish that the special session will expire with nothing passing other than thirty days. By far that would be the best option right now.
I'm going to try to pick up some of the tatters of the most recent budget "plan" from the House and make something coherent out of it a bit later, but for now, take a moment to digest this story, headlined "A House united - against Perry".
Gov. Rick Perry finally found the consensus Tuesday that he'd been seeking on public school finance: a 126-0 House vote against his plan.In a bipartisan show of pique, lawmakers slapped the governor for publicly trashing key elements of the House plan the day before major debate was to begin.
Mr. Perry on Monday called the House plan's proposed 1.25 percent payroll tax against businesses "an economic U-turn" and "a job killer" and issued a thinly veiled threat to veto it. He pitched his own plan again, saying it was looking "prettier and prettier."
But actually, things only got ugly.
House leaders decided to vote on the governor's plan Tuesday before they began serious work on their proposal.
Mr. Perry has called for a split tax roll – having the state collect business property taxes and leaving residential taxes collected locally. He also favors "sin taxes" on cigarettes and strip clubs, and video gambling.
Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, the author of the payroll tax proposal, took to the floor and said he thought the House should consider the governor's plan first as a courtesy.
"In the Texas House, we don't give press release warnings. No, we just vote bills up or down," Mr. Keffer said.
So he sponsored the bill and laid it out before the House. But his pitch for the plan resembled a fastball at the head.
"He called us here without so much as a consensus and then undermined our process and criticized the committee's plan," Mr. Keffer said.
Without going into details, the sponsor said he intended to vote no, and then offered a Will Rogers saying for the governor: "If you're going to ride point, look behind every once in a while and make sure the herd's behind you."
Rep. Mike Krusee, R-Round Rock, pleaded with his colleagues not to vote. "This is wrong. This is childish."
He said it was unfair to take the unperfected bill in its original form and present it "just to spite" and "to embarrass."
Mr. Krusee said if the governor chose to publicly speak of his opposition to business taxes, "that's his prerogative."
The members might have listened, but they did not herd. When the vote board lit up, there were more "no" red lights than a five-alarm blaze. By the end, 126 voted against the governor. Sixteen white lights indicated present but not voting.
Three longtime Capitol observers said they'd never seen such a public rebuke of a governor.
Remember, that was a Republican who sponsored this bill. And, as noted here, Speaker Craddick had to allow it to come to the floor. Wasn't this special session a great idea?
UPDATE: Not that it's a big deal, but the Star Telegram identified one of the "longtime Capitol observers" as Harvey Kronberg, editor of the Quorum Report.
Snarkout has a lively look at made-up languages and the people who love them. I just have one question: Does the Klingon Linguistics Institute have a visiting scholars program?
William Krar will get eleven years in the pokey.
TYLER -- An itinerate gun dealer caught with a cache of poison gas, machine guns and other weapons in an East Texas storage facility was sentenced Tuesday to more than 11 years in federal prison.But William J. Krar's motives, and those of his common-law wife, Judith Bruey, remain unknown to federal officials, who cast the case as a victory against domestic terrorism.
"To the extent there was any plot to use these weapons, that plot was thwarted," said U.S. Attorney Matthew Orwig of the Eastern District of Texas.
[...]
The case began to develop in January 2002, when a package of fake identification documents was mistakenly delivered to Staten Island, N.Y.
Federal agents traced it to a mailing center near Tyler, then to Bruey and Krar, who had moved to Noonan from New Hampshire in 2001.
In several storage sheds rented by the couple, agents found nearly half a million rounds of ammunition, blasting caps, pipe bombs, silencers, machine guns and more than 800 grams of almost pure sodium cyanide, enough to kill everyone in a one-story, 30,000-square-foot building within a minute.
"Anyone possessing that has to be considered very dangerous," [FBI Supervisory Special Agent Peter] Galbraith said.
I'm as glad as the next guy that a nutjob with a half million rounds of ammo and a bunch of explosives has been taken off the streets, but until and unless we get some kind of idea what Krar was doing with all that stuff and who he might have been doing it with, I'd call this a pretty qualified victory against domestic terrorism. Ammo and explosives are fungible; masterminds are not.
David Neiwert has followed this case closely from the beginning and has a lot of background info if you want to do some exploring.
Nearly $500 was raised yesterday for Richard Morrison, which is a pretty decent total and an encouraging beginning to Texas Tuesdays. I'd like to thank all of the bloggers who helped promote this effort:
The People's Republic of Seabrook
My apologies to anyone I may have missed. If you didn't join in this time and want to do so next week, please leave a comment or drop me a note - we'd love to have you.
As the wrapup to Texas Tuesday, here's a guest post by Richard Morrison on the YDB. Thanks again to everyone who made this a successful beginning.
The Who -- considered one of the most acclaimed, most influential and loudest rock groups ever -- issued a compilation of their classic singles on Tuesday, including two new songs, the first they have released for more than 20 years.Only two members of the original line-up remain -- Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend -- and Daltrey says there is nothing wrong with the band moving with the times.
"I believe Pete Townshend is the only person in rock and roll who can write about the path from middle to old age," he said.
One of the two new songs, "Old Red Wine," was penned by Townshend as a tribute to former bass player John Entwistle.
Cool. Of course, the only way I'll ever get to hear this new music is if I buy the CD (which I probably will, for the best-of stuff anyway), since of course the Classic Rock station won't touch any post-1990 music by any of its featured artists. And they wonder why CD sales have slumped. Via Amish Tech Support.
We won six games in a row before finally losing, as we did last night in a game that was closer for us than perhaps it should have been. Though we did some good things, including throwing a runner out at home, our pitching was shaky and our offense took awhile to get untracked. The kids were disappointed that they lost, but I think they've got a better appreciation now of why they'd been winning.
It's amazing how easy it is as a coach to lapse into Coachspeak, that cliche-riven amalgam of pithy sayings and Hallmark inspiration. "Losing is a habit, and so is winning," I intoned last night. "We need to get back to the habit of winning." I'm not sure what amazes me more, that I can think of things like that to say on the spur of the moment, or that it's not even an effort to maintain a straight face while doing so. I guess it helps when this kind of stuff is not well-worn to your audience.
Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress most of these kids have made. They're getting more confident in what they can do, which is a big hurdle to clear. They're just now at the age where they're coordinated enough to really build on physical skills they've been taught, and it's really rewarding to see a kid who's been working on his swing all season finally make contact. You don't really appreciate how hard hitting a baseball is until you see kids struggle to do it.
With another rainout last weekend, our schedule continues to be full as we scramble to make up missed games. We're halfway through the season but we've only got about 2.5 weeks to go. No rest for the busy, that's for sure.
Chron columnist Ken Hoffman has an amusing tale of coaching strategy and Lombardiesque speechmaking for his 7-year-old team. I don't think I'd have the guts to try that kind of shifting defensive players, but hey, if you can't experiment at this level, when can you?
It's a moot point now, but I think Jim D is exactly right here.
Permitting gambling in some places, but not others, is going to (and right ought to) unleash a torrent of "me too"-ism from cities and counties left out of the rain.
The reason that Governor Perry's original proposal to allow slot machines only at dog and pony tracks wasn't because there was some grand moral justification for allowing "limited" gambling, but because those places had the clout to harness the prevailing political winds. Why not let the Kemah Boardwalk get some slot action? How about cruise ships and their embarking/disembarking areas? Hell, why not the neighborhood pub? Why should I, as a conscientious supporter of the public schools, have to go to Gulf Greyhound Park to throw my coins into the slots?
I can see arguments for wanting to limit where slot machines can be installed, but I can't see why the boundary has to be at racetracks. If slots were going to be the gold mine that their proponents claimed, I don't agree that only one small group of businesses should be the beneficiaries. And even if I was convinced that the only-at-racetracks idea was the best one, I'm very much not convinced that the pressure to extend this manna to the have-nots would be resistable for long by the Lege. I suppose it's just as well that we won't be finding out any time soon.
Continuing with the Texas Tuesdays tradition (hey, we've had more than two posts now, so that makes it a full-fledged tradition now), YDB has a brief interview with Richard Morrison.
What are you hearing voters on the campaign trail say about the race and Tom DeLay?People are excited that I'm running! Honestly, the feedback I've gotten has
been the most rewarding and inspiring part of this whole experience. I can't
tell you how many people have told me, "Richard, I'm a Republican, but I
just can't vote for that Tom DeLay any more. You'll be the first Democrat
I've ever voted for, but I'm going to do it because I believe you'll do a
better job of representing me and my family in Congress."
Sounds pretty exciting to me. More exciting is the news on his front page that his ad on Daily Kos raised over $20,000. Great as that is, it's still chicken feed compared to the DeLay war chest, so do what you can and tack on that extra $0.36 to let him know where it came from.
Meanwhile, here's my interview with Morrison from a few months back, when he was just starting out. The more you know Richard Morrison, the more you'll like him.
No, not here, but at the Political State Report, which recently purged its rolls of idle authors. Especially if you live in a currently unrepresented state, this is an excellent chance to ease your way into blogging - no setup or config needed, no webhosting fees to pay, and only two posts a month required as a minimum. Leave a comment on the cited post or drop me a note if you're interested.
UPDATE: Just to be clear, I was referring to contributing at Polstate, not here. My bad, sorry for the confusion. Please leave a comment at the cited Polstate post if you want in on that.
It's pretty much official - gambling is dead. Everyone knows the votes aren't there. And that new business payroll tax - dead, too. All of this pretty much guarantees that whatever eventually gets christened as The Bill won't do squat for schools and will inflict a thousand paper cuts on various subsets of the population.
So who's in the crosshairs now for new taxes? Well, there's snackers, for one.
[Rep. Charlie Howard, R-Sugar Land] is proposing a 1 percent "snack tax" on beer, wine, soft drinks, chips and other snack foods in lieu of gambling. He said early estimates indicate it could raise $1 billion a year.
Given the state of public nutrition these days, at least one could argue that unlike most other proposed "solutions", this will not be a diminishing market. Maybe we should also scale back on the anti-junk food attacks on school vending machines. Heck, if this proposal becomes law, we ought to put more soda and snack machines in the schools. May as well get the students themselves to help pay for their schooling, right?
Hey, Kevin! Here's a proposal for you.
Texans would pay a $1 tax on most amusement events, whether it's a Dallas Cowboys game, a live music show or the ballet, under a provision tucked into the 370-page public school finance bill.The bill, authored by Rep. Talmadge Heflin, R-Houston, includes a $1 flat tax on professional sports events, amusement parks and any live concert, reading or play, including events by not-for-profit groups. Movie tickets were left out.
Only performances for public schools, colleges or charity events would be exempt. The extra buck would earn an estimated $47 million for public schools.
[...]
The prospect of a new $1 tax worries many involved in Texas performing arts.
Steve Wertheimer, owner of Austin's Continental Club, said that for a small venue, a $1 tax could amount to $500 to $700 per week, and club owners would have to decide whether it comes out of the public's, the club's or the musicians' pockets.
"It's hard enough to get people to pay five bucks to see six guys on stage trying to maintain their livelihood," Wertheimer said.
Welch said he doesn't think the $1 tax will hurt the club business.
Melissa Eddy, owner of Austin-based Pro Arts Management, offers services for small to midsize classical performing arts groups.
Eddy said that although paying a $1 tax might not add much to ticket prices, administering the tax could be difficult for volunteer and part-time staffs.
Philosophically, she added, the tax is wrong.
"It's sad enough that Texas state support for the arts is already so paltry," Eddy said. "To tax performances would add insult to injury."
Looks like the baby will be born at just the right time to curtail my social life. Yet another tax I can escape. Bring it on, fellas!
All of these ridiculous proposals, which if this is any indicator will cumulatively be more of a harm than a help to most people, show the folly of making property tax relief such an obsession. The reason people feel their property taxes are so high is because it's the only real non-federal tax anyone is paying around here. There's no state income tax, the corporate franchise tax is an easily-avoided joke, and the sales tax only applies to the diminishing economy of goods, not services. What else is left?
Either we care about educating a rapidly expanding population or we don't. The so-called leadership in Austin has made it clear that they have other priorities. All I can hope for right now is that they manage to not screw things up beyond repair.
As in 1992, a majority of Rice professors have expressed a dislike of atheltics in general and football in particular. As in 1992, I expect the trustees to thank them for their input and then ignore it. I for one refuse to waste any energy worrying about it.
Speaking as an alum of a Division III school, let me say that there's a huge gap between that and Division I. There's no doubt in my mind that Rice would attract a different student body overall if athletics were deemphasized to that degree, though of course whether that would come to be seen as a positive change or not is something I cannot say. Division III is also a more expensive option than you might think because of travel costs - there just aren't that many Div III schools close by - and the inability to recoup any costs via ticket sales - football crowds at Trinity back when I was a student measured around 200-300, basketball crowds at about 100, and baseball crowds at about 20. Admittedly, Trinity's football team - indeed, all of their teams - is a lot better now than it was then, but still. For the number of people that would attend, you may as well not charge admission.
UPDATE: Ginger adds her perspective as a Rice alum.
Today is the debut of Texas Tuesdays, in which our coalition of bloggers raises awareness and hopefully a little money for some deserving Congressional and State House candidates. We lead off today with Richard Morrison, who is taking on Tom DeLay and has been buoyed by a recent poll that shows shallow support for the embattled Majority Leader. Everyone knows what last year's redistricting did to all of the Democratic incumbents, but CD22 is quite a bit different as well, with a sizeable chunk of Galveston County relocated there from Rep. Nick Lampson's old district. That's one reason why Lampson had been rumored to run against DeLay himself this time around, and it's one reason why DeLay's numbers may not be so hot right now - there are a lot of voters in CD22 now who are new to him.
You can help Richard's cause by donating to his campaign. As the Yellow Dog Blog suggests, please add $0.36 so he'll know where the donation came from. The YDB will have a guest post by Richard Morrison later today, so check back with them for that and for more info on what's happening today. Let's make Texas Tuesdays a success!
You know all about the rise of the small donor in this year's election cycle, right? And you know how successful Atrios has been with his John Kerry Thursdays, right? Well, nothing succeeds like success, so get ready to mark a couple more days on your weekly planner: The DCCC has rolled out Hard Sell Monday, and tomorrow will be the debut of Texas Tuesdays. Watch this space and the Yellow Dog Blog for more info on the latter, which will be aimed at helping out the various Texas Democratic Congressional candidates plus a few State House hopefuls. We're six months out from Election Day, and there's no time like the present to get ready for it.
The National Catholic Reporter has a very good editorial on the "controversy" of John Kerry's Catholicism and what it means about his fitness to be President.
Assume for the moment that John Kerry’s Catholic critics are correct. That a Catholic legislator, or would-be president, cannot embrace abortion rights (or embryonic stem cell research, or gay rights or you name it) and be a “good Catholic.”It’s an interesting debate, one in which even some “good Catholics” -- those who would pass these narrow litmus tests -- might disagree.
But that discussion has nothing -- zero -- to do with whether John Kerry should be president of the United States.
Kerry might be a “bad Catholic” (or a “good” one for that matter) and still be an exemplary president; or a failed one. Personal piety and religious observance are not prerequisites of national leadership.
Were Jefferson and Lincoln good Deists? Hoover and Nixon exemplary Quakers? Kennedy a committed Catholic? George H.W. Bush a first-rate Episcopalian? Clinton a quality Baptist? George W. Bush a pious Methodist?
Who cares?
History judges these men not on their religious zeal, but on their performance in office. How God judges them is for God to decide.
Read the whole thing. Via Body and Soul.
With Rep. Ciro Rodriguez filing a lawsuit to overturn the result in the CD28 Democratic primary, the case would appear to turn on the question of what a valid voter registration is.
The issue of residency is a murky one, some say, involving family ties and deep-rooted cultural traditions.At Zacatecas and New York streets on the city's Southeast Side, one home boasts a bright blue plastic tarp that serves as a front door.
A steady stream of cars chugged through the neighborhood as Rosaura Castañon emerged from behind the tarp to answer a reporter's questions.
"That's my brother, that's my brother-in-law, that's my sister-in-law," Castañon said, rattling off family members as she peered at a list of people with five different last names. "We all voted."
She's one of 12 family members who share the modest home.
Rodriguez attorney Buck Wood acknowledges family ties are at the heart of many of his examples of alleged illegal voting, such as a son or daughter who moves from his or her parents' home but maintains voter registration there.
"The tradition of people maintaining an address other than where they live seems to be very prevalent here " in Laredo, he said. "It's very family-oriented and people maintain their connections."
While it may not be fraud, it's certainly not legal, he said.
"If you go to a poll and you claim you still live at an address, that's illegal," Wood said. "That vote's going to be thrown out."
Cuellar attorney Steve Bickerstaff disputes that.
"It's very, very common for the registration to remain at the residence of the parents," he said. "Any ruling that would say that's a violation of the law would have implications statewide for minority voting."
Trying to determine if family members have moved out of a home but remain registered there could lead to all sorts of problems, Bexar County Elections Administrator Cliff Borofsky said.
"I think it's probably a fairly common phenomenon," he said. "Statewide, I'm sure there are many cases where families vote together."
Borofsky said officials try to keep tabs on residency by sending out voter registration cards to last-known addresses. If the person no longer lives there, the current residents are supposed to return the card to the county.
"It would be a mess, and in order to correct it, the (Texas) secretary of state or a court would have to ask every elections administrator to investigate whether people really live where they say they do."
State law tends to protect rather than inhibit the right to vote. To be eligible to vote, states the Election Code, a person must "be a resident of the territory covered by the election," in this case, Congressional District 28. It doesn't refer to a specific address or time frame.
My gut instinct says that a judge will be reluctant to hold this election to a tight reading of state law when it's not an issue in pretty much every other election. I don't necessarily agree with this idea, but I can already hear cries of "unfunded mandate" if the stricter standard is upheld. The implications could be awfully messy, and I'm not sure anyone without a direct interest in this case wants to go down that path. Maybe as long as we've got all our lawmakers in Austin, most of them without much to do right now, we could ask them to look into whether the relevant laws need cleaning up. Not that doing so would affect this case, but it might at least avoid a bigger mess in the future.
And the march of bloggers going pro continues apace. Congrats to Ezra for landing an internship at the Washington Monthly and to O-Dub for his new gig with Media Matters. I look forward to seeing you on the Sunday talk shows some day.
John Nova Lomax continues a good run with his "Racket" feature in the Houston Press by presenting us with the Thirty Worst Texas Songs. Unlike Texas Monthly and their recent Best Texas Songs list, he's pretty darned broadminded about what constitutes a Texas song or artist, but the end result of that is to make the list more fun, so it's okay by me. Though I disagree with him on a couple of selections, he gets enough credit for being so right about so many others that I'm willing to overlook them.
I've included the article below, with my comments. Be warned - as Dave Barry mentioned in the introduction to his Bad Song Survey (referenced several times below), this comes with a severe Brain Takeover Alert. You may find yourself incessantly humming some of these awful songs, and there's not much you can do about it short of a lobotomy. So have fun, but be careful.
30. Timbuk 3, "Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades." This song's so bad, I gotta wear earplugs. All right, all right, maybe it's not that bad, but it would take years to find rock any geekier than this. That "Ain't nothin' gonna breaka my stride" song tops it, but not by much.We'll start right off with a disagreement - I like this song. I will admit that that as earworms go, though, it's pretty pernicious, so if you're not that fond of this song, the number of times you'll hear it in your head over and over again will surely magnify the effect. Nonetheless, I would not have chosen this song.
29. Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, "Luckenbach, Texas." Not a terrible tune, but terribly overrated and overplayed, and responsible for the plague of name-checking other Texas songwriters.28. Various Artists, "Deep in the Heart of Texas." I've always hated everything about this tune -- the stupid melody, the moronic hand-clapping, the Up With People vibe. Couldn't we sing "San Antonio Rose" at baseball games instead? "Waltz Across Texas"? "Mind of a Lunatic"? Anything but this.
I can't speak for anyone else, but my answer to that question is because I don't know those songs. It's still better than "Texas, My Texas", and it has the Pee Wee's Big Adventure thing going for it. Which is nice.
27. Fabulous Thunderbirds, "Powerful Stuff." After scoring a hit with "Tuff Enuff" on their previous album, the T-Birds watered down their signature sound still more for this turd off the Cocktail soundtrack.26. Steve Earle, "Esmeralda's Hollywood." This slice of Earle's "vacation in the ghetto" interlude is of interest today only to those of a ghoulish bent. You could pretty much put about half of The Hard Way in here; not for nothing has Earle allowed that record, alone among his studio recordings, to slip out of print.
25. Ray Wylie Hubbard, "Screw You We're from Texas." It takes some doing to write a song that's even more obnoxious than "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," but Hubbard topped himself with this one from last year's Growl.
24. H-Town, "Knockin' Da Boots." Included here for introducing a dorky euphemism for screwing into the American lexicon.
23. Charlie Sexton, "Beat's So Lonely." Man, Charlie, you had it all. The chops. The looks. The three-album deal with MCA when you were 17. The Fabulous Thunderbirds and ZZ Top paved the way for you. You could have been a guitar idol for the ages. Instead, you got hornswoggled into thinking you were Duran Duran, and you released a piece of drum machine-encrusted, synth-addled crap. It's hard to hold it against you -- after all, you were 17 and just following orders. But, man, was I disappointed.
Man, I remember "Beat's So Lonely", and I remember the hype over Charlie Sexton. What in the world happened to him?
22. Edie Brickell, "What I Am." "I'm not aware of too many things / I know what I know, if you know what I mean." Dude, that's pretty heavy. If you're a 19-year-old philosophy student wearing a beret and smoking Gauloises.
Another song I don't really dislike but can't really disagree with. I remember a parody version of this song where the lyrics went "Philosophy/Is a subject I never passed/ In high school". I usually sing that when The Point plays this tune.
21. John Denver, "Sunshine on My Shoulders." Denver -- an army brat -- went to Texas Tech, so we'll throw him in here. Washington Post critic Tim Page once said that 1974 was the worst year in pop music history. It was the year of "Seasons in the Sun," "Piano Man," "Waterloo," "The Way We Were," "Billy Don't Be a Hero," "You're Having My Baby," "I Honestly Love You"…Page honestly has a point. And the quasi-Texan Denver certainly carried the standard for the Lone Star State.
Hard to argue with that, and I like "Piano Man".
20. Johnny Lee, "Lookin' for Love." The standard-bearer for a bad era of country, unfortunately one that was centered on Houston. I still can't hear this song without thinking of Eddie Murphy as Buckwheat singing "Ookin' pa Nub."
I always thought that was "Wookin Pa Nub", but that's not important. I can't hear this without thinking about the Buckwheat Sings! version, either.
19. Steve Miller, "Abracadabra." "I wanna reach out and grab ya." I want to reach out and grab a sledgehammer when I hear this song.
The first Dave Barry Bad Song to appear on the list, precisely for that lyric.
18. Stephen Stills, "Love the One You're With." This hippy-dippy blast of free-love propaganda is like the venereal disease it no doubt did much to promote. And like syphilis, after a dormant period, it has come roaring back with a vengeance in the repertoires in many of today's younger Texas Music artists. (Like Hubbard and Brickell, Stills and Miller are both Dallasites. Notice a pattern?)17. Don Henley, "Witchy Woman." The Sting of Texas has a few options here, most notably this one and the Stevie Nicks duet "Leather & Lace," or hell, even that overblown piece of quasi-mystic '70s mumbo-jumbo "Hotel California." We'll go with "Witchy Woman." Or make that "Witch-eh Woman."
16. Willis Alan Ramsey, "Muskrat Love." This ode to rodent lust -- made famous by the Captain and Tennille -- well deserves a place on this list, or any such assemblage of the worst music of all time. Who could forget lines like these: "Nibbling on bacon, chewin' on cheese / Sammy says to Susie, 'Honey, would you please be my missus?' / And she say yes / With her kisses."
Another Dave Barry Bad Song.
15. Barbara Mandrell, "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool." Actually, Barbara, you were never either country or cool.
Damn straight. This was wonderfully parodied by Wammo of the Asylum Street Spankers with his (sadly no longer performed) "Children of the Cornnuts", in which he proclaims that he "was flannel, when flannel wasn't cool".
14. Michael Martin Murphey, "Wildfire." One of a million smarmy relics from a smarmy decade. As a matter of fact, that's not a bad nickname for that particular ten-year stretch: the Smarmy Seventies.
And another Dave Barry Bad Song. This one got an entire page in his "Book of Bad Songs" thanks to a letter he received from a guy who pointed out that a "killer frost" occurs on a clear night and is a hazard to one's vegetable garden.
13. Meat Loaf, "I'd Do Anything for Love." A plus-size artist with a plus-size palette of bad music, the Dallas-bred Loaf's comeback record was a definite return to form. Unfortunately, what he was returning to was ludicrously over-the-top dreck. See also No. 10.
Sad but true. "Bat Out Of Hell II" blew chunks - it's high on my list of CD Purchases I Most Regret. Say what you want about the original, Jim Steinman utterly failed to capture any of its charm or magic.
12. Drowning Pool, "Bodies." It was banned by Clear Channel Radio after 9/11, and people thought that maybe Clear Channel had some taste after all. Then it was reinstated to the airwaves and people came to their senses.11. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." Not even Willie is immune to putting out a bad record every now and then, and this is truly wretched. And if you've ever seen karaoke versions of it, you'll begin to be able to conceive of what awaits sinners in hell.
Yet another Dave Barry Bad Song. To quote Steve Dallas: "There will be no - repeat, NO - duets with Julio Iglesias this session!"
10. Meat Loaf, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Hmmm, should I put this on the list? Let me sleep on it, baby baby, yeah, let me sleep on it. Yeah, I'll put it right here at No. 10.
Sacrelige! The original "Bat Out of Hell" is a desert island CD for me. Yes, I know, it's cheesy, overproduced, overwrought, melodramatic, and pretentious. What's your point? It still kicks ass. "Bat II" just proved that it was a once in a lifetime accomplishment.
9. Pat Green, "Songs About Texas." Old Cow Town, Old San Antone, taco meat, old Guy Clark, Hill Country rain, Jerry Jeff Walker, honky-tonk angels, dusty plains, and to top it all off, a fast-moving train. Green left out the Shiner Bock, Ol' Willie and the Guadalupe River, but managed to work in just about every other yee-haw-generating platitude under the, ahem, blazing Texas sun. He should have called this "Clichés About Texas."
Though it's to the tune of another mindless "country" hit, I'm convinced that this was the inspiration for the Austin Lounge Lizards' wonderful Stupid Texas Song.
8. Kenny Rogers, "You Decorated My Life." Rogers has released more crap than any Houston artist. Ever. Ask ten people their least favorite Kenny Rogers song and you'll get ten different answers. Some hate "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town," while others opt for "Lady," "Islands in the Stream" or "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer." But then sing 'em a few bars of "You Decorated My Life." A consensus soon emerges.
The really amazing thing about this is that Lomax didn't mention my personal "favorite" Kenny Rogers atrocity, which is "She Believes In Me", or more accurately "She Be-LEEEEEEEEEVES In Me". Hard to believe one artist could have that much concentrated crap in him, but there you go.
7. LeAnn Rimes, "How Do I Live." Ye gods, this offering from the Dallas songbird is awful. Hum it a little bit. Now it's as stuck to your head as that old bumper sticker you can't peel off your car.6. Christopher Cross, "Ride Like the Wind." Breaks like the wind, more like. It's tough to pick just one from the Chris Cross canon, and, um, I'll admit I actually like the Arthur theme. (Pull my hipster card -- I don't care.) "Sailing" is another matter, but "Ride Like the Wind" is even worse.
(raises hand sheepishly) Yeah, I like the "Arthur" theme, too. Sue me. How exactly is Chris Cross a Texan, though? That just seems so wrong.
5. Little Texas, "God Blessed Texas." This song, more than any other, is responsible for the epidemic of ridiculously excessive fiddle and guitar solos that plagues the Texas Music (Bowel) Movement. Seriously, the typical solo in some of these bands sounds like a C-130 taking off. And goddamn it all to hell, bombastic truck-commercial-friendly crap like this is catchy as hell. Chev-eeehhh, driving Texas! I was born on the Llano Estacado! Bad, but catchy.
If I ever do move out of Texas, it'll be because of the godawful truck commercials. This one, which mutates into "Ford Is The Best In Texas" for commercial purposes, is worthy of the death penalty. You think those "Like A Rock" ads are bad? You have no idea.
4. Lisa Loeb, "Stay." "I missed youuuuu…" Not. Loeb kicks off a four-tune Dallas Hall of Shame at the top of this list. Loeb, Tripping Daisy and Deep Blue Something were all active in the Metroplex at about the same time -- it's kind of like one of those great, fertile scenes like San Francisco in the Summer of Love or the Lower East Side in the mid-'70s, only all the bands were complete and utter abominations. Does SMU offer a postgrad degree in Crap Music Production or something?3. Tripping Daisy, "I've Got a Girl." As an Austin-based poster on Velvetrope.com once put it, "an embarrassment, even for Dallas."
2. Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's." "And I said, 'What about Breakfast at Tiffany's?' / She said, 'I think I remember the film / And as I recall, I think we both kinda liked it' / And I said, 'Well, that's the one thing we've got.' " Arrghhhh! Bores into your brain like a power drill, and blossoms there like the most malignant tumor on record. To paraphrase Robert Johnson, once this tune takes root, all the doctors at M.D. Anderson sho' can't save you now.
1. Vanilla Ice, "Ice Ice Baby." What, you were expecting something else? With this one song, Robbie Van Winkle destroyed a cool Queen tune and set back the cause of white people in hip-hop a decade. Word to yo' mutha!
'Nuff said.
Great article in the Sunday Texas magazine about forensic artist Karen Taylor, who has a long and distinguished record of helping police identify criminals and crime victims through her composite sketches. Here's the story of her first sketch, which came about via a request from the Texas Rangers:
The crime was a hit-and-run homicide of a child. The witness was an 8-year-old girl who had seen her 6-year-old cousin struck and dragged by a car whose driver stopped long enough to determine that the child was dead, then sped away."This little girl was surrounded by all these huge Rangers with guns, and she was scared to death," says Taylor. "My instincts kicked in, and I knew I had to get her by herself. I took her to a room by ourselves and just talked to her for a while. It took about two hours, but I finally put her at ease.
"The driver had stopped and looked right at her, and she was exactly the right height to see directly into the car. She gave me a great description of the man, and I did the sketch. Then, just as I was about to leave, she asked me, `Are we gonna draw the lady too?' "
Taylor's sketches of the couple appeared in newspapers and on television the following day. The couple, having seen their likenesses and frightened by their accuracy, turned themselves in.
"That's when I began to realize that I had what I call `it,' for lack of a better term," says Taylor. "It's a sort of ability to group things into perspective, like the features of the face."
Be sure to click on the sidebar link entitled "Molding a career", which shows a couple of examples of her work. It's pretty amazing.
So Tiffany is a fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and I confess that in watching it with her I've been oddly fascinated by it as well. I'd love to know how the recipients of the newly remodeled homes are doing a year or two later, though. Are all of the bells and whistles more of a pain to maintain, or are they still as in love with the new digs as they appear to be when they first see them?
A better question is how they handle the tax implications. Do all of the improvements, including a pile of new furniture, appliances, and electronics, count as taxable income? How big a property tax hike do they get hit with? As Tiffany observes, most of these families are not exactly flush with cash. What happens when their little rundown houses become the nicest in the neighborhood? Just curious.
UPDATE: This site has nothing whatsoever to do with the TV show "Extreme Home Makeover". If you're capable of using Google, which you must be to have found this, you're capable of figuring out the real contact info for this show. Comments are now closed.
As expected, the latest version of The Plan passed out of committee yesterday, though apparently no one expects it to survive in its current form. Some taxes, such as the imposition of sales tax on auto repair and the $1 surcharge on movie tickets, are now gone, while others like a new tax on alcohol and billboard advertising have been tacked on. This has turned into a game of financial Whack-a-Mole, with each singled-out constituency's lobby raising hell until the Lege untaxes them in favor of someone else and thus forces that group to rally its troops. Not that I think a reasonable and shallow tax on as broad a base as possible is a more sensible solution than figuring out whether my lobbyist can beat up your lobbyist or not.
Here's a crazy idea: Why not try to figure out how much these proposals might save or cost an individual? With the proviso that nothing is yet set in stone, the Express News took a whack at it.
Legislators added bottled water and mixed drinks to items that would be taxed under a plan designed to reduce local school property taxes, a plan that could save San Antonio homeowners more than $400 its first year depending on where they live and the value of their houses.But the property tax savings would shrink for individuals who sip cocktails, buy newspapers and magazines or go to ticketed sports events.
And big spenders could pay as much as $1,100 more in state taxes — if they smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and purchase both a new car and boat the same year.
The San Antonio Express-News gauged the effect of several proposed tax changes on homeowners in districts served by Reps. Elizabeth Ames Jones and Mike Villarreal, two San Antonio members of a House panel that's poised to approve the plan.
The results signal the plan's possible pocketbook impact, though they do not include ripples from a proposed payroll tax of 1.25 percent of each employee's gross annual pay or $500, whichever is less, or the legalization of slot machines at horse and dog tracks and three Indian reservations and new taxes on cigars, newspaper inserts, smokeless tobacco and billboard advertising.
[...]
In Villarreal's inner-city district, the owner of a home valued at $58,000 for tax purposes — the average for the district less the standard homestead exemption — would save $259 if school districts were required to lower their tax rates to $1.05 per $100 valuation, as the plan states.
That rate, currently limited to $1.50 per $100, is for maintenance and operations. School districts also can set a separate tax rate to pay long-term debt.
A proposed half-penny increase in the general state sales tax — pushing what San Antonio residents pay on many purchases from nearly 8 cents on the dollar to nearly 8.5 cents — would cost an estimated $62 a year.
In Jones' Northwest Side district, the owner of a house valued at $123,000, the average for the district less the exemption, would see property taxes drop $555, while general sales tax costs would increase by an estimated $132.
Another wrinkle: homeowners who itemize deductions on their federal income tax would owe more with the swap of property taxes for sales taxes, because sales taxes are deductible, but property taxes are not.
If they deduct, Austin economist Stuart Greenfield said the typical resident in Jones' district would owe $62 more in federal taxes while an average resident of Villarreal's district, in a lower tax bracket, would owe $24 more.
"The message is Texans are going to be paying more taxes to the state, less to the local school district and more to Uncle Sam," Greenfield said.
In both districts, residents would face additional taxes if they took a friend to a sports event, linked a home computer to the Internet or sipped margaritas.
Buying a new $20,000 car would add $300 to a resident's tax bill. Want that $7,000 boat? Add $542 in taxes. A pack-a-day smoker would need to spend an extra $300 a year.
As a non-smoking and non-boating homeowner who doesn't foresee the need to buy a new car next year, I'll do pretty well under this proposal. Still doesn't mean it's a good idea - I'd do pretty well if we abolished property taxes, too, and I don't think there's much support for that.
And there continues to be talk about a state income tax, not by anyone in Austin, of course, but by an increasing number of interested parties. The day when a serious bill gets introduced and actually debated may be closer than you think.
Finally, in the Remembering One's Roots department, Governor Perry's old school has hit hard times.
Gov. Rick Perry often praises the education he received from Paint Creek, a kindergarten-though-12th-grade school that sits along a winding, desolate West Texas road.But the school has hit hard times, causing it to join more than 200 school districts, both wealthy and poor, in suing the state over its share-the-wealth school finance system.
The district's annual budget this school year is $1.13 million, down from $1.24 million last year. Coping with the financial shortfall has meant hard choices for Paint Creek, where all the district's 96 students -- down from 146 in 2002 -- attend class in the same two-story building and the motto is "No dream too tall for a school so small."
Last fall, the school let three of its 19 teachers go and asked two others to double up classes and teach two grades. With fewer students and declining property values, the Paint Creek school district faces a crisis.
As legislators meet in Austin to wrestle with school finance, Paint Creek educators and parents hope Perry won't forget the small ranching and farming district of about 600 people where he grew up.
"Because the school district is the community, once the school district is gone, it's time and again been proven, the community dries up," Paint Creek teacher Keith Medford said.
[...]
Emily Medford, the mother of two Paint Creek students, doesn't like Perry's plan because she said it could hurt rural districts with small tax bases. More worrisome, however, is that Perry seems to have forgotten his roots, she said.
"We don't feel he's looking out for the rural population as much as he is big cities' interests," said Emily Medford, a distant cousin of the Paint Creek teacher. "Any changes are scary because of the unknown. It's very, very important to us that Paint Creek stays open."
Keeping small, rural schools open isn't just a Paint Creek problem. Similar districts are struggling also, Paint Creek Superintendent Don Ballard said.
"We ought to be concentrating more on `what programs can we provide for students?' instead of concentrating on `what do we have to cut to survive?' " Ballard said.
In 2002, Texas had 419 rural districts and 122 urban districts, Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said. The urban number takes in nine major cities, their suburbs and districts in smaller cities.
Rural districts face extinction because of a dwindling population, which influences property taxes and enrollment. Complicating matters, the size of the state makes mergers between school districts a challenge because it may mean students have to travel long distances to attend school.
The Paint Creek community is a collection of modest homes. The population is aging, and fewer children are being born in the district's 235 square miles. There are only a handful of businesses.
A couple of years ago, a power plant on Lake Stamford closed and families moved away to seek other jobs. That led to a $10 million drop in the district's property tax rolls and state funding for the school district.
Good luck getting the help you need. I wouldn't be holding my breath for it, though.
And the debate over the future of Rice athletics takes over the op-ed pages today, with a piece in favor of dropping football, a piece in favor of keeping thigs as they are, and a column by Richard Justice extolling Rice's virtues in the NCAA.
The thing that struck me about the anti-football column, written by a professor at Rice, is that it's all about SAT scores and academic honors:
Among the 500 top high school football players in the class of 2004 in the United States, only five listed SAT scores of 1300 or above. Rice was able to recruit two of them. The average SAT score for the Rice football team is just under 1100, and the national average for NCAA Division I-A football teams is below 900. The Rice football team has good scores relative to the rest of the country, but the average SAT scores of the Rice student body is almost 1400.Do SAT scores matter? There are those at Rice who are skeptical of the predictive value of SAT scores. The data on the academic performance of the Rice student body are not public. However, the grade point average of all the football players who are on the Western Athletic Conference athletic all-conference team is public knowledge. In 2003, 13 members of the Rice football team made the academic all-conference team, which requires a grade point average above 3.2. To compare, 30 percent of Rice students make the President's Honor Roll each semester. In the past few years, this has required a GPA above 3.8 for that semester. Of 13 members of the Rice football team who made the academic all-conference team, one member made the Honor Roll both semesters and one member made it one semester. If SAT scores were not predictive, the chance of this occurring at random is considerably less than one in a million. The probability of flipping a coin 38 times and getting no more than two heads is greater.
This suggests two possibilities that are not mutually exclusive. First, SAT scores do have predictive value; or second, there is something in the operation of the football program at Rice that does not allow members of the football team to have the same opportunity to succeed in their studies as other students. Perhaps those at Rice who are skeptical of the predictive value of SAT scores can suggest other alternatives.
I'll stipulate, and I don't think any real supporter of Rice athletics would disagree, that football players on the whole get lower SAT scores than the population at large, and that while Rice football players do much better on the SATs than most NCAA athletes, their scores would make them marginal at best for a regular admission to Rice. That said, I have to wonder what kind of predictive value Professor Brito thinks the SATs are supposed to have. As I understand it, SATs are supposed to correlate with success at the college level, which I've always understood to mean the ability to graduate. Given that Rice graduates over 80% of its athletes, a rate that compares favorably to its overall graduation percentage and regularly puts them atop the NCAAs, I have to ask: What's the problem?
Comparing football players to honor roll students strikes me as moving the goalposts. Do you classify the regular students who don't make the dean's list as underachievers? Is it worse if they came in with a 1500 SAT as opposed to a 1300? There's many ways to succeed in college, and not all of them require top grades.
NCAA rules about attendance and scheduling may eventually make it impractical for Rice to compete in Division 1A football. If that happens, it happens. If this is the best argument about why it's incompatible with Rice's academics, though, then I'm convinced they should stay the course.
A criminal complaint has been filed against the state GOP related to corporate donations from 2002.
The criminal complaint was filed by two government watchdog groups, Public Citizen and Common Cause of Texas, in response to a Houston Chronicle article, published earlier this week, recounting how the Texas GOP handled $2.2 million in corporate contributions.A lawyer for the Texas GOP on Friday denied any wrongdoing and said the investigation is the work of vengeful Democrats.
Texas law prohibits political parties from spending corporate or labor union funds for any purpose other than running a party primary, paying for a convention or administrative expenses. The law also requires those funds to be spent through a separate, restricted account, which can also include money from other sources.
According to records reviewed by the Chronicle, the Texas Republican Party transferred its corporate contributions to a federal committee that the party operates and designated all general election expenses as administrative. In two instances, the GOP defined $1.9 million in television advertisements and $453,815 in direct mail as administrative costs.
"We're going to look into it. We'll review it and determine what we need to do," Escamilla said.
[...]
"The (Republican) party claims to have spent an enormous sum on administrative costs in the 2002 elections, but when you look at their expense reports, you see payments for voter drives, list acquisition, political consultants and television ads affecting state candidates," said Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen.
"Since 1905, Texas law has prohibited corporations from contributing to campaigns within the state. Our forefathers had learned that the contributions from corporations would be paid back in policy. As the saying goes, `You dance with them that brung ya,' " Smith said.
All told, the Texas Republican Party ran $5.7 million through its restricted corporate campaign account in 2002. The total included money raised directly from corporations and funds from national party committees that raise money from corporations and individual donors.
Most of that money ended up in the state party's federal account, the Texas Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.
Federal law in 2002 was less restrictive than state law on how political parties could spend corporate and labor union money.
Wayne Hamilton, former executive director of the state GOP and now an adviser to the party, told the Chronicle that state law didn't apply to the party's 2002 coordinated campaign because the GOP was raising and spending money to build party support and voter turnout for federal and state candidates.
Hamilton said the spending was done through the party's federal committee in compliance with the federal law then on the books.
But the executive director of the Texas Ethics Commission, Karen Lundquist, said spending to affect Texas elections would be governed by state law and its restrictions on corporate money.
I confess, it's not clear to me how this differs from the ongoing grand jury investigations. This Statesman story sort of addresses that, but not really.
The misdemeanor complaint is an echo of a yearlong investigation by Travis District Attorney Ronnie Earle into how the Texas Association of Business and the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee spent corporate money in the 2002 elections.Sources familiar with that investigation said Jim Ellis, a consultant to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was declining to testify before the grand jury, invoking the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination. The lawyer for Ellis on Friday denied that his client is refusing to testify about his role with the Republican PAC.
San Antonio lawyer J.D. Pauerstein said he has been negotiating with prosecutor Gregg Cox on whether Ellis would testify. "I've discussed with Cox what he's interested in and what we can talk about," Pauerstein said. "But nothing has happened."
Cox declined to comment.
The bit about Jim Ellis is very interesting, but it still doesn't answer my question. I did enjoy this quote in the Morning News, however.
Rene Diaz, general counsel to the state Republican Party, denounced the complaint as "nothing more than an extension of the partisan smear campaign by Texas Democrats."[...]
Mr. Diaz said that the Republican Party complied with all election laws and that the citizens groups have "little, if any, understanding" of the "exceedingly complex state and federal regulations."
"Democrats – and their liberal, special interest front groups – are still furious at the people of Texas for rejecting their party at the ballot box, and they are now viciously attempting to hang Republicans in the media," Mr. Diaz said.
Translation: Don't you worry your pretty little heads about this legal stuff. Just take our word for it.
Happy Blogiversary to Skeptical Notion! Here's to another good year for you, Morat.
I believe the most appropriate response to this announcement is "Jes-se! Jes-se! Jes-se!" Congrats on your new gig, Jesse!
Best of luck to Julia for her upcoming debut on Air America's Majority Report show. I'll buy you a drink if you can use the word "dulcity" on the air in an unforced manner.
Blue Bell Creameries has a new CEO, but it's still a family affair.
Befitting a company that sells its ice cream with bucolic images of contented cows grazing in fields of bluebonnets on the label, the approaching takeover of Paul Kruse is going down as smooth as a scoop of the company's Homemade Vanilla."It's kind of a nonevent around the office," said Kruse, who becomes chief executive on Monday.
Perhaps Blue Bell employees have gotten comfortable with the notion of a Kruse running things.
They have for nearly 85 years.
As Paul's grandfather E.F. Kruse used to say, "No one ever got lost on a straight road."
Paul Kruse will replace his uncle Howard Kruse as CEO and president of a company that took in $400 million last year, according to Forbes, and is the No. 3 ice cream in the United States behind Breyers and Dreyer's.
Like his own father, Ed Kruse — CEO before his brother Howard — Paul first refused to join the company. After all, Paul Kruse had a law practice in Brenham.
But after his father asked him three times, Paul signed on as Blue Bell's chief legal counsel in 1986.
Since then, he's had time to absorb the Blue Bell culture and says he doesn't plan to change it.
The whole story is a pretty nice little capsule history of Blue Bell, which didn't make its first batch of Homemade Vanilla until 1969. I confess, as a native Yankee, I still pine for Breyer's (and I can finally get it down here now), but you can't go wrong with Blue Bell either.
An appeal has been filed by Andrea Yates' lawyer, which alleges numerous mistakes in the trial, bad testimony from Dr. Park Dietz, and that Texas' insanity statute is unconstitutional.
"The standards presently in place are extremely archaic and do nothing for mental illness, and in this case, for women," Yates attorney George Parnham said. "We have an opportunity in this case to help the mentally ill, particularly those entangled in the justice system."A spokesman for the Harris County district attorney's office could not be reached for comment late Friday.
Yates admitted to the June 20, 2001, bathtub drownings of her children -- Noah, 7; John, 5; Paul, 3; Luke, 2; and Mary, 6 months. She was charged, however, only in the drownings of Noah, John and Mary.
Yates was convicted in March 2002 and sentenced to life in prison.
Parnham filed the appeal about an hour before the 5 p.m. deadline set Thursday by the 1st Court of Appeals when it denied his request to be replaced by a Washington, D.C., law firm.
"Nevertheless, I will do everything in the world I can to help Andrea's case," Parnham said.
Parnham said his law firm asked to be replaced following a request by Arnold & Porter, a larger firm with more resources.
He said Arnold & Porter at some point came in contact with the Yates family, but he did not know who requested its services.
"It was not my idea," Parnham said. He and attorneys Wendell Odom and Daucie Shefman were donating their time on the case, he said.
The strain on his smaller law firm is much greater than it would be on Arnold & Porter. "I don't have a 700-member staff to devote to this issue," he said.
The court probably rejected his request to be replaced because it was filed so late and the court was concerned that new attorneys would lack the time to properly prepare, Parnham said.
[...]
The appeal focuses on Dietz's testimony under cross examination in which he mentioned an episode in Law and Order.
Dietz testified that the episode portrayed a woman who drowned her children and was acquitted by reason of insanity, the same defense Yates used.
A prosecutor said during his final argument that the episode inspired Yates to drown her children as a way to end her marriage.
After Yates was convicted, it was discovered that no such episode had been broadcast. Jurors were told about the incorrect testimony before the trial's punishment phase began.
A Harris County grand jury declined to indict Dietz on perjury charges.
The appeal alleges that the trial court should have declared a mistrial when the judge learned about the incorrect testimony and that the false testimony violated Yates' constitutional right to due process.
It also alleges that Yates was denied equal protection under the law "because the Texas sanity standard fails to recognize the biological reality that no man can suffer from postpartum psychosis because no man can bear a child."
Parnham called the standard "gender-based discrimination."
Another Texas law challenged by the appeal prohibits jurors from being told the consequences of an insanity verdict.
"It permits a jury to think that (Yates) can walk out the door and ride down the elevator to freedom" if she were declared not guilty by reason of insanity.
Parnham wanted to tell the jury that such a verdict would mean treatment at a mental facility and not automatic release.
The appeal also said the trial court should not have allowed articles of the children's clothing and photos of children in the morgue and the crime scene to be shown to the jury because they were prejudicial.
It has been my belief all along that Andrea Yates is not evil but ill, and that no one's interests are served by having her in a regular prison. As such, I hope that she is granted a new trial by the appeals court. Stay tuned.
This might be the first boxing match ever for which I'd be tempted to do a pay-per-view.
Rice University's Malcolm Gillis, president of one of the world's leading centers of wisdom and knowledge, intends to fight two-time heavyweight boxing champ and grill king George Foreman in a charity bout.While others have made millions of dollars by stepping into the ring with Houston's hometown pugilist, Gillis said he won't be paid so much as one of those swanky grills for whatever happens.
"I look to come out of this with nothing but the satisfaction of having been in the ring with a world champion," said Gillis, 63, who did some amateur boxing as a youth. "I'm trying to show that old people can do these things. We can dust off old skills and use them again."
Over the past few months, Gillis has been quietly negotiating with Foreman, 55, for a little time in the ring. Thursday night, Foreman's daughter, Frieda Foreman, announced at a banquet that Gillis would be a warm-up for her father's coming out of retirement.
Foreman, who was not available for comment Friday, has said in recent months that he intends to box again.
The Foreman-Gillis card will be at the George Foreman Youth and Community Center. Other details have not been decided.
Foreman associate Richard Johnson has been helping the champ work out details of the match, and Rice Vice President Terry Shepard is helping Gillis.
"We're like the corner men," Johnson said Friday.
Johnson said Foreman's motivation to fight again is the same as Gillis':
"He wants to show the American people that just because you turn 55 or 60 years old, it's not time to throw in the towel."
Keeping fit is part of Gillis' routine. If he doesn't have an early meeting, Gillis works out in his home gym, lifting weights, running the treadmill and shadow boxing. He said he's 5 feet 11 1/2 inches tall and weighs 207 pounds.
"I'm in great shape," he said.
I hope so, Dr. Gillis. May the best man win. I'm just hoping this doesn't inspire Fox to do a Celebrity Boxing Seniors Tour.