Major congrats to the Burnt Orange Report for being named the Best Local Political Blog by AusChron readers. A well-deserved award, guys. Way to go!
And while I'm in congratulatory mode, kudos as well to ArchPundit for being named Best Web Site by the Riverfront Times (the Houston Press of Saint Louis). Another well-deserved award.
It's been a pretty good year for lefty bloggers in the all-important Alt-Weekly Awards competition, hasn't it?
So as a 2004 Houston Press Best Of winner, I get to include a little icon on my blog that proclaims my victory for all to see. There's a problem, though - the GIF they've provided (this is the one I'll use; the others are just larger versions of it) blinks. I hate blinking icons. Really really hate them. So I'm asking a favor. Is there anyone out there with some mad grafix skillz who can convert this thing into something that doesn't blink? Please drop me a note or leave me a comment if you can do that. I'd be much obliged. Thanks!
UPDATE: Wow! I've gotten five responses on this already. Thanks to Chris, Steve, Alan, Aziz, and Charles M for the help. I'll have the logo added shortly.
Greg notes two entries by George Strong in which he indicates that Ken Bentsen will throw his hat in the ring for the Senate race in 2006, and in which the DSCC comes to town on behalf of already-all-but-declared candidate Barbara Radnofsky. Greg adds his two cents regarding the 2006 landscape.
I'm going to jump on in to the Who I Want To See Run In 2006 capades, but my target isn't the statewide races. I'm going to talk about who I want to see run for various Congressional seats. In doing this exercise, I'm going to make the optimistic assumption that all of the endangered incumbents win this year. Those who do wind up losing can run again if they want, or have their own crack at this or that statewide office - Charlie Stenholm, for example, would make a helluva candidate for Ag Commish if he finds himself looking for work next year. I'm also not mentioning CD06 and CD22 - as far as I'm concerned, Morris Meyer and Richard Morrison should run in 2006 whether they win this year or not.
The reason why I want to see people like the following run for Congress in these currently not strongly contested districts is twofold: One, with redistricting spreading the GOP voters out, some of them would be reasonably competitive with a good candidate and some money. And two, getting more Democrats to the polls around the state will only help the statewide candidates (and vice versa). What's not to like?
With that in mind, here's my lineup:
CD04: Barry Telford, who's retiring from the State House this year after nine terms, would be a fine choice to go after the fossil Ralph Hall (if Hall finally retires and leaves the seat open, so much the better). My first thought was Paul Sadler, the former State House member who lost a close special election race earlier this year to replace the retiring State Sen. Bill Ratliff, but his hometown is in CD01. Maybe we could persuade him to move from the city of Henderson to the county of Henderson and challenge Jeb Hensarling in CD05, but without a record in that area he'd not have any realistic prospects. Anyway, the moderate Telford would be a good counterbalance to Hall, whose increasingly quaint views cost him the Dallas Morning News' endorsement in this year's Republican primary. With all due respect to Jim Nickerson and his efforts this year.
CD07: Chris Bell. Or, failing that, Ken Bentsen. The redistricted CD07 is a very different beast than it once was, covering large swaths of Bell and Bentsen's old CD25 plus a sizeable chunk of Montrose (my previous house, near Montrose and Dallas, is in the new CD07). John Martinez, running on a shoestring, is getting a lot more signage in this part of the district than I'd have thought given his anonymity, and this is surely due to the area's deep Democratic roots. It'd be tough, but someone with money and name recognition could make John Culberson sweat.
CD10: Sherry Boyles. This idea is not original to me - it was suggested by Hope's husband Mike while Tiffany and Olivia and I were briefly in Austin last weekend. With all due respect to Lorenzo Sadun, who's run a fabulous race as the write-in, anyone who runs in CD10 in 2006 will curse the State Democratic Party and all the associated county parties as I have for essentially ceding this district to the Republicans this year. Sure, it's as GOP-tilted as other districts, and sure, it's hella expensive for media buys, but you know what? The GOP didn't get to where it is now by being afraid to run their candidates in what they knew were losing causes 30 years ago. Boyles has statewide campaign experience, a good resume, ties to Austin where she'd need to run strong to have a chance, and would make any Democrat in the district proud to vote for her.
CD14: John Sharp. After two straight close losses in statewide races (with the more recent one being less close), it's time for Sharp to do his part and let someone else carry the statewide flag. The best thing he could do for that person is to challenge Ron Paul and give all the Democrats in CD14 a reason to vote again. If there's anyone in this group that can raise money, it's John Sharp, and if there's anyone who can articulate a case for fiscal responsibility in government spending without going completely off a Paulesque cliff, it's Sharp.
CD21: Ed Garza. Garza is currently the mayor of San Antonio, though he'll be term-limited out in 2005 (I believe). I could see him running for a statewide office in 2006, but I'm not sure for which office he'd be best suited. If he wants to try something closer to home, taking on DeLay lapdog Lamar Smith would be doing us all a favor and would position him for bigger things in the future.
CD23: Richard Raymond. Raymond's a scrappy fighter with statewide campaign experience under his belt (he lost to David Dewhurst for Land Commish in 1998). His State House district is in Webb County. It probably makes more sense for a San Antonian to challenge Henry Bonilla, but I figure if the good people of Laredo were excited to finally get their own Congressman by supporting Henry Cuellar, they'll be ecstatic to do it again for Raymond.
That's a start. I wish there were more that I could make suggestions for, but some districts just don't have much of a Democratic bench that I can look to. Maybe I'm missing someone - feel free to name any names I've overlooked. What do you think?
Fired HPD Captain Mark Aguirre's arbitration hearing has ended with a little media bashing.
Fired Houston police Capt. Mark Aguirre's civil service hearing ended Wednesday with testimony from Executive Assistant Police Chief Chuck McClelland, who called media footage of the infamous Kmart arrests an unfair and inaccurate portrayal of the Houston Police Department.Referencing video footage of numerous youths handcuffed and sitting in a Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer, McClelland said, "I don't think that was an accurate portrayal of the Houston Police Department, of the hardworking men and women that were involved in that operation, and it's unfair."
[...]
McClelland, who approved an initial plan for the raid, also was disciplined and given a seven-day suspension. He is appealing that disciplinary action, which is pending.
"I couldn't believe we were being told to arrest all those kids. It was just utterly, utterly senseless," said one officer involved, who violated department policy by discussing the arrests and spoke on condition of anonymity."Captain [Mark] Aguirre was put in charge, and it went to hell in a handbasket," said a police supervisor who was at the scene, also violating department policy and requesting anonymity.
[...]
The two supervisors said police had "scout cars" and undercover officers working surveillance at the gathering spot for weeks in preparation for Sunday's raid.
"But we got out there, and no one was racing," said one of the supervisors. "So Aguirre just said, `Arrest them all for trespass.'
"It was like, `Kill them all and let God sort them out,' " said the other supervisor. "I guess we're just lucky he didn't order us to fire warning shots into the crowd or anything."
Both supervisors said many of the people arrested were not in cars. Many were eating food from the Sonic, which was open until 2 a.m., or had been shopping at Kmart.
Aguirre's attorney, Terry W. Yates, said he thinks Aguirre will be vindicated."This is the only appeal that's really going to be heard and fully bring these facts out. We've shown this arbitrator, we believe, that what those men and women did that night, they were justified in doing," Yates said.
I've snarked about the many new fees and surcharges imposed by the Lege last year while they crowed about "no new taxes", but this is one new surcharge I fully support.
The hefty surcharges — totaling $67 million since they went into effect a year ago — are aimed at Texans who drive without a license or insurance or while drunk.The law is expected to raise about $1 billion for trauma care over the first five years and another $1 billion for highways and general revenue funds.
A person fined for driving without a license will have to pay an extra $100 a year for three years. Driving without insurance or with a license that's been revoked will add a surcharge of $250 a year for three years.
A first driving-while-intoxicated conviction will include a surcharge of $1,000 a year for three years — double that for drivers whose blood alcohol was 0.16 or more.
I'm cool with all of this, and I like where the new revenue is going. There's one small thing that concerns me.
The author, Rep. Dianne Delisi, R-Temple, said she has little sympathy for Texans who will soon receive notices of the expensive surcharges."If you look at the folks that are in the system now, I have no sympathy for DWIs. They can howl all they want to."
The get-tough surcharges are patterned after a New Jersey program, in effect for more than 15 years, that has dramatically changed driver behavior, according to Delisi's office.
"They went back and measured since they first had it in place. There was a 24 percent reduction in fatalities. Phenomenal, isn't it?" Delisi said.
She added that Texas has the highest number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities in the United States, but it will take until 2007 or 2008 to see if the financial penalties bring the desired results.
It's therefore my hope that we'll keep in mind the primary goal of better road safety, and treat any extra revenues along the way as a temporary condition. As with gambling and sin taxes, we shouldn't count on bad habits to fund government services.
Timing is everything when you're a weekly publication and a big story breaks. The TRMPAC indictments came down last week too close to the Austin Chronicle's publication date for them to have anything about it, but they made up for that this time around. Check out this article on affected State Rep races, this one about where the grand jury goes next, this enumeration of the indictments, and this piece about the campaign finance reform ads being run by Clean Up Texas Politics.
On a related note, former Austin mayor and Democratic candidate for Attorney General in 2002 Kirk Watson has filed suit against the Law Enforcement Alliance of America for its role in his electoral defeat.
Watson and East Texas legislative candidate Mike Head, both Democrats, filed the lawsuit in state District Court in Travis County against the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, based in Falls Church, Va.; its undisclosed corporate donors; "John Doe conspirators" who assisted in the ad campaigns; and John Colyandro, the former executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, who also advised Watson's opponent, Greg Abbott, during the 2002 elections.The lawsuit, opening another front in the escalating campaign finance controversy, says corporate-financed advertising tainted the 2002 elections and says that the alliance violated Texas law by not disclosing its donors. State law generally prohibits corporate or labor money from being spent on political expenditures.
[...]
The alliance spent an estimated $1.5 million on a TV commercial aired around the state in the final days of the 2002 campaign. The commercial attacked Watson as a personal injury trial lawyer who "made millions suing doctors, hospitals and small businesses."
[...]
Created 13 years ago, the alliance was largely financed by the National Rifle Association to counter law enforcement groups that supported gun control laws. Since 2002, the alliance has raised eyebrows by becoming involved in campaigns in Texas, Mississippi, Kansas and Pennsylvania.
An unidentified benefactor or benefactors funneled $4.5 million through the alliance in 2002, according to tax records, paying for attack ads in several states. The TV blitzes rarely reflected the alliance's priorities, such as arming airline pilots and allowing off-duty and retired police officers to carry concealed guns. Travis County prosecutors hypothesize that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with ties to the Texas Association of Business, is the alliance's mystery benefactor.
No new symbolic Harris County property tax cuts, anyway.
Harris Commissioners Court voted Tuesday to keep the county tax rate the same this year after rejecting County Judge Robert Eckels' proposal to lower it a quarter-cent.Eckels and county Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, who spoke in favor of the cut at the meeting, said the decrease was needed because rising home values have translated into higher tax bills for many residents.
But some commissioners said the quarter-cent cut was a meaningless decrease solely intended to curry favor with voters.
"What we need is advocacy, not playing games with our public," Commissioner El Franco Lee said.
The owner of a $100,000 home — about $36,000 below the value of the average home in the county — would have paid $2 less in taxes this year if the cut had passed, said Dick Raycraft, head of county management services.
That taxpayer, assuming he or she takes the typical 20 percent homeowner exemption, will pay $511.98, Raycraft said.
The county's rate — 63.99 cents per $100 of assessed value — has not increased since 2000, he said.
[...]
Eckels said, "I respect my colleagues and what they are looking at (tax situation), but we could have accommodated a tax cut."
Eckels couldn't find a second for his motion to make the cut.
Lee said Eckels and Bettencourt engaged in political grandstanding, and he characterized the cut as "cosmetic."
The county, he said, should not be cutting taxes when it has been forced to pick up the costs of health care, mental health and other programs funded by the state until this year.
Commissioner Sylvia Garcia said the county should keep the tax rate the same in case state lawmakers cut funding for programs even further next year.
"I think (the state lawmakers) will just send the problems back to the county," she said.
Commissioner Steve Radack said there were places in the budget that might be cut.
Eckels' predecessor, Jon Lindsay, had a core staff of 16, but Eckels has 28 full-timers, Radack said.
"It's almost insulting for them to say they were saving taxpayers all this money," Radack said of Eckels and Bettencourt. "Why else go there for something so minor except to grab headlines?"
Lee and Radack said they believe Eckels and Bettencourt were looking to score political points because each is eyeing a run for a state office.
So it finally happened - Les Expos have a new home.
Baseball returned to the nation's capital for the first time in 33 years Wednesday, with an announcement from Major League Baseball that the Montreal Expos will move to Washington next season.The announcement came one day before the anniversary of the Senators' final game. The team moved to Texas after the 1971 season, the last time a major league team moved.
"It's a day when the sun is setting in Montreal, but it's rising in Washington," Expos president Tony Tavares told a news conference in Montreal.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it:
Hearings will begin soon on the city's $440 million package that would include the new ballpark and $13 million for refurbishment of RFK. The money will come from a new tax on the city's largest businesses, a tax on baseball-related income and lease payments by the team's new owners.
Congratulations are in order to Expos GM Omar Minaya, who's been hired by the Mets as their head of baseball operations. The Mets can use all the help they can get, and with Minaya they've gotten a good GM who performed near miracles with little raw material in Montreal. Via David Pinto.
UPDATE: The Baseball Prospectus has lots of good stuff: Jonah Keri's fond remembrances of his favorite team and the reader responses to him, plus two articles that sill surely raise Sue's blood pressure: this one on how DC is paying for the new stadium, and this one on how Peter Angelos will make out like a bandit as a result of the deal MLB gave him to drop his territorial opposition to the DC relocation.
We know (via Byron) that voter registrations are up sharply in Travis County. Now, via Lasso, we see that it's way up in Bexar County, too.
More than 62,000 Bexar County residents have registered to vote since January, boosting the number of local eligible voters to a record level of almost 900,000 and causing officials to brace for the upcoming presidential election.If only half of all those who are registered to vote actually show up at the polls Nov. 2, it would be the largest voter turnout in Bexar history, officials said Tuesday.
[...]
According to election records, there were 896,913 registered voters in Bexar County as of Tuesday afternoon — about 25,000 more than the 2000 presidential election.
The number of new voters began trickling in during January and rose sharply in time for the primary elections in March. Since Sept. 1 alone, there have been 21,985 new registered voters, marking the largest influx so far.
The north and northeast parts of the county set the pace for new registered voters this year with 22,819.
The western part was the lowest with 11,551.
While the number of registered voters usually peaks during presidential election years, voter turnout out traditionally is only about 50 percent, experts say.
In Bexar County, 47 percent of the 871,000 eligible voters participated in the 2000 election.
StatewideGeorge W. Bush /Dick Cheney REP 3,799,639 59.29%
Al Gore /Joe Lieberman DEM 2,433,746 37.98%
Bexar CountyGeorge W. Bush /Dick Cheney REP 215,613 52.24%
Al Gore /Joe Lieberman DEM 185,158 44.86%Dallas County
George W. Bush /Dick Cheney REP 322,345 52.58%
Al Gore /Joe Lieberman DEM 275,308 44.90%Harris County
George W. Bush /Dick Cheney REP 529,159 54.28%
Al Gore /Joe Lieberman DEM 418,267 42.90%Travis County
George W. Bush /Dick Cheney REP 141,235 46.88%
Al Gore /Joe Lieberman DEM 125,526 41.66%
Ralph Nader /Winona LaDuke GRN 31,243 10.37%
The pattern has held true through close elections and blowouts, in nearly every statewide contest in every year I've checked. Given the number of hotly contested Congressional and State House races in these counties, that bodes well for the Democrats. I don't know how things are going in Dallas, and I don't have any current data for Harris County (though at the Deputy Voter Registrar seminar I attended three weeks ago, Paul Bettencourt said he expected about 1.9 million registered voters by the deadline, which is a new high but apparently not a record increase for a single year).
On a side note, in case you're curious, the pattern does not hold for Tarrant County, which is a GOP bastion. It holds very strongly for El Paso County, which is about as Democratic as you get.
I'm working on a spreadsheet with all the data, and will post it along with my interpretations hopefully later this week. In the meantime, keep those registrations coming in. Good things happen when they do.
UPDATE: Byron is less certain that the spike in Bexar voter reg is good for Democrats.
Getting worried, Tom? You should be.
U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay plans to raise money for his re-election race Monday, just a few blocks from the courthouse where three associates were indicted last week on charges of illegally using corporate money to help Republican candidates for the Texas House in 2002.There will be one key difference, however, between this fund-raiser and the activities that are still being investigated by Travis County prosecutors. The invitation to this $1,000-per-person event at the private Austin Club states clearly: "No corporate checks accepted."
State and federal laws both prohibit corporate or labor-union donations from being used to help individual political candidates.
At the Monday fund-raiser, DeLay, R-Sugar Land, will be soliciting money for his race against Democratic challenger Richard Morrison. A spokesman for DeLay's campaign didn't return a telephone call Tuesday from the Houston Chronicle.
UPDATE: More from The Stakeholder.
Do you ever wonder if the reporters who cover the state Capitol keep stories like these written and ready to go at all times so that they can file them easily whenever the Governor makes his next "we can have a special session as soon as those lazy bums in the Lege do all the work for me" proclamation?
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst reiterated today that they're willing to call a special legislative session on education funding before next year's regular session, if someone puts forth a plan that has a chance of winning the backing of majorities in both houses."If the lieutenant governor comes to me tomorrow and says we have a solution that the House has agreed to, and I looked at that and said I can sign that, I wouldn't be afraid to bring them in next week," Perry told reporters. "We are not there yet."
Former HPD Captain Mark Aguirre, fired for his role in the K-Mart Kiddie Roundup fiasco of 2002, is in arbitration and seeking to be reinstated.
During emotional and sometimes angry testimony Tuesday, former Houston Police Department Capt. Mark Aguirre claimed he was wrongfully fired and was betrayed by his co-workers.During a hearing before an independent arbitrator, Aguirre said he wants his job back and the pay he has lost since he was fired almost two years ago for his handling of Operation ERACER, a controversial raid at a west Houston Kmart parking lot that became a legal fiasco for the city.
"Sir, you can't put me back together — I know that," he told the hearing examiner. "You have no idea what's happened to me, how I was betrayed by my co-workers and my Police Department. ... They destroyed me financially. They destroyed me reputationwise. You can't give me my reputation back. But I want that back pay, at the very least. ... I want my job back, and I want to be given some measure of dignity."
An attorney for the city, calling Aguirre the "mastermind" of the raid, claimed the fired police captain has no recourse.
Aguirre, 47, said he did nothing wrong and violated no rules or department policies when he embarked on the sweep, designed to crack down on racing enthusiasts and spectators clogging west Houston parking lots. Aguirre also said HPD's administration had approved plans for the operation, but scapegoated officers when the controversy became a political firestorm.
[...]
Aguirre speculated Tuesday that former Mayor Lee Brown directed all charges be dropped to protect former Police Chief C.O. Bradford, who publicly disavowed knowledge of the raid. When pressed, Aguirre could not provide proof, saying only, "That's my gut feeling."
I will be surprised if Aguirre wins his case. If he does, then it's highly likely that former Mayor Lee Brown and former HPD Chief C.O. "BAMF" Bradford got off way too lightly. That may be the case anyway, of course, but until someone like an arbiter agrees with Aguirre that he got shafted, the official story will remain in effect.
Julia, one of my daily faves, gets interviewed by The Goddess on the What She Said blog. What She Said is a huge compendium of female political bloggers and a good place to look the next time you find yourself asking the question "where are all the women who blog about politics?" It's not perfect - their big blogroll of "progressive women who blog politics" includes a nontrivial number that would surely dispute that "progressive" designation, a group blog that's mostly men, a blog that was started by a woman but has since been turned over to a man, a blog that's no longer active, and more than a few omissions, which can be corrected by anyone who wants to let them know about it. Given the high pain-in-the-butt factor of putting together a list like this, they did a pretty good job. Check it out, you might find some new voices that you like. And for goodness' sake, read Julia every day.
Jack Abramoff, the disgraced DeLay crony currently under investigation for swindling a tribal casino in Texas, just keeps getting more disgraceful.
The Capital Athletic Foundation's Web site portrays youths at play: shaking hands over a tennis net, learning how to hold a bat, straining for a jump ball. Its text solicits donations for what it describes as "needy and deserving" sportsmanship programs.In its first four years of operation, the charity has collected nearly $6 million. A gala fundraiser last year at the International Spy Museum at one point attracted the Washington Redskins' owner as its chairman and was to honor the co-founder of America Online.
But tax and spending records of the Capital Athletic Foundation obtained by The Washington Post show that less than 1 percent of its revenue has been spent on sports-related programs for youths.
Instead, the documents show that Jack Abramoff, one of Washington's high-powered Republican lobbyists, has repeatedly channeled money from corporate clients into the foundation and spent the overwhelming portion of its money on pet projects having little to do with the advertised sportsmanship programs, including political causes, a short-lived religious school and an overseas golf trip.
The foundation's brief history -- now the subject of a federal investigation -- charts how Abramoff attached himself to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and, in so doing, became a magnet for large sums of money from business interests. It also demonstrates how easily large amounts of such cash flowed through a nonprofit advocacy group to support the interests of a director.
Surely by now you've heard that the Lone Star Iconoclast, Crawford, TX's hometown newspaper, has endorsed John Kerry. I was going to do a longish post on this, tying together some of the other iconoclastic things this paper has done, but thanks to the keen foresight of having too many other things to do first, the Burnt Orange guys beat me to it, thus sparing me the work. And to think that in real life I have to justify my tendency to procrastinate. Thanks, guys! Check it out.
I see via Taking on Tom DeLay that our poor misunderstood Majority Leader is not such a hot draw on the campaign trail.
When Billy Tauzin III announced this month that top Republicans would "campaign on his behalf" for Louisiana's 3rd Congressional District seat, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas was touted as the first in line to make an appearance.But on Monday, with several of DeLay's associates now under indictment for possible breaches of campaign finance laws, the appearance was scaled back to a 1 1/2-hour private fund-raiser at the Airport Hilton in Kenner.
If you scroll farther down on the ToTD page, you'll also find this story about the Tiguas' reaction to being swindled by Jack Abramoff, Mike Scanlon, and Ralph Reed.
"There's outrage right now," Tigua Gov. Art Senclair said Monday. "You can sense it among tribal members who are asking, 'How could this happen?' ""Shouldn't a victim of a crime be outraged?" he asked.
[...]
The Washington pair paid Reed and his consulting company as much as $4 million to organize a coalition to block several tribal casinos in the South, the Post reported. Abramoff and Scanlon at the time were representing tribes in Louisiana and Mississippi that were attempting to block competing tribal casinos in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, the newspaper said.
After the Tigua casino closed in February 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon pitched themselves as Washington influentials to Tigua leaders, while the tribe desperately tried to reopen the casino.
Abramoff wrote a tribal representative that he would get Republicans in Congress to fix the "gross indignity perpetuated by Texas state authorities" and assured the representative that he had lined up "a couple of Senators willing to ram this through," the Post reported.
A month later, in March 2002, the Tiguas sent three checks to Scanlon's firm totaling $4.2 million, according to the story. A check for half that amount was sent a month later from another Scanlon company to a company formed by Abramoff, the Post reported.
Abramoff sent Reed an e-mail Feb. 11, 2002, according to the Post story, which said: "I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions. I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out."
[...]
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to review "lobbying practices involving Indian tribes."
The committee plans to scrutinize the activities of four tribes -- the Mississippi Choctaw, the Louisiana Coushatta, the Agua Caliente in California and the Saginaw Chippewa in Michigan. All four were clients of Scanlon and Abramoff.
In addition to the committee, the Justice Department and several other federal agencies are jointly investigating large payments by the four tribes to Abramoff. Some of that money was spent by tribes that sought to block other nearby tribes from opening casinos.
[...]
State Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, sponsored legislation three years ago to, in essence, legalize Indian gaming for the Tiguas. Anti-gambling groups countered with an aggressive radio advertising blitz, and his bill died in the Senate after passing in the House.
"It was clear to me that some of the opposition to treating the Indians fairly was coming from anti-gambling people who weren't really the money people in the equation," Keel said. "The anti- gambling interests in Texas were being funded by gambling interests in other states."
Keel, a former prosecutor and the first Republican sheriff elected in Travis County, said that what has happened to the Tiguas is "people's worst nightmare about potential corruption and special interests."
"It's very sad. I hope that the federal government gets to the bottom of it, and I hope that some people are held accountable," Keel said.
UPDATE: Another hometown newspaper of another Republican House Ethics Committee member calls for him to do the right thing and either recuse himself because of the campaign cash he's gotten from DeLay, or vote to turn the whole thing over to an independent counsel. Via Archpundit.
Campaigns for People is running an ad decrying the influence of money on political campaigns.
A grass-roots low-budget effort aimed at reforming how Texas campaigns are financed has begun circulating this week on the Internet and television in four Texas cities, including San Antonio.Corporations need not send their contributions, said Fred Lewis, the organizer of Campaigns for People.
Lewis pitched in his own money to produce and air a 30-second TV commercial on cable's Comedy Central and "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC.
The ad decries "special interests (that) have too great an influence at the Capitol" and urges people to become part of an "electronic action team."
They want residents to notify their legislators that they want campaign laws limiting the amount an individual can contribute to a state race.
Lewis said it's "shameful that between 115 and 120 individuals contributed more than $100,000, three people gave more than $1 million each, and one guy gave $4 million to state campaigns in 2002."
He said those contributions, which are legal, "breed cynicism among the electorate about who is hogging the microphone."
The nonpartisan Campaigns for People combines the TV ad, an e-mail campaign and yard signs to educate and mobilize people to fight for campaign reform, as well as to contribute to the online effort to keep the ad running, Lewis said.
The $20,000 collected to run the ad in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio "is about enough to air for this week, beyond that, we'll have to rely on contributions" to get further airplay, Lewis said.
He said the Texas Election Commission, which issues non-binding advisories on the state's campaign finance law, "is toothless, gumless and completely ineffective" in regulating how races are financed.
Ethics Commission assistant general counsel Tim Sorrells said the Legislature empowered the agency to impose civil fines when a violation of the election code is found to have occurred.
"We don't enforce the criminal side of it" because lawmakers chose not to mandate that the agency investigate and file criminal charges, he said.
The ad, which began running this past weekend, will end Monday — when U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, hosts a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser in Austin.
Meanwhile, Carlos Guerra talks to Fred Lewis and Craig McDonald about the TRMPAC indictments, and Greg says what needs to be said about the latest outsourced editorial infesting the Chron. To paraphrase Ronnie Earle, being called "partisan" by the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page is like being called ugly by a frog.
The prosecution put on its star witness in the Enron Nigerian Barge case yesterday as Michael Kopper testified.
Kopper, 39, calmly and thoughtfully explained that in 1997 he and ex-Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow started to divert funds to themselves, family and friends by breaking laws, breaking internal rules, lying, manipulating and standing in the middle of deals.Though 14 people have pleaded guilty to crimes in connection with Enron's demise, this is the first time any one of them has publicly discussed the rampant greed and multimillion-dollar plundering in their own words.
Kopper was called to the stand by Enron Task Force prosecutors in the second week of the trial of six former Enron and Merrill Lynch executives charged with conspiracy and fraud in an alleged sham sale of three electricity-generating barges off the coast of Nigeria.
Larry Zweifach, attorney for Merrill Lynch defendant James Brown, asked Kopper if he and Fastow shared the value that they "would always put (their) interests above the interests of Enron and its shareholders?"
Kopper replied, "I'm not sure that that would be my value, but those were my actions, yes."
One thing to note about Kopper:
The former executive has clearly done well financially even while a cooperating witness. He forfeited $8 million to the government as well as his disputed rights to another $4 million. His domestic partner William Dodson did not have to forfeit any of the $9 million pre-tax that he benefited from the frauds.Kopper said he now has a job at a health clinic, is living in a house worth up to $2 million owned by his partner Dodson, just bought a new home worth $380,000, has a 401(k) worth about $300,000, $100,000 in other assets and could possibly get back some of the $500,000 he has on account with his lawyers.
New to my bookshelf - The Hammer, by Lou Dubose (that would be longtime Texas Observer editor Lou Dubose) and Jan Reid. Sean-Paul of The Agonist was kind enough to not only get me a copy of this book, but get it autographed by the authors as well. Thanks, Sean-Paul! It's next on my to-be-read list after Fifty Years of the Texas Observer, which (sigh) I'm still working on. (If you just can't wait for me to get my butt in gear and finish writing a review of it, you can give yourself solace by reading these two reviews instead.)
Anyway, "The Hammer" looks like a fun book and a good read, and one of these days (I swear!) I'll write something about it.
Various Texas campaigns are focusing on the cuts in CHIP.
U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco, a Democrat trying to win re-election in a Republican-majority district, charged his challenger the other day with depriving children of health insurance and shorting nursing home residents $15 a month for personal needs such as denture cream."When she says she wants to do for the country what she's done for Texas, I'm not sure that's a promise or a threat," Edwards said after a Hill College debate with state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth of Burleson.
[...]
Republicans say such sallies won't stick, in part because President Bush's run for a second term will overshadow down-ballot races, to the benefit of other GOP candidates.
Budget-related barbs appeal to the news media, said GOP consultant Ray Sullivan, but "whether Texans believe we are taxing too little and spending too little remains to be seen."
[...]
In Houston, Hubert Vo, challenging Rep. Talmadge Heflin, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, emphasized the loss of millions of dollars in matching federal funds given up by Texas in CHIP reductions.
The state cuts led to a loss of at least $400 million in matching funds in 2004-05, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for programs serving low-income residents.
"It is ridiculous to lose these federal funds when we have children without health care coverage," Vo said, referring to Texas's last-place standing among the states, with more than 22 percent of children uninsured.
Heflin said the criticism lacks "traction" with voters who understand "there are many places that if we plowed more money into certain programs, there are federal matches."
In East Texas, Bob Glaze of Gilmer has highlighted CHIP cuts in trying to beat Rep. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, who unseated Glaze two years ago.
Hughes said legislators should ensure that help "goes to the folks who need it most," adding, "I'm not saying every change to (CHIP) eligibility was done exactly right."
Waco's Edwards, a seven-term congressman, has aired two TV commercials blaming Wohlgemuth for CHIP changes, including one in which a mother says her daughter was denied renewal about six months ago.
The mother, a bank teller, lost the coverage because child care costs are no longer exempted from family income, according to Edwards' campaign. She cannot afford to insure her child through her employer, a spokeswoman said.
A consultant for Edwards said the budget cuts "matter to people. Regardless of party, people have a difficult time getting their minds around why these are good ideas."
Consultant Craig Murphy of Arlington, whose clients include Wohlgemuth and Heflin, said the CHIP attack "is not working. Whether that's because they're overstating their case or people have other priorities, I have no idea."
Is there any potential scenario in which critics who view education as a tax issue whereby property tax rates go down? Let's crunch some numbers ... X number of students will go to school come hell or high water. If anything is done to move them from public schools to either private or charter schools, we still have X number of students in school. If you support vouchers, that money still has to come from somewhere. If you support charter schools, that money still has to come from somewhere. If you support dumping more money into the public schools, that money still has to come from somewhere. In short, there's no solution that ends up with a net tax cut. Period. Republicans take pity on homeowners who have, in fairness, gotten stuck with the increasing bill on matters of education. But the reason this tab has fallen on them is due to the fact that the state has paid for a smaller and smaller portion of the education budget out of its coffers (again .. the money has to come from somewhere). If you cut taxes on home owners, you still have to find the money somewhere. There's not a free lunch in the system, even if you've run through all of the qualitative fixes you can possibly imagine for schools of any variety.
Yes, it's time for another edition of Texas Tuesdays, this time featuring special guest star Martin Frost. Byron has a state of the race overview and a chat with the Frost campaign that you should check out.
We're about to enter our last month of Texas Tuesdays, so before you know it, I'll be done nagging you about them. But since we're not done yet, you can donate to Martin Frost, you can donate to all Texas Tuesdays candidates, and you can donate to the DCCC. This offer expires November 2, so don't get caught out in the cold.
UPDATE: How could I fail to note BlogPAC and its pro-Frost ad?
If you're in the Houston area and are looking for some good political activities this weekend, there's a veritable cornucopia from which to choose. There are five Kos Dozen parties on Friday and Saturday nights, with all of the Saturday ones being coordinated by various area Richard Morrison groups. The Sharpstown Democrats will be busy registering voters all weekend starting on Friday at the HCDP Sharpstown Mall location and elsewhere. The Greater Heights Democratic Club will have a booth and be registering voters at the Houston Heights Fall Festival on Sunday. And as noted before, the Fort Bend County Democratic Party will be having its own Democratic Salute to Democracy on Saturday. We're 36 days out, so get involved and help make a difference. Drop me a note if you have any questions about any of these activities.
You've probably seen this NYT artlce about new voter registrations in swing states like Ohio and Florida, but in case you haven't, you should read it. MyDD has a good discussion of it as well.
Of course, as noted on Kos, MyDD, and Atrios, those new voters in Ohio may be ruled ineligible because they used the wrong card stock. Lord knows, paper with the proper thickness is vital to the functioning of a democracy. Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that Paul Bettencourt runs a tight ship?
And as long as we've mentioned the local angle, give Greg his props for 1347 newly registered Democrats through the HCDP Sharpstown office. Now get some sleep, Greg!
Remember that strong stench of desperation that emanated from the Orlando Sanchez campaign last year when he tried to link Bill White to Hezbollah? I'm getting a whiff of the same stuff from Louie Gohmert in CD01 now.
Republican Louie Gohmert takes a potshot at beleaguered CBS anchorman Dan Rather in a new campaign spot challenging Democratic Congressman Max Sandlin.The spot makes references to Sandlin's "negative" ads.
"They've got more holes than a CBS News story by Dan Rather," the narrator says in the spot.
The ad then shows a newspaper clipping with Rather's photo and
the headline "CBS apologizes for Bush Guard story."
Via Southpaw.
The Chron discusses Kenny Boy's PR offensive.
Prosecutors have started using Ken Lay's public statements against him in legal filings, leading some experts to suggest the former Enron chairman keep quiet while others insist he should just keep on talking.Since his July indictment, Lay has mounted an aggressive public relations campaign, starting with a news conference just hours after he was cuffed and appeared in court. He followed that with print and TV interviews, an Opinion piece in the Washington Post and Houston Chronicle and his own Web site.
[...]
Dan Hedges, a defense attorney and the former U.S. Attorney for the Houston area, said two likely intended audiences for Lay's comments — the Justice Department and the judge — would be unswayed and annoyed by the PR campaign.
"I think Lay's strategy is backfiring," Hedges said. "He stuck his finger in (the prosecutors') eye and now they will stick him back."
Hedges said if Lay has misstated or overstated anything at all in his press pronouncements, it could come back to haunt him if he takes the stand.
Not surprisingly, Lay's lawyer disagrees. "I guess what Ken has said is beginning to sting. I view what the government put in their (legal memo) as whining," said Mike Ramsey, Lay's Houston-based lead trial lawyer.
[...]
Criminal defense experts who say Lay should quiet down say there are two areas the government could use at trial.
One is that Lay argues he didn't know about what was going wrong at Enron, but in his post-indictment persona he appears to be not out of the loop but totally in control of his case.
A second possibility is that the government will try to show Lay exaggerated or made a false statement about anything. In that case, the lawyers say, prosecutors might argue that Lay is accused of making false public statements to help himself at Enron and he did it again after his indictment.
"Ken Lay has a shot at acquittal in this community," said Houston-based attorney David Berg.
"But if he keeps talking, he's going to wind up eating some of his words. All he needs is a misstatement and he's handing the prosecutors a huge weapon." Berg said prosecutors now probably "go to sleep dreaming of cross-examining Ken Lay."
How bad are things for the Illinois Republican Party these days? According to this Chicago Tribune poll, they're really really really bad.
Together, the surveys paint a portrait of a Republican Party so divided that it may have trouble fielding statewide candidates with sufficiently broad appeal to prevail in general elections for years to come. Republicans make up only 28 percent of Illinois voters, compared with 43 percent who identify themselves as Democrats and 27 percent as independents, according to the broader survey.The Republican poll is based on a survey of 386 registered Illinois voters who consider themselves members of the GOP and likely to vote on Election Day. The poll was conducted Sept. 14-20 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
The other poll, which surveyed 700 likely voters, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. That poll was conducted Sept. 17-20.
[...]
After Republican primary winner Jack Ryan dropped out of the U.S. Senate race, the party struggled to find a replacement and finally settled on [Alan] Keyes. One hope was that the selection of an African-American to take on [Barack] Obama, who is black, would make a statement about the GOP's commitment to diversity.
But the survey showed that 94 percent of voters who identified themselves as Republicans are white, and only 2 percent are Hispanic and another 2 percent are black. The rest declined to identify their race.
The separate poll of likely voters regardless of party affiliation showed that 68 percent favored Obama for senator and just 17 percent backed Keyes. Last month, the gap was 65-24.
The broader survey shows that Keyes has failed to draw much support from independents. But the Republican-only poll demonstrates that he also has not locked up strong backing from fellow Republicans.
Only 44 percent of self-identified GOP voters said they intended to support Keyes, and 35 percent said they planned to vote for Obama. That contrasts with the 89 percent of Republicans who vowed to support the re-election of President Bush.
Keyes contends that Obama is too extreme on the issues for Illinois, but the Republican survey shows only 21 percent of GOP voters agreed. At the same time, 38 percent of Republicans thought Keyes was too extreme.
Meanwhile, 39 percent of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Obama while just 31 percent think favorably of Keyes.
Archpundit and Chillinois provide some extra insight on the poll. Via Political Wire.
This op-ed on the Regional Transportation Project (RTP - see here for more) is a month old but worth reading.
Guaranteed is that not one, but several roadways near your home and business are on the construction timetable. All the Westheimers, Bellaires, Dairy-Ashfords and beyond are set for major expansion. But the 11,733 new lane miles in there are not going to expand over Joe Farmer's cotton crop anymore. We're talking about shopping malls, dentist offices and back yards these days.Some of the projects are not on the block until several years from now. But do not let this long-term time frame mask projects' urgency. This is the transportation world, where politicians use "that project's been in the plan for years" and "we've already spent millions on planning" rationalizations. Indeed, a Pearland City Council member told this paper that the Pearland project had been on the books for 20 years.
Someone is going to have to pay for the plan's very dramatic increase in expenditures. The published road costs add up to $2 billion per year, a more than doubling of annual road costs over the last long-term transportation plan approved by the council (Metropolitan Transportation Plan 2022). And that does not include full right-of-way costs, which planners have not and cannot fully calculate until they're actually purchasing properties.
[...]
I have been able to identify that this plan includes over $9 billion in new, added-capacity road projects, which is twice as much as the Metro Solutions $4.2 billion voter-approved rail and bus projects (both numbers are nominal and do not include recurring costs such as operations and maintenance).
To help pay for such an increase in spending, the Regional Transportation Plan cites revolutionary toll-road law changes as new funding sources. Those laws free up the government to charge fees on existing roads (and toll roads) and subsequently use that revenue to build new road capacity within the region.
The government also estimates additional revenue will come from population growth generating new property, sales and gas tax dollars that help pay for our roads. But bet on shelling out on toll roads: They are the Viagra necessary for road-powered politicians.
Thankfully, it looks like some people have finally gotten a sense of perspective about the RTP and its ever-skyrocketing price tag.
Art Storey, Harris County's public infrastructure director, said at Friday's Transportation Policy Council meeting that to him a plan means "one that is a reasonable, doable, sensible thing that really might be accomplished in someone's lifetime, or at least that of our grandchildren. This is a plan that is numbered over $100 billion."To call it a plan, I just take issue with that."
Hall of Fame basketball player Calvin Murphy, currently under indictment on several charges of sexual assault against five of his children, will not be part of the Houston Rockets broadcast team in 2004-05.
Calvin Murphy's leave of absence from his broadcast duties with the Rockets will continue throughout the 2004-05 season, the team announced Friday.The decision clears the way for the Rockets to replace Murphy as the team's television analyst with Comets coach Van Chancellor, possibly as soon as next week.
Murphy, the Hall of Fame guard who has been a Rockets broadcaster for 14 seasons, has been on leave since he was charged in March with sexually abusing five of his daughters more than a decade ago. He was indicted July 1 and is expected to go to trial in November.
"We're waiting to see what the legal process proves," said Tad Brown, the club's senior vice president of sales, marketing and broadcasting. "Everybody is focused on moving ahead with the season, and Calvin is focused on getting ready to go to court. ... We will wait to see what happens at the trial, and that is all we can do."
Murphy, 55, is in the final year of his contract with the Rockets. He played 13 years with the team before serving as an assistant coach and working as the team's community services adviser in addition to his broadcasting duties.
Brown said the Rockets have not reached a formal agreement with Chancellor to team with Bill Worrell but added: "We think he could do a good job and work well with Bill. But we're not ready to make an announcement."
I kept forgetting all last week to blog about the fact that there was a huge fire at an old WWII airplane hangar down in Galveston, destroying what was to be an integral part of the new Schlitterbahn park. That fire has now been ruled accidental.
Galveston fire officials asked for federal help in examining the remains of the building, and agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives combed through debris Friday."The main reason we're here is the size of this fire," said ATF Agent Franceska Perot. "It's an awfully huge building to try to do an investigation on with limited resources."
The ATF has many investigative resources and the legal ability to step in when fires occur in commercial buildings, Perot said.
The 1943 hangar was constructed mainly of wood on a concrete and metal frame.
The 50,000-square-foot hangar was to be incorporated into a planned Schlitterbahn water park..
Schlitterbahn officials have said they still plan to build a water park at the hangar site, which is part of the city's property at Scholes International Airport. But the design may be affected by the fire.
The WaPo updates us on the Scanlon/Abramoff/Ralph Reed casino-swindling scandal.
Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public relations consultant Michael Scanlon quietly worked with conservative religious activist Ralph Reed to help the state of Texas shut down an Indian tribe's casino in 2002, then the two quickly persuaded the tribe to pay $4.2 million to try to get Congress to reopen it.Dozens of e-mails written by the three men and obtained by The Washington Post show how they built public support for then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn's effort get the courts to close the Tigua tribe's Speaking Rock Casino in El Paso in late 2001 and early 2002. The e-mails also reveal what appears to be an effort on the part of Abramoff and Scanlon to then exploit the financial crisis they were helping to create for the tribe by securing both the multimillion-dollar fee and $300,000 in federal political contributions, which the tribe paid.
Ten days after the Tigua Indians' $60 million-a-year casino was shuttered in February 2002, Abramoff wrote a tribal representative that he would get Republicans in Congress to rectify the "gross indignity perpetuated by the Texas state authorities," assuring him that he had already lined up "a couple of Senators willing to ram this through," according to the e-mails.
What he did not reveal was that he and Scanlon had been paying Reed, an avowed foe of gambling, to encourage public support for Cornyn's effort to close two Indian casinos in Texas. Abramoff, one of Washington's powerhouse Republican lobbyists until his work came under scrutiny by law enforcement agencies this year, has long been close to Reed, former executive director of the Christian Coalition and now southern regional chairman of President Bush's reelection campaign. Both have political ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), as does Scanlon, who had served as his spokesman.
In the end, Abramoff and Scanlon failed to get the casino reopened.
In an e-mail to Reed on Feb. 11, 2002, Abramoff did not mention he had been in contact with the Tiguas. He wrote: "I wish those moronic Tiguas were smarter in their political contributions. I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!! Oh well, stupid folks get wiped out."The e-mails show the three men hustled to provide a show of public support for Cornyn's efforts to shut down the casino, which he contended had operated illegally under Texas law for eight years. The coalition made phone calls, rallied pastors and religious activists, and conducted a media campaign in support of closing the casino.
A spokesman for Cornyn, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002, said that Cornyn does not recall any contact with Reed, Abramoff or Scanlon on the Tigua issue.
In November 2001, the Tiguas took out full-page newspaper ads in Washington and across Texas, saying Cornyn was using a "legal technicality" to kill jobs and decent housing for tribe members and return them to poverty.
"Wow. These guys are really playing hard ball," Reed e-mailed Abramoff on Nov. 12. "Do you know who their consultant(s) are?"
Abramoff responded: "Some stupid lobbyists up here who do Indian issues. We'll find out and make sure all our friends crush them like bugs."
At Reed's suggestion, Abramoff urged Scanlon to mobilize calls from the public to Cornyn's office supporting his efforts. A couple of months later, Reed reported to Abramoff that "we did get our pastors riled up last week, calling his office. Maybe that helped but who knows."
Abramoff replied: "Great. thanks Ralph. we should continue to pile on until the place is shuttered." He suggested getting "one of our guys in the legislature" to introduce a bill that would bar vendors who do business with casinos from state contracts so that "Cornyn can sit back and not be scared. Let one of our tigers go get em. Do we have someone like this and can we get it introduced as soon as possible?"
"We have tigers," Reed assured him.
Meanwhile, back on the DeLay front, the current PAC to elect Republicans to the State House has decided to return donations given to them by corporations indicted or implicated in the TRMPAC case.
State Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, who serves as treasurer of the Stars Over Texas PAC, decided to return the money Wednesday, the day after eight out-of-state corporations and three people were indicted on charges of illegally using corporate money to help Republican Texas House candidates in 2002.The donations returned by Stars Over Texas include $100,000 to AT&T Corp., $2,200 to ACE Cash Express Inc. and $1,200 to Cash America. Several other check-cashing businesses that made contributions of $1,000 or less also were sent back.
In a letter to contributors dated Sept. 22, Keel said he "made a policy decision to return all corporate contributions and accept none at all until state courts have ruled so as to identify with precision and authority what activities are protected from criminal allegation."
Keel said in the letter that the contributions were legal and that Stars Over Texas PAC segregated the corporate money for administrative costs as allowed under Texas law. But he said that the indictments returned by the Travis County grand jury did not specify what acts constituted the alleged illegal contributions.
Elsewhere, the Statesman gives the history behind the 1905 law that bans corporate and union campaign contributions in Texas state elections, Clay Robison sums things up for the Chron's op-ed page, and Morris Meyer writes a guest post for Atrios which connects the dots between Westar and Smokey Joe Barton.
UPDATE: Julia found this article on Rep. Joel Hefley, chairman of the House Ethics Committee, which gives one the impression that a deadlock-induced punt of the issue is not yet a sure thing. I'll take back every nasty thing I've said about the Ethics Committee if Hefley or any other Republican votes to allow an investigation to go forward.
UPDATE: The broken link to Atrios is now fixed. Thanks for the catch, Kevin.
Governor Perry has appointed a replacement for the leaving-in-shame Oliver Kitzman.
Gov. Rick Perry on Friday appointed William Parham of Hempstead as the new criminal district attorney for Waller County.Parham, an assistant district attorney, will succeed Oliver Kitzman, who resigned in midterm last month after a controversy over voting rights for Prairie View A&M University students.
Parham will serve the remaining two years of Kitzman's term if he wins the Nov. 2 election. He will face Democratic nominee Sylvia Cedillo, a civil rights attorney who directs the Domestic Violence Project at Prairie View A&M. Parham and Cedillo were chosen for the general election ballot by their respective parties' county executive committees.
Nice article on the founders of ActBlue, the online clearinghouse for donating to Democratic candidates, even if they do somehow manage not to mention the Texas Tuesdays ActBlue page. I want to touch on something in this paragraph:
After originally targeting volunteer coordination — and calling themselves StepUp 2004 — they realized that fundraising for campaigns was a better starting point. Despite all the recent attention to Internet-based fundraising, few candidates are taking much advantage of it. Campaigns prefer check donations, since credit-card-processing services like PayPal take a piece of each transaction. Besides, non-national campaigns traditionally work local donors, such as PACs, party committees, and supporters at fundraisers. But how many people in faraway places would contribute to, say, Patsy Keever, in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, if they didn’t have to bother with writing a check?
Via Political Wire.
Ever since I spent a summer umpiring Babe Ruth League games back in college, I've thought the idea of using technology to help officiate sporting events was a good one. As far as I'm concerned, the so-called "human factor" is nothing but a randomizer, like a bad bounce or a sudden gust of wind. It's no more charming than that, and speaking as one who became a "human factor" by blowing an easy strike-three call once, it's not something that's worth saving.
Whether baseball ever adopts some form of camera-aided ball-and-strike calling is unclear, but we do have football and its implementation of instant replay for the technology fans. I think they got it right this time, and I really don't understand at this point what the fuss from the traditionalists is about. And I really don't understand this line of reasoning from King Kaufman. He's referring to a riff on instant replay that Al Michaels and John Madden made during the first Monday Night Football game.
Edgerrin James lost a fumble in the third quarter of that game. It looked to me like James' elbow hit the turf a split second -- even in slow motion it was a split second -- before the ball was ripped from his arm, but it was ruled a fumble on the field and that ruling was upheld on review. In other words, the ball came out before James' elbow hit the grass."I kind of like that, get back to where a fumble is a fumble," Madden said. "I mean, someone has the ball, and if they get hit and they fumble it's a doggone fumble. Now, every time there's a fumble, we have to look. Is the elbow down? Is the knee down? Is the foot? You know, all those types of things, instead of it just being a fumble. That was good defense, and it was a turnover by the Colts.
"If they have any other emphasis on rules, that's one I'd like to see them emphasize, that a fumble is a fumble, and don't every time a guy fumbles, don't start trying to make excuses for it and find out why it's not a fumble."
Michaels agreed. "I mean, let's face it, John, the impetus for replay in the first place was to correct egregious calls," he said. "And now it's reached a point where you parse the real close calls."
"Right, too fine," Madden said. "And then you get away from what football is and has been."
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Instant replay has altered reality, has changed what, in Madden's words, a doggone fumble looks like. Officials call "down by contact" -- the NFL's current technocratic term for "tackled" -- on fumbles far more than they did in the pre-replay days. I can't prove this statistically, but if anyone were to study it, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that I'm right. It's obvious. Twenty years ago, you almost never saw the ball-carrier ruled down on an apparent fumble. Now, most plays that are apparently fumbled are ruled, on the field, "down by contact."
Instant replay was introduced to correct mistakes, not to change the definition of what a fumble is. It's been a change for the worse.
What Madden is arguing, and Kaufman is endorsing, is that football was better when no one was really sure if a player was down or not. That's a value judgment, and it's one I'd bet Madden the coach might not have agreed with. I can't see how that actually improves the game, but maybe I'm the stick in the mud here.
Besides, it seems to me that there's still a human factor, albeit a lesser one, with instant replay. Some things are just plain hard to judge, even in super-slo-mo. Just ask any Raiders fan about the 2002 AFC Championship Game, for example. We're not going to run out of questionable calls to argue about anytime soon, no matter how good the technology to assist us with them gets.
September's almost over, isn't it? That means I really ought to do the August traffic report, so I don't fall any farther behind. We had about 45,000 hits in August, a nice rebound from the doldrums of July but still behind the heights of May and June. A link from Kevin Drum is always a big traffic driver, and I got one of those last month.
As for my overall totals, as I'm on my second blog location and third Sitemeter counter, it's not really possible to say for sure. I'm over 600,000, but that's about as exact as it gets. Needless to say, whatever the number is I'm very happy with it, and I thank you all for coming by.
Top referrers and search engine terms are beneath the More link.
Aggregators, collections, indices, etc ====================================== 787: http://www.technorati.com/ 359: http://www.bloglines.com 248: http://blo.gs/
Weblog referrers
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#reqs: search term
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685: diane zamora
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107: gregg phillips
88: link dump
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The planned signing of Fifty Years of the Texas Observer at the Holcombe Barnes & Noble in Houston, originally scheduled for this Sunday has been postponed. No word yet on a makeup date. And yes, I'm still working on reading the book.
The deadline to register to vote in the 2004 election is October 4. If you're not registered yet, what are you waiting for? If you live in Harris County, I urge you to check out HCVoter.net, the online resource for voter registration. You can check to make sure you're registered - if so, it'll also tell you what precinct you're in and who your local elected officials are - to register if you're not, or to update your existing registration if you need to (for example, if you've moved). It's a very slick site, so check it out. I don't much care for Paul Bettencourt's politics, but I have to admit, the guy runs a tight ship.
Speaking of voter reg, Austin folks have an opportunity to help with that tomorrow morning. Click the More link for details. Thanks to HellieMae for the tip.
Door Hangers and Breakfast Tacos for Democracy
The number one reason a person doesn't register to vote is that they don't have a card in their hands. This week, 70,000 people in Austin won't have an excuse 'cause we're hanging a bag with voter registration cards on apartment and dorm doors all across town.
We need you. Can you spare a couple of hours for this project?
When: Saturday, September 25, 9:30 a.m.
Where: Glen Maxey's office, 512 E. Riverside
What: Door hangers, breakfast tacos, and juice (bring your own coffee). After breakfast and a few instructions, we'll set out in teams so we can cover an entire complex quickly. Please let us know if you're coming or you won't get a taco (plus it helps us plan). Email Fran Vincent at Fran@democracyfortexas.org or call (512) 468-4127.
If you can't make it Saturday morning, you can still help by going by 512 E. Riverside and taking some door hangers for YOUR complex or one near where you live. (We're targeting Democratic areas-usually anything east of Mopac and student complexes west of Mopac.)
Questions?
Email Glen Maxey at Glen@democracyfortexas.org.
This project must be completed this weekend!
Statistics:
* In 2000, 24,189 people registered between March primaries and September 1
* In 2004, 36,946 people registered in that time frame.
* 59% of those newly registered voters cast a ballot in November 2000.
This weekend can make a huge difference for our candidates in 6 weeks!
What have you done for democracy this week?
Your Democracy for Texas Steering Committee-
Marla Camp, Glen Maxey, Teri Sperry, and Fran Vincent
Looks like we may have finally settled the what-to-do-with-the-Astrodome question: The company which is seeking to redevelop the Dome now has a plan to turn it into a hotel/entertainment center.
The new plan still calls for some rides, possibly even of the space variety, other entertainment, restaurants, a cineplex and retail stores.But much of the area would be taken up by as many as 1,000 hotel rooms that would serve, in part, those attending conventions at nearby Reliant Center, said Willie Loston, executive director of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp.
"Part of our interest in this concept would be to increase the use of Reliant Center," he said Wednesday. "That would not be at the expense of the George R. Brown (Convention Center). We're trying to attract business to Houston that doesn't come here now."
If the plan becomes a reality, Houston, which never had a convention hotel until the Hilton Americas opened next to the George R. Brown late last year, would have two as early as 2008.
I'm glad to see that the county commissioners are also skeptical of this project.
Harris County could help pay for a $400 million convention hotel-entertainment complex in Reliant Astrodome with taxes generated by the facility, County Judge Robert Eckels said Thursday.[...]
Eckels and two other commissioners said they would oppose raising taxes on residents and businesses to pay for converting the "Eighth Wonder of the World" into a convention hotel-entertainment complex.
[...]
The local portion of the hotel taxes from the hotel, Eckels said, would not be enough to pay for a $400 million project.
"It will take substantial private investment," he said.
The hotel "would be a real plus for the (Reliant Park) complex, but also for the community," he said.
Scott Hanson, president of Astrodome Redevelopment, may ask the county to use the local portion of hotel taxes generated by the complex to help pay for the project.
It does not plan on asking the county to tap other tax revenues, he said.
"We are looking at private sources as much as we possibly can," he said. "We are not looking to strap the county with additional debt. Our source of financing is coming through traditional means."
[...]
Commissioner Jerry Eversole said he opposes levying additional taxes on residents to pay for the project.
"If this outside party does the redevelopment, I wouldn't expect the county to put into this," he said.
"I am not interested in spending a helluva lot more county money right now."
Commissioner Steve Radack wondered whether there would be a market for a convention center hotel since the Hilton Americas opened late last year.
"I would find it hard to believe that you could have high occupancy of another hotel of that magnitude," he said.
The county still owes more than $50 million on bonds issued to pay for renovations at the Astrodome in the 1980s, said Edwin Harrison, Harris County director of financial services.They will be paid off in 2012.
Some Congressional news and notes:
Here's a profile of the race for CD19 between Rep. Charlie Stenholm and Rep. Randy Neugebauer.
Stenholm's 17th District -- which stretched from near the New Mexico border to the outskirts of Fort Worth -- was a centerpiece in the Republican redesign of Texas' congressional districts last year.
He chose to run in District 19, situated in the High Plains, the Panhandle and other counties in eastern West Texas. He faces U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, a freshman incumbent, in one of the most closely watched and most expensive House races in the country.
"It's become a referendum on redistricting," said Neale Pearson, a former political science professor at Texas Tech University.
The spotlight comes from there being few competitive races in the House. But moreover, Texans and others across the country are interested in the consequences of redistricting and they want to see whether Stenholm's seniority in Congress can sustain him, said Brian Gerber, an assistant professor of political science at Tech.[...]
The going got tougher for Stenholm, 65, in the past six elections as District 17 grew increasingly conservative. Beginning in 1980, Stenholm won re-election to six consecutive terms without Republican opposition. His margins grew smaller during most of the 1990s, and in 2002 he won by only 4 percent.
Gerber said that despite Stenholm's name recognition, District 19 demographics favor Neugebauer.
"Neugebauer has a big advantage because this is such a Republican area but it is still is going to be a competitive race," Gerber said.
The Morning News looks at the Texas races and their national implications, both legislative and financial.
Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said the GOP will "definitely" win the two incumbent pairings: the one in Dallas pitting four-term Republican Pete Sessions and 13-term Democrat Martin Frost, and the West Texas match between Democrat Charlie Stenholm of Abilene and freshman Republican Randy Neugebauer of Lubbock.The Frost-Sessions race had attracted $6 million through the end of June, making it the costliest House race in the country.
And Mr. Forti predicted "excellent opportunities" in the three races involving challengers. In East Texas, former judge Ted Poe of Houston and Louie Gohmert of Tyler face, respectively, Democratic Reps. Nick Lampson of Beaumont and Max Sandlin of Marshall. And state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson, is hoping to oust Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.
Democrats say they're in good shape in all five races.
"The common theme in each of these races is that each Democrat is a tried and true fighter for Texas, with the courage to stand up to anyone in either party when the interests of Texas are at stake," said Greg Speed, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
[...]
Last week, Rep. Robert Matsui, the Californian who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told colleagues that not one Democratic incumbent outside Texas has poll numbers below 50 percent.
That's good news for incumbents outside Texas. But it also means that "nobody's in as bad a shape as the Texas Five," said Amy Walter, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. But, she added, candidates matter, campaigns matter and the experience and power of incumbency matter.
Mr. DeLay admitted some anxiety about the three challengers, who lag in cash after costly primaries. "But," said Mr. DeLay, who reportedly called political action committees last week to drum up funds for them, "they'll be fine."
Ms. Walter noted that four of the Texas Five – Mr. Frost is the exception – have won GOP-leaning districts. And the three facing nonincumbents are far more seasoned campaigners than their rivals.
So it makes sense for all of them to dig in their heels, even though districts are stacked against them.
"For many Democrats, it's a sort of political Alamo – 'We're going to stand up and fight ... and if I go down, I'm going to make them spend a whole lot of money coming to get me,' " Ms. Walter said.
But if the Democrats lose this fall, she said, "there's not going to be any money going to Texas ever again."
Finally, Byron looks at a few races around the country in which candidates who have taken money from Tom DeLay's ARMPAC, the PAC from which TRMPAC was sired, are being called on to give it back.
Not a whole lot of news on the TRMPAC indictment front today, but the Chron comes through with a front-page story that disputes the statements by Tom Craddick and Tom DeLay which claim their involvement with TRMPAC was tangential at most. The story is based on a review of documents related to the case.
Most of the documents come from a civil lawsuit filed by some Democrats who lost to Republicans funded by TRMPAC. Other documents come from IRS filings and federal investigations of Enron Corp. and Westar Energy Inc.Colyandro testified in the civil lawsuit that he and Kevin Brannon, TRMPAC political consultant, spoke frequently to Craddick on the phone and in his office to discuss House races. He said Craddick also attended at least one TRMPAC fund-raiser.
"He was probably the most active and engaged member of the Texas House in terms of electoral politics on the House side," Colyandro testified. "So he would have been an excellent resource for, for information."
Phone records show Brannon called Craddick 32 times in the weeks before the 2002 election and another 60 times in the weeks after.
Colyandro, by e-mail in October 2002, had the TRMPAC accountant cut $152,000 in checks for 14 Republican House candidates and send the checks by FedEx to Craddick's Midland office. Craddick's aides distributed the checks.
An executive for Mariner Health Care Inc. delivered to Craddick in October 2002 a $100,000 check from The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care made out to TRMPAC. Craddick, who passed the check along, said this week he did not know what was in the envelope. The alliance is one of the corporations under indictment.
And the Nov. 7, 2002, news conference for Craddick to claim he had the votes to become speaker was announced by Colyandro on letterhead paid for by TRMPAC.
Ellis, the executive director of ARMPAC, set up TRMPAC at DeLay's direction to help win control of the Legislature. Ellis also had personal ties to Colyandro. (ed. note: according to this story, "Ellis' late wife was Colyandro's cousin".)
DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, was a paid consultant for ARMPAC and TRMPAC, setting up fund-raising events.
RoBold had been DeLay's fund-raiser for several years.
E-mail disclosed in the investigation of Enron showed that RoBold, on behalf of DeLay, in 2000 directed Enron contributions to the Texas Republican Party. RoBold was the ARMPAC fund-raiser before also going to work for TRMPAC.
While raising money for TRMPAC, RoBold kept his office in the offices of DeLay's ARMPAC, according to testimony by Colyandro.
Colyandro testified in a civil lawsuit that RoBold was assigned to raise $600,000 in corporate cash in Washington for TRMPAC. Almost all the controversial corporate money came from RoBold events, most of which featured DeLay as the honored guest.
A fund-raising brochure created by RoBold said corporate donations would be used to help candidates:
"Unlike other organizations, your corporate contribution to TRMPAC will be put to productive use. Rather than just paying for overhead, your support will fund a series of productive and innovative activities designed to increase our level of engagement in the political arena."
The same brochure contained a direct solicitation for donations from DeLay and put him at the top of the list of advisory board members.
Letters and e-mail show at least some donors believed they were giving money to a DeLay committee. A June 2002 letter accompanying a donation of $25,000 for TRMPAC from The Williams Companies Inc. was addressed to "Congressman DeLay." The company was one of the corporations indicted by the grand jury.
Internal e-mail from another of the indicted companies — Westar Energy Inc. of Kansas — had one executive asking why the company was making donations to Texas legislative races. The reply cited DeLay's position in the House.
DeLay's position on the advisory board of TRMPAC also gave him an opportunity to know what was happening at the committee.
Colyandro testified in a civil lawsuit that DeLay participated in "one or two conference calls" after TRMPAC had its launch to discuss "the general direction of the organization, what our objectives would be and what we hoped to accomplish."
When asked whether advisory board members, including DeLay, were aware of how money was being raised, Colyandro said: "They certainly had an awareness, particularly because they participated in certain — some of those events."
Colyandro said he also sent routine updates to advisory board members.
A Jan. 12, 2002, e-mail message from DeLay Ferro to TRMPAC Texas fund-raiser Susan Lilly asked for name tags for an event in Austin to include Ellis, ARMPAC staffer Mike Murphy and fund-raiser RoBold.
"They are some of our staff from Washington that will be in town for the event," DeLay Ferro wrote. A flier for that fund-raiser featuring Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris listed the "TRMPAC Board" as being headed by DeLay. "Corporate Contributions are Welcome."
As for the current cases, look for trials next year sometime.
"My speculation is that the pretrial issues would not be resolved until sometime in the spring, with the possibility of a trial sometime in the summer or fall of next year," said Wayne Meissner, an Austin lawyer representing defendant Warren Robold of Maryland.[...]
A number of factors could affect the timing of the case:
•The investigation of corporate money in the 2002 races will continue next month with a new grand jury — the fourth to consider the case. Further indictments could push back a trial date on the first indictments.
•During their 2005 session, legislators will decide on a two-year budget for the Public Integrity Unit of Earle's office. Lawmakers who are unhappy with the indictments may revive an effort to move the unit to the state attorney general's office. A leading Democrat, meanwhile, has called on the Legislative Budget Board to consider giving the unit more money.
Earle is a Democrat, and some Republicans say the indictments are politically motivated.
Changes to state election laws made during the 2005 session would not protect the defendants from prosecution, [Gregg Cox, who is leading the investigation for Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle] said.
•Lawyers for the defendants could file motions to quash the indictments if they think there's not enough information in them to prepare a defense. J.D. Pauerstein, Ellis' lawyer, said such an effort "is certainly a possibility."
"We really haven't fleshed out any strategy at this juncture," he said.
•Not all of the defendants will be tried together because they are accused of different crimes. But some who are accused of the same crimes, such as Colyandro and Ellis, could be tried together. Lawyers could appeal decisions about which defendants will be tried together, and those appeals could delay the case as well.
A legislator who made what he called a humorous plea for campaign cash while addressing an advocacy group in a state office building says he'll turn away money from anyone responding to the pitch.Rep. Jack Stick of Austin, a first-term Republican, said he did no wrong, but "I do not want anybody to think I have even come close to an ethical line."
State law forbids making or authorizing contributions to state officeholders or candidates in the Capitol, but it does not mention requests in other state facilities.
Stick spoke Wednesday to the Texas Committee on Insurance Fraud, a group created by the insurance industry to devise legislation for the 2005 Legislature.
The panel met for the third time this year in a hearing room offered by the Texas Department of Insurance.
Stick, described by panel spokesman Mark Hanna as a "workhorse" on committee matters, was answering questions on insurance topics when he said he expected his current campaign to cost more than his 2001 race.
"We will always accept monetary assistance or monetary assistance and if you can't do that, we can take monetary assistance," Stick said, according to an observer who took notes. "We also take checks or credit cards."
Stick, disputing the observer, said he said "financial" help.
Looks like TXU has backed off its ill-conceived plan to base rates on credit scores after State Rep. Rene Olveira (D-Brownsville) threatened legal action. Sarah has the details.
I got the following email this afternoon, which reads in total:
You stupid liberal! Put the koolaid down!
Here's an update on the race for SD106, featuring Katy Hubener and the multi-tasking wizardry of incumbent Ray Allen. (Have I mentioned that this is the kind of coverage of local races that I want to see more of in the Chronicle? Yes, I do believe that I have.)
Mr. Allen, 53, is a self-described conservative Republican, backed by business and law enforcement. He is anti-abortion, pro-gun rights and a nationally known expert on criminal justice. He is married with five children.A former environmental lobbyist, Ms. Hubener, 33, advises nonprofit groups on fund raising and media relations. She is a teacher and Realtor. She grew up in Duncanville and is single with no children.
[...]
Observers say the race in the normally low-turnout district, where 56-percent of voters are registered Republicans, isn't as close as some others, but is definitely in play.
"It would be an upset," Austin political analyst Tony Proffitt said.
Ms. Hubener said she's trying to focus on issues such as education and health care. The actions of her campaign and supporters suggest that Mr. Allen faces a brawl.
During a recent interview, Ms. Hubener's campaign manager accused Mr. Allen of "using taxpayer dollars to fund his prison privatization-lobbying firm" – a reference to Mr. Allen's lone lobby client, the National Corrections Industry Association. It has two private-prison members in addition to the public prison systems in all 50 states, the federal prison system, city and county jails and corporations that contract with prisons.
Ms. Hubener's Web site links to a newspaper editorial criticizing Mr. Allen's use of Austin staffers to do his campaign work using private telephone lines and computers. The opinion piece said the practice, although legal, gave the perception of impropriety.
Mr. Allen scaled back the practice after the editorial, which he said was "on point."
Criminy. Don't storms know when they're over any more?
I'll echo what Christine said: After Tropical Storm Allison, no one around here is saying "well, at least it's not a hurricane". Stay dry down in Seabrook, Jack!
The grand jury work in Austin isn't over yet. Another grand jury will be impaneled starting next week, and this time their focus will be House Speaker Tom Craddick and the Texas Association of Business. Let's go to the videotape:
From the Morning News:
[Travis County DA Ronnie] Earle, who has subpoenaed extensive records from Mr. Craddick and the business association, made it clear that the grand jury work was not done."There are a number of allegations that arose as a result of the 2002 elections. We continue to investigate various of those allegations," he said. "Anyone who has committed a crime is a target."
Craig McDonald, executive director of Texans for Public Justice, filed the original criminal complaints that are at the heart of the grand jury investigation. He said he expects the Texas Association of Business and Mr. Craddick to be indicted.
"I don't think it's going to stop here," Mr. McDonald said.
He said he "would be surprised" if the TAB and Mr. Craddick did not "face some indictments in the months to come."
Allegations against the speaker and the TAB have unfolded in the last year, some through civil lawsuits brought by losing candidates that raised many of the issues also being explored by the grand jury. Others have been unearthed through newspaper reports and court hearings.
[...]
Among the actions that appear to connect Mr. Craddick to the TRMPAC operation:
•In October 2002, TRMPAC mailed Mr. Craddick $152,000 worth of checks to 14 candidates. The money had been raised from individuals, not corporations, and therefore could legally be given directly to candidates. But TRMPAC chose Mr. Craddick to deliver the largesse to the potential House members.
Roy Minton, Mr. Craddick's attorney, said delivering checks did not qualify as a "thing of value." And, he said, all the candidates who received the checks had "pledged to him [Mr. Craddick] long before then."
•Also in October 2002, Mr. Craddick passed along a $100,000 corporate check made out to TRMPAC and donated by The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care Corp., among the firms indicted Tuesday on charges of making an illegal contribution to TRMPAC.
Such a donation would be illegal in Texas if the business knew the money would be spent for political purposes. A spokesman for the alliance said the group thought the money would be spent on administrative expenses.
Mr. Minton said Mr. Craddick was just serving as a conduit for a Republican cause. "I don't know how in the world he would know how it's going to be spent," Mr. Minton said.
•TRMPAC records show that in interviews with Republican candidates in the primary, notes were taken on whether they supported Mr. Craddick in the speaker's race.
•In the months immediately before and after the November election, Mr. Craddick spoke 92 times with the political coordinator for TRMPAC, according to phone records.
Mr. Minton said that his client was interested in politics and was just catching up on events.
Mr. McDonald said he believes TRMPAC was helping Mr. Craddick in the speaker's race and that he helped direct their operation. "It's a stretch of the imagination to say that Craddick didn't know the corporate and hard money aspects of TRMPAC. If he didn't understand, he's the least curious man in politics," Mr. McDonald said.
The check was given to Craddick during a dinner in Houston with Chris Winkle, CEO of Atlanta-based Mariner Health Care Inc. on Oct. 18, 2002, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle said.In Midland on Wednesday, Craddick did not deny receiving the check, but did not recall who gave it to him, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram.
[...]
Winkle, whose Texas subsidiary, Living Centers of Texas, operates 54 nursing homes, including one in San Antonio, did nothing beyond delivering the check to Craddick, said Winkle's attorney, Van Hilley of San Antonio.
"It was not a planned trip to meet" Craddick, Hilley said of the Houston dinner. "It was set up by political consultants, and they talked about tort reform. (Winkle) did not think anything untoward about it, and he has cooperated fully" with prosecutors, Hilley said.
Hilley said his client confirmed to investigators on Friday his role in delivering the check.
Records from the speaker's office were subpoenaed by the grand jury earlier this year relating to his role in the distribution of $152,000 in checks from the Texas political action committee to candidates campaigning for the Texas House.Craddick said he did not remember to whom he gave $100,000 in corporate money from one of the indicted companies and said he did not know what the check was going to be used for.
"I met with some people in Houston and they gave it to me when I visited," Craddick said, adding that he was not in Houston for the purpose of collecting money.
"I don't even know if I looked at it, to be truthful," he said.
The Chron picks up the ball from the Mariner Health Care side:
In the Mariner incident, Craddick received corporate money on behalf of TRMPAC. To have violated the state's ban on corporate money in campaigns, Craddick would have had to have known he was taking banned money.Van Hilley, a San Antonio criminal defense lawyer representing Mariner Health Care Inc., said Winkle met with Craddick in October 2002 in Houston. He said Winkle had been asked to deliver a check to Craddick from the nursing-home alliance to have delivered to TRMPAC.
"We simply wanted to talk to the speaker about tort reform. He wasn't the speaker at the time, but everybody thought he was going to be speaker," Hilley said.
Hilley said someone with the alliance knew Winkle was meeting with Craddick and asked Winkle to deliver the check.
"It was actually set up through some of the political consultants here in the state that the alliance had and that we had. They sort of made the connection for us," Hilley said. "I'm not sure our client ever actually saw the check. It was in an envelope."
Hilley said Winkle discussed his meeting with Craddick in a conversation with Travis County prosecutors last week.
Bill Miller of Hillco Partners confirmed that Mariner lobbyist Neal T. "Buddy" Jones set up the meeting between Winkle and Craddick. Miller said any questions about the donation would have to be directed to Mariner or the alliance.
Joel Weiden, a spokesman for the alliance, said one of the 14 group members asked that the donation be made. He declined to name the business that wanted to make the contribution to TRMPAC.
The alliance is an umbrella nonprofit corporation for some of the nation's largest nursing-home companies. The alliance maintains there was nothing illegal about its contributions to TRMPAC.
Craddick, who was not indicted Tuesday but remains under investigation, said Wednesday that he doesn't remember to whom he gave the $100,000 check: "It's a long time ago."Bank records show Texans for a Republican Majority deposited the check two days after the meeting at Anthony's in Houston.
San Antonio lawyer Van Hilley represents Chris Winkle, the chief executive of Mariner Health Care Inc., an alliance member.
Hilley said his client was in Houston on business and was asked to deliver the check as a favor for other members of the alliance.
"He was just a messenger," Hilley said. "I don't think he even knew the size of the check."
The dinner at Anthony's, however, was not a coincidental meeting.
Austin lobbyist Neal "Buddy" Jones, a close ally of Craddick's who has represented nursing homes in Texas for years, confirmed Wednesday that he arranged the meeting. He refused to say anything else about his client's business, but added that he did not attend the meeting.
Among its activities, the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care runs TV commercials in Washington, D.C., and print ads in Roll Call, a publication for Capitol Hill, opposing cuts in Medicare aid for nursing home patients or appealing to Congress for more money to recruit and retain nurses.
But the night of Oct. 21, when Craddick and Winkle dined, the topic was limiting lawsuits against nursing homes.
Last year Steve Guillard, the Boston-based chairman of the alliance, said the group sent $100,000 to Texas less than three weeks before the election because its Texas members were interested in the pending legislative debate over limiting the legal liability of companies, including nursing homes.
Asked why the alliance felt it needed to give the money to Craddick if it was intended for the Texas PAC, Hilley said, "That's a good question."
It's not the first time Craddick or his staff handled PAC money.
Colyandro sent $152,000 in noncorporate donations, intended for Republican House candidates, to Craddick's Midland office. That money then was sent to the candidates. Those candidates, once elected, voted for Craddick for House speaker.
Craddick has said he had already secured enough pledges from House members to become speaker before the $152,000 was routed through his office.
State law forbids outside groups from trying to influence a speaker's race in which only House members can vote. It also prohibits a candidate from accepting outside help.
State Rep. Jim Dunnam of Waco, who heads the House Democratic Caucus, said Craddick's acceptance of the nursing home organization's money was "extremely disturbing.""Texans deserve an explanation for why Speaker Craddick took $100,000 in illegal corporate cash from a company that was just indicted," Dunnam said.
Meanwhile, a Democratic consultant said the controversy could help put a dent in the GOP's 88-62 state House majority in November's elections.
"That some of these House Republicans put Tom DeLay's interests above those of Texas families will be an issue in those local races," Democratic strategist Kelly Fero said. "Voters are going to have to decide whether they want to reward those incumbents or turn to a candidate who's not all tangled up in tainted corporate money."
But Austin political consultant Bill Miller, who advises Craddick, disputed the notion.
"We are heading into the homestretch of a presidential election campaign at a time when the nation's at war," Miller said. "Nothing is going to be heard above the din of presidential politics. This is the hardest time to make an issue [in a state House race] stick."
(UPDATE: Sarah has more on this.)
Meanwhile, back in Fort Bend, the reaction to the charges against Tom DeLay's buddies has been muted so far.
A quick and informal poll of people outside a county courthouse annex building Wednesday showed that only a few knew about the indictments in any detail."I don't really keep up much on it," said Mary Lutz of Needville. "I should, but I don't."
Lutz said she plans to vote a straight Republican ticket and that includes voting for DeLay.
[...]
Alice Palacios of Richmond had not heard any specifics about the Travis County indictments but said it did not matter because she does not plan to vote for DeLay anyway.
Nate Johnson of Stafford said any time a criminal case develops around a politician, people will automatically say it is politically motivated.
"That is going to be said whether it's a Democrat or Republican," he said.
Johnson said DeLay spends too much time pursuing his own political agenda.
Sugar Land Mayor David Wallace said DeLay has done much for the city and county and said he does not believe the criminal cases will hurt DeLay's re-election bid.
One Fort Bend resident who does not think the indictments were politically motivated is Bo Randall, who has served on seven Fort Bend County grand juries in the past 30 years.
Randall said she was never swayed by political sentiments and does not believe the panel in Travis County would issue an indictment without sufficient evidence.
Finally, while as noted yesterday there's little chance of Tom DeLay being indicted since Ronnie Earle has no jurisdiction over him and the Fort Bend DA is unlikely to be interested, there's still the matter of the House Ethics Committee. Rep. Chris Bell sent out an email which disputes a number of DeLay's claims regarding his ties to TRMPAC. It's reproduced below the More link, since this entry is plenty long enough already.
Editorials:
The Express-News says what happens next will determine if Texas' campaign finance laws mean anything or not.
Carlos Guerra chats with Fred Lewis of Clean Up Texas Politics, who hopes that the next step will be to look at what's still legal:
"What is legal in Texas is as bad as what is illegal," he said. "Texas is one of just a few states with no contribution limits, allowing super-rich individuals to dominate our state elections."In 2002, one individual gave $4 million in legal contributions and 15 gave over $500,000 each. In Texas, 57 percent of all the legal contributions came in amounts of $25,000 or greater."
The Chron goes all Greek mythology on us, working in words like "hubris" and a reference to Icarus.
The Star Telegram lauds Ronnie Earle's efforts.
The Waco Trib joins the independent-counsel bandwagon for the House ethics complaint against DeLay.
The Lufkin Daily News connects the dots to redistricting.
FACT CHECK: DeLay Statements Contradict Evidence
The Myth:
"This investigation isn't about me", explained House Majority Leader Tom DeLay Tuesday about his colleague's indictments. "All I did was help raise money. I didn't have anything to do with where it went." As reported in today's Los Angeles Times.
The Facts:
Although Mr. DeLay claims to have no connection with the three associates indicted on Tuesday, his statements do not agree with the facts. According to deposition testimony offered by defendant John Colyandro, the executive director of TRMPAC, DeLay is directly involved with TRMPAC.
* DeLay served was the head of TRMPAC's advisory board and was integrally involved in its administration.
* According to the deposition testimony of John Colyandro, there were regular conference calls "to discuss matters related to the overall administration of the committee."
* "When it came to broadly making decisions about who, which candidates we would support and with what amount of financial assistance, at that point the advisory board was involved with those types of decisions." - John Colynadro, sworn testimony
* An October 4, 2002, memo from TRMPAC fundraiser Susan Lilly discussed an upcoming conference call with donors in which Rep. DeLay would "update everyone on TRMPAC's efforts to date and to discuss our strategy for victory in the final weeks of the campaign."
Other highlights of the deposition connecting DeLay to the indictments are listed as follows:
* DeLay named to TRMPAC advisory board.
* TRMPAC documents stating that Congressman DeLay was a leader of TRMPAC.
* "High Ranking Republicans announced formation of new PAC" (11/28/01) news release includes description of advisory board and DeLay's name.
* Colyandro met with DeLay in Dallas at Bill Ceverha's office while Colyandro was working for TRMPAC.
* DeLay traveled, on a private plane, to Texas for TRMPAC event in February 2002. TRMPAC paid for the cost of the plane ride.
* Colyandro distributed memo to members of advisory board assessing potential Republican candidates and discussing their viability.
* Advisory Board met and discussed races that TRMPAC was supporting.
* All members of the advisory board were engaged in raising funds for TRMPAC. A quote from Congressman DeLay was used in TRMPAC's direct mail fundraising appeals.
Response Statement from Chris Bell
"These indictments along with the deposition of his fellow collaborator, John Colyandro, just strengthen the case that Mr. DeLay should be investigated by the Ethics Committee."
"I don't think any credible person would believe that Mr. DeLay had no idea what his top level aides were up to, particularly when the money they raised illegally helped changed the face of Texas politics. Besides, the facts clearly show Mr. DeLay was deeply involved. The evidence at hand doesn't support his statements."
"I am confident that the evidence will demonstrate that all roads lead right back to Tom DeLay. He is the common link."
With President Bush's continued rhetorical assault on the civil court system, the LA Times takes a look at how Texas went from being a consumer-friendly state to one where there's very little recourse for those who have been ripped off under his watch as Governor. Take a moment to read it, there's a lot of good stuff in there. One thing that must be pointed out:
Developers and home contractors say juries cannot be trusted to fairly resolve these disputes between a builder and a buyer."The last place you want to go is the civil court system. The facts don't matter to a jury," said Bobby Bowling IV, a builder from El Paso and president of the Texas Assn. of Builders. "In court, the plaintiff's lawyer makes it rich versus poor. It's about the redistribution of wealth."
Bowling said he and other builders were convinced that private arbitration was the best way to settle disputes."It's been a great system for me. I had a woman who had about 60 things she wanted fixed. I finally said, 'Let's go to arbitration,' " he said. "It cost about $10,000 to take care of it all. And it was done in 30 to 60 days. There's nothing like that in the civil justice system."
I think this is the sort of thing that will eventually bite tort-reform advocates and their mostly-Republican supporters in the butt. People expect to get treated fairly when they do things like buy a house, and when they don't get that they expect to be able to recover. Finding out that your only recourse is a system that's stacked against you is sure to change how people view that system. It'll take awhile to overcome all of the lying and scaremongering that is sadly a large part of the pro-tort "reform" argument, but the day will eventually arrive when there will be enough Mary and Keith Cohns with their stories to tell to counterbalance it.
UPDATE: Dwight weighs in.
Well. I'm rather at a loss for words regarding this.I'll settle for "Wow! That's pretty cool." I don't know who at the Press makes these choices, but whoever you are, thanks very much.
One thing, though:
[A]mong political bloggers, Kuffner also stands out as a sensible moderate Democrat amid all the paranoid libertarians, smug right-wingers and shrill lefties typing their screeds in cloudy cuckoo land.
Anyway. It's nice to know that a logo and a buck can still buy you a ticket on the light rail. Good thing, too, since blogging apparently continues to be a non-moneymaker for most of us. (Who knew?)
One more pitch for the day: You've probably heard of the New Partnership for America's Future (PDF), the new national campaign push by the Congressional Democrats to make their case for a majority (see also here). That makes this as good a time as any to join with Atrios and urge anyone with a little cash to spare to give to the DCCC. I was on the conference call that Joe Trippi talks about, and he makes an awfully compelling case for why DCCC donations are a great way to stretch your dollar and do a lot of good. Check it out, and give till it hurts.
We've all been enjoying a little schadenfreude at the expense of Tom DeLay and his cronies, but it could mean so much more if the current unpleasantness surrounding him leads directly to his exit from the public stage. You know what that means - show a little love to the man who's taking the fight to DeLay, Richard Morrison. If you live around here, you can get involved directly. The Fort Bend County Democratic Party is throwing a little rally on October 2 which they're calling A Democratic Salute to Democracy (warning: page plays music). Come on along and meet Richard, Al Green, Albert Hollan, and a variety of other Fort Bend Democrats. There'll be food, music, and fun for the whole family, and hey, it'll be October. That's the good-to-be-outside time of year in Houston. What more do you want?
If you want to help out some more, the FBCDP is looking for individuals and businesses to help sponsor this event. Details can be found here (Word doc), or drop me a note and I'll pass you on to the right people. Deadline for being a sponsor is Monday, so please respond quickly.
October 2 is exactly one month before Election Day. Get involved now while you still can.
UPDATE: Meant to link in Morrison's statement on the indictments and the local news coverage of the House Ethics Committee's dithering, along with Morrison's reponse. (On a personal note, the guy who wrote that story is an old acquaintance of mine. Nice to see his byline again.)
There are good profiles from the last two Sunday Austin American-Statesman editions on the races in HD50 and HD48, which feature Mark Strama and Kelly White, respectively. Texas Tuesdays previously interviewed them here and here. Check them out, and consider giving Mark and Kelly a hand.
UPDATE: Oops, I meant "HD48" and "HD50", not SD. Thanks to Dingo for the catch.
Let's see what there is out there today on the TRMPAC indictments:
Byron has some good linkage, including the Morning News story:
"This is not good news for DeLay," political analyst Norm Ornstein said.While Mr. Ornstein emphasized that the case is only at the earliest stages of the legal process, he and other observers of Congress said the investigation could:
• Pressure the House ethics committee into initiating a full-blown inquiry into a complaint by Rep. Chris Bell, D-Houston, that accuses Mr. DeLay of soliciting campaign contributions in return for legislative favors. The complaint also accuses Mr. DeLay, who denies any wrongdoing, of laundering illegal campaign contributions through a Texas political action committee; and improperly involving a federal agency in a Texas partisan matter.
On Monday, the panel's top Republican and Democrat, appearing deadlocked, referred the complaint to the full committee. With the panel split among Republicans and Democrats, many observers predict the committee will deadlock on initiating an inquiry.
• Dampen fund raising by PACs associated with Mr. DeLay.
• Possibly provide a minor boost to Texas Democrats in several hotly contested congressional races where a new redistricting plan championed by Mr. DeLay helped Republicans.
• Cloud Mr. DeLay's political future until the case is resolved.
"Obviously it's critical for these individuals to be exonerated if DeLay ever is to be speaker of the House," said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. "The Republican caucus will never promote DeLay if this is hanging over his head. It will hurt him even in hanging onto his current position if these people are convicted."
On the other hand, will the wimpy House Ethics Committee use this as their excuse to take no action?
"The committee could say, 'It's already being investigated,' " said Melanie Sloan, head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which helped Mr. Bell draft his complaint. "It seems that they are looking for a way to do as little as possible, if not nothing, on the complaint."Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch said the panel could be spurred to action because the "level of urgency, the seriousness is raised considerably" by the Texas investigation.
The businesses indicted were Sears, Roebuck and Co. of Illinois; Bacardi USA Inc. of Miami, a subsidiary of the Bermuda-based liquor producer; Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, a subsidiary of CBRL Group Inc. in Lebanon, Tenn., that operates restaurants and retail operations in 41 states; Westar Energy Inc., an electric utility company in Topeka, Kan.; Diversified Collection Services Inc., a debt collection company in San Leandro, Calif.; Williams Companies Inc., a natural gas company in Tulsa; the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care Corp., an umbrella organization of some of the nation's largest nursing home operators; and Questerra Corp. of Charlottesville, a subsidiary of MeadWestvaco Corp.
The Express-News has some reactions to the indictments, all of which share a theme:
Those involved with Texans for a Republican Majority did not believe they were doing anything wrong, said Steve Brittain, an attorney for DeLay."All of these people felt very comfortable that they were not violating the law, that they were following the rules as they understood them," Brittain said.
Sears spokesman Chris Brathwaite said the company was "surprised by the indictment because Sears' contribution to this PAC followed all applicable state and federal laws."
Joel Weiden, a spokesman for the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, a Washington-based group representing 14 nursing home firms, said his group believed it acted lawfully when it gave $100,000 to TRMPAC in October 2002.
Jim Ludwig, a spokesman for Westar, a Kansas-based electric utility, said there was "no basis for Westar to be held accountable for how others spent the money after we gave it."
Tennessee-based Cracker Barrel said it its $25,000 contribution to TRMPAC was legal.
The Statesman has a huge and highly informative story. We'll start with the next excuse that Team DeLay will be offering:
"Tom [Craddick] has been handed millions of dollars in checks just like (former Speaker) Pete Laney has," [Craddick attorney Roy] Minton said. "If that's a crime, we are a little late deciding that. If they are going to decide that's a crime, they ought to be indicting 15,000 or 20,000 people."
There's lots more of interest in this story, including why Craddick and DeLay may escape indictment, at least by Ronnie Earle:
Craddick, like DeLay, could have one tactical advantage over Tuesday's individuals who were indicted.The election code allows Earle to prosecute Colyandro because he lives in Austin. It also gives Earle jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants. But because Craddick and DeLay live in Texas, but outside of Travis County, their local district attorneys would have jurisdiction over election code violations.
Earle could argue for jurisdiction in Craddick's case if he has a dual residence. It's unclear if the speaker's apartment provided in the Capitol would qualify.
We're not done yet:
Gregg Cox, who is leading the investigation, said the inquiry will continue with a new grand jury. Besides the business group, investigators are looking at: the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a Virginia-based group that spent an estimated $1.5 million on TV commercials in the attorney general's race in 2002; Americans for Job, which spent corporate money in a special Senate election this year; and Craddick's role with Texans for a Republican Majority and how that might have affected his campaign for House speaker.
Austin lawyer Buck Wood said he might add corporate donors to his lawsuit.Terry Scarborough, an Austin lawyer who is defending the Republican PAC, said the indictments might delay the litigation: "Anything that gets in the way of that civil judicial determination which we have been seeking since March of this year is disappointing."
Elsewhere in the news: the Star-Telegram story, the local view of Westar's indictment, and a sound you'll be sure to hear between now and November, the call for TRMPAC beneficiaries to give the dirty money back.
The head of the Galveston County Democratic Party is publicly asking local State Representative Larry Taylor to return more than $55,000 he received in campaign contributions from a political action committee after the executive director of the committee was indicted Tuesday on charges that allege the donations were raised illegally.[...]
Taylor is one of 12 Republican politicians that received a donation from the Texans for a Republican Majority.
Anthony Buzbee, chairman of the Galveston County Democratic Party said Taylor was given $55,124 from the PAC, the second largest amount handed to candidates at the time. The largest donation, $65,087, was given to Bryan Hughes who represents District 5 and is based in Mineola.
Buzbee, who faced Taylor in the 2002 election for the State Representative position in District 24 said as a matter of ethics Taylor should return the money.
“In 2002 (Taylor) spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the race,” Buzbee said. “Texas for a Republican Majority was one of his largest contributors. Now after two years it comes out that the way the money was raised was against the law. As an elected official he should give the money back to the political action committee because it wasn’t raised appropriately.”
Hotshot Casey revisits the unpublished opinion of the Texas Ethics Commission from 1998 on the question of whether corporate clients could give money to an unrelated PAC.
The Ethics Commission drafted an opinion that said, in a word, "no."It said while the wording of the law appeared vague, its legislative history made its intent clear.
For one thing, its language on administrative expenses was lifted straight from the federal law (complete with a grammatical error), and the feds prohibit corporations from giving money to PACs other than their own.
The opinion says a change of wording in the law in 1987 "suggests that there need be no connection" between the corporation and the PAC to which it makes contributions for administrative purposes, but that the Ethics Commission did not think the Legislature intended that result.
For one thing, in 1991 the Legislature amended the law to permit corporations to make contributions to state or county party executive committees to defray administrative expenses.
Since party executive committees are "by definition, a general-purpose political committee," that change would not have been necessary if the earlier change had permitted such contributions.
The draft's conclusion: "A corporation may make expenditure to defray administrative expenses of a general-purpose political committee only if the corporation participated in the establishment of the general-purpose committee."
"After today's felony indictments of John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and other key DeLay associates, the Ethics Committee has no option but to move forward with a full investigation into Mr. DeLay on all three counts of the complaint filed against him.The Ethics Committee has already taken 90 days to review the information and has yet to take action.
These indictments are clear indication that the Ethics complaint against Mr. DeLay is substantive and extremely serious. Anything less than a full investigation would signify a failure on the part of the Committee to fulfill their responsibility to protect the integrity of the House."
Pretty clever idea, getting red staters and blue staters to actually talk about issues so we can all see where they agree and disagree (and, as Hope points out, where they're just plain factually challenged). Now if I can only get the Dr Seuss rhyme out of my mind...
My original info was a bit off, but from my perspective that's just fine since the real story is even better.
A Travis County grand jury today indicted three consultants with Texans for a Republican Majority and at least seven corporate donors, according to lawyers for U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.Indicted were John Colyandro, executive director of the political action committee; Warren Robold, a Washington, D.C., fund-raiser; and Jim Ellis a key aide to DeLay, according to Austin attorney Steve Brittain, who is a lawyer for DeLay.
Defense attorneys said Colyandro and Robold were charged with about a dozen felonies each; Ellis was indicted on one count. It was not yet known what the charges were.
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle was not available for comment yet, and the indictments were still being processed.
Among the companies indicted on grounds that corporate money was illegally funneled into the 2002 legislative elections were Sears and Roebuck, Westar Energy Inc., Cracker Barrel Old Country Store and Bacardi USA.
My joy at seeing Jim Ellis nailed can be traced back to this:
Memos from Tom DeLay's point man on redistricting suggest that for the House majority leader, it wasn't enough to pick up four or five seats if he couldn't knock off three particular senior Democrats."We must stress that a map that returns Frost, Edwards and Doggett is unacceptable and not worth all of the time invested into this project," Jim Ellis wrote, referring to Martin Frost of Arlington, Chet Edwards of Waco and Lloyd Doggett of Austin, in an Aug. 17 memo Democrats obtained when deposing him for the federal trial that opened last week.
The Stakeholder, Roman Candles, and Kos have more.
UPDATE: The Express-News has more:
The indictment named John Colyandro, executive director of DeLay's political action committee; Warren Robold, a Washington fund-raiser; and Jim Ellis a DeLay aide who directs the congressman's Washington PAC. Robold was indicted on 18 counts, nine of unlawfully soliciting and nine separate counts of accepting unlawful contributions from corporations. All are third-degree felonies. Colyandro faces 14 indictments, one charging money laundering, a first-degree felony, and the others of unlawfully accepting a political contribution, all third-degree felonies. Ellis was indicted on one count.The indictments refer to Colyandro's acceptance of more than $400,000 in corporate contributions to Texans for a Republican Majority in violation of Texas law. Colyandro directed the Austin-based political action committee founded by DeLay, which was founded to help elect more Republicans to the Texas House.
Colyandro was also indicted on a money laundering charge in connection with his alleged role sending a $190,000 contribution to the Republican National State Elections Committee on behalf of TRMPAC. The alleged crime occurred, according to the indictment, when contributions totaling the same amount were subsequently made by a different arm of the committee to seven GOP candidates for the Texas House.
Ellis, who assisted the RNSEC, was also charged with money laundering in connection with the $190,000 in contributions.
"It was a multiple-count indictment, including felony charges," said an attorney who saw the document this morning, hours before it was to be released. It was not immediately clear if misdemeanor charges were included in the charges.
[...]
Westar Energy, Inc., for $25,000 given TRMPAC in May 2002; The Williams Companies, Inc., for $25,000 given in June 2002; Questarra Corporation, with two charges, for contributions of $25,000 in May 2002 and $25,000 in August 2002; Diversified Collection Services, Inc., for $50,000 in June 2002; Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc., for $25,000 donated in September 2002; Bacardi USA, Inc., for $20,000 donated in July 2002; Sears, Roebuck and Co., for $25,000, in June 2002; The Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care Inc., for $100,000 in October 2002.
UPDATE: The Chron gives us a peek of the defense strategy:
Only a few of the corporations that contributed to Texans for a Republican Majority were indicted, but the indictments generally focus on violations of a Texas law that bans corporate donations from being used to promote individual political candidates.Steve Brittain, who is representing DeLay, said the state law is clear on that but that it is "trumped" by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
He said Colyandro, Ellis and RoBold were all following the advice of legal counsel when they were running the Texans for a Republic Majority political action committee.
"All of these people felt very comfortable they were not violating the law," Brittain said. "We don't believe there's been any criminal conduct."
The Stakeholder and Taking on Tom DeLay both note that the Travis County grand jury which is investigating the TRMPAC allegations ends its term today amid rumors of indictments. From the Chron:
Terry Scarborough, a lawyer representing TRMPAC, said attorneys involved in the case are prepared for the possibility the grand jury will return an indictment."I've heard a lot of rumors that they are. Nobody knows for sure," Scarborough said.
Criminal defense lawyer Roy Minton said he had spoken with Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle after hearing rumors of possible indictments. Minton represents Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick and the Texas Association of Business.
"I don't expect any indictments on the people I represent," Minton said.
Other lawyers involved in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they also do not expect an indictment of DeLay, R-Sugar Land, but said the grand jury apparently has focused its attention on TRMPAC.
[...]
Even though the current grand jury term is ending, prosecutors could hand the case off to a new grand jury.
The speculation among a half-dozen defense lawyers seemed to heighten Monday because the grand jury scheduled its last meeting for today. The deadline for the grand jury to act is Sept. 30. The jurors, who meet in secret, could schedule another meeting, but lawyers said they think that is unlikely. Prosecutors declined to comment.[...]
San Antonio lawyer Van Hilley confirmed Monday that his client, Mariner Health Care Inc., talked to prosecutors by phone. Mariner Health Care is a member of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, a group of 14 national nursing home chains that gave $100,000 to the GOP PAC. Representatives for the alliance could not be reached Monday night.
UPDATE: I've been told that the grand jury has handed down a 32-count indictment, with Texans for a Republican Majority PAC executive director John Colyandro and treasurer Bill Ceverha indicted. I'm also told some corporations were cited. No details yet, no news that I can find on the wires, so check back later for more.
Lasso cites this New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin on redistricting, and pulls up short when he sees a reference to the 2003 re-redistricting in Texas:
When the DeLay plan was submitted to the Justice Department for approval, career officials in the Voting Section produced an internal legal opinion of seventy-three pages, with seventeen hundred and fifty pages of supporting documents, arguing that the plan should be rejected as a retrogression of minority rights. However, according to people familiar with the deliberations, the political staff of the Voting Section exercised its right to overrule that decision and approved the DeLay plan, which is now in effect for the 2004 elections.
TAPPED has some related information that's worth your time to check out as well. Lasso link via Roman Candles.
Some other news and notes from the campaigns:
Check out Take Back Texas, which looks to be a clearinghouse on various state races of interest. They've got some good stories on several familiar Texas Tuesday names, and a good story from the Sunday Star-Telegram about Democratic hopes for gains in the State House. I expect this will be a useful reference, so take a look.
Speaking of Texas Tuesdays - it is the right day for it, after all - we had a couple of non-Tuesday entries this past week, with this one about Jake Gilbreath and his so-far-futile efforts to get his opponent to debate him (seems to be a lot of that going around this season; can't imagine why), and this one about Becky "Buy Now While I'm Still Cheap!" Klein.
There's good voter registration news in Austin and in Houston. I've got some thoughts on how things might look in Harris County this year that I need to sort out and write down when I get a minute.
As noted by Greg in the prior link, I hope to be interviewing Harris County Democratic DA candidate Reggie McKamie in the near future. Feel free to email me any question suggestions. No guarantees I'll use them, but I will read them. Anyone interested in me trying to do a group Q&A session with some Harris County judicial candidates? Let me know.
Time for another Texas Tuesdays Twofer, this week starring Morris Meyer and Lorenzo Sadun, two creative and hardworking candidates fighting the good fight on tough terrain. Check it all out:
Meyer intro
Meyer interview
Donate to Meyer
Sadun intro
Sadun overview
Sadun interview
Donate to Sadun
Posts for these and all other Texas Tuesday candidates can be found on our ActBlue page, which of course also provides an easy way to donate to them. And don't forget the DCCC, who's working hard for every deserving Democrat. We're six weeks out, people. There's no time like the present to make a difference.
Why, giant Presidential heads in a Zippy the Pinhead comic, that's what. Many thanks to Rob for the catch.
We should know in another day or two if the House Ethics Committee will use the option of last resort, which is basically to say "we don't feel like it" and call it a partisan deadlock. At least the Democrats on the committee seem to have grown a pair, according to Kos, who chalks it up to pressure from pissed off constituents. (Which reminds me - I need to call Gene Green's office tomorrow. I'm not in his district, but I used to be, and that's close enough for me.) The NYT also vents a little well-deserved spleen on the committee (via Taking On Tom DeLay), as does a coalition of watchdog groups.
Rep. Chris Bell rightly keeps up the pressure as well, reminding the committee of some Westar evidence that they have refused to look at so far. His letter is reproduced below. If the committee weasels out, someone - I don't care who - needs to revive this complaint next session (assuming that DeLay doesn't get a much needed early retirement from his vastly superior opponent). No interest worth serving is served by punting this issue.
UPDATE: The Bell letter has hit the wires. Be sure to check out this Statesman editorial in favor of an outside counsel to do the work the House Ethics Committee is to weeneyish to do. Via ToTD.
Dear Chairman Hefley and Ranking Member Mollohan:
I am writing not to amend my complaint but to remind the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct that Westar Energy commissioned a report which investigated its company's 2002 plan to influence pending federal legislation by making political donations. Included in this plan was a $25,000 donation made to TRMPAC, the political action committee founded and chaired by Rep. DeLay. Westar Energy voluntarily gave the report to the Federal Election Commission, and I again urge the committee to request the report compiled by Mr. Tim Jenkins of O'Connor & Hannan law firm.
In 2002, Westar Energy conducted an internal probe of the company's finances, headed by the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, with the assistance of consultants from PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The report included allegations of corruption, sweetheart financial deals, unjust enrichment, fraud and a disinformation campaign by former Westar Executive David Wittig.
After receiving the Debevoise & Plimpton report, Westar retained O'Connor & Hannan lawyer Jenkins as expert counsel to investigate the campaign finance issues raised in the initial report. Attorney Jenkins then conducted his own year-long probe into possible illegal political contributions which occurred during the tenure of former Westar executives, David Wittig and Douglas Lake.
On July 12th of this year Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington submitted a Freedom of Information Request for the Westar report. The FOIA request was denied but an appeal has been filed. There is a distinct possibility that the Westar report could add a wealth of new evidence either supporting or refuting Count 1 of the complaint against Rep. DeLay. Since the FOIA request was denied, it seems that the likely avenue for obtaining the report would be through subpoena.
According to committee rules from the 1997 Ethics Committee Task Force Report, a subpoena can only be filed after the creation of an investigative subcommittee. With the knowledge that this report exists and its pertinence to one of the counts in the complaint, the Committee should examine the report prior to final action on the complaint. Therefore, in the interest of examining the total body of evidence, I urge the Committee to take the next step and form an investigative subcommittee in order to subpoena the Westar report.
Jury selection has begun for the first actual Enron-related trial, known as the "Nigerian Barge" case.
The six people defending themselves in the case over the sale of Nigerian barges will not include high-profile names like ex-Enron Chairman Ken Lay or ex-CEO Jeff Skilling.The first Enron employees to face a jury are former midlevel workers Dan Boyle and Sheila Kahanek. They will be tried on conspiracy and fraud charges, along with four former bankers from Merrill Lynch — James A. Brown, Daniel Bayly, William Fuhs and Robert Furst. All six say they are innocent.
A jury is likely to be chosen today before U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein.
A lot is on the line for the defendants, but prosecutors could forfeit a lot of credibility if they lose this case. It is seen as one of the most understandable in the world of Enron's Byzantine financial machinations.
"This is the first acid test for the government," said Robert Mintz , a New Jersey-based attorney and former federal prosecutor who has followed the case. "Prosecutors will trot out their stable of cooperating witnesses, and the lawyers for all the defendants awaiting trial will be watching closely to see how well they do and how well the defense attorneys can question them."
I've been reading about Drinking Liberally at Eschaton, and figured I'd check it out to see where they're organized. Lo and behold, Houston is a member city. Thursdays are inconvenient for me in the fall because of MOB practice, but I'll make an effort to drop by one of these weeks. If anyone reading this has attended any of these events around the country, please leave a comment and tell us about it. Extra credit if you did it in Boise.
So I've read about the new fall lineups, I've seen a few preview teasers, and I've set my TiVo accordingly: Season passes for old favorites "24" and "Law and Order: SVU" when they return, and trial-run recordings of "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives". Beyond that, it's all BBCA Mystery Monday and various one-offs of interest until "The Sopranos" returns.
What are you watching this fall?
The Express News reports on an FBI investigation into the Tulia drug busts and which concludes that there's no evidence of racial motives on the part of disgraced undercover agent Tom Coleman, and thus no evidence with which to bring federal civil rights charges against him.
The civil rights investigations centered on a 1999 sting by an Amarillo-based regional drug task force and Tom Coleman, its undercover officer.Coleman's uncorroborated solo work resulted in the arrests of dozens of Tulia residents, most of them black, and provoked national condemnation as blatantly racist.
The FBI, and later then-Attorney General John Cornyn, responded by launching separate civil rights investigations, the results of which remain tightly guarded.
The records summarizing the FBI's investigative work are contained in a Texas attorney general's file.
KTVT-CBS 11 in Dallas independently obtained the file after the state office, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice turned down open records requests.
According to the records, the lead FBI agent who spent nearly three years looking for evidence that Coleman, who is Anglo, was racist and that he fabricated evidence to rid Tulia of blacks, found nothing to support those allegations.
Amarillo-based Special Agent Tim Reid, who led the bureau's civil rights inquiry, told state investigators as they were starting their own probe in late 2002, "It was his opinion that the Tulia arrests were not racially motivated, and Thomas Coleman had not violated any laws."
Reid also concluded that no evidence could be found that Coleman ever tampered with evidence and said he could find no proof of juror misconduct in the original Tulia trials.
[...]
Civil rights activists condemned the FBI and state investigations as faulty and inadequate.
One of them, Tulia resident Gary Gardner, said his own investigation and collection of court records contradict all of the FBI's findings. He blamed investigative shortcomings by the FBI and attorney general for the lack of civil rights-related charges against anyone.
"I did not attack publicly the charade until it became apparent that people like the Rangers and the FBI were not going to do a proper job of investigating and assuring justice was done," Gardner said.
Alan Bean, a minister who founded Friends of Justice in the wake of the Tulia drug sting scandal, said the issue was never about the guilt or innocence of the defendants. At issue was the fundamental validity of legal procedures in which people were imprisoned on the uncorroborated word of a single undercover officer with a checkered past.
Coleman's "allegations against (the Tulia defendants), and any allegations they might have made against him, devolve into a swearing match between a cop and convict. Forced to choose between Coleman and the convict de jure, nine Tulia juries went with Coleman," Bean wrote in an e-mail.
"It is hardly surprising that the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the Texas attorney general's office would also side with Coleman. Forced to choose between Coleman and a convicted felon, and with nothing to go on beside allegations and denials, they were going to side with Coleman."
Reid told state investigators he did find fault with Coleman and his bosses.
A Feb. 27, 2003, memo at the attorney general's office listed six "Problem Areas" in the Tulia sting.
They included that Coleman lacked of qualifications for major undercover work, that his bosses let him return to the operation after a theft charge against him came to light, and that his methods of identifying suspects were flawed.
Here's a nice endorsement for Martin Frost.
Ed Smart is best-known as the father of kidnapped Utah teenager Elizabeth Smart, whom authorities found alive and safe after nine months in captivity. He's also a Republican.But Mr. Smart traveled to Dallas on Friday to endorse Rep. Martin Frost, D-Dallas, in his contentious fight against Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, to represent Texas' 32nd Congressional District.
Mr. Frost, he said, should be rewarded with re-election for advocating a federal Amber Alert system – named for an Arlington girl who in 1996 was kidnapped and murdered – that broadcasts emergency messages when authorities suspect someone has abducted a child.
Mr. Frost also wrote a bill that created stiffer penalties for sexual offenders.
"This man here made it happen," Mr. Smart said, placing his arm around Mr. Frost. "He's someone who's responsive, who's dedicated to the betterment of our society."
Cragg Hines takes a look at Frost's run for reelection today.
In what was, at best, insensitive phrasing, in a debate last week Sessions said Sept. 11, 2001, was "a home game" and the attack Iraq a preferable "away game." Rushing into the opening, Frost turned on his opponent: "Pete, this is not a game."In speaking of the war on terrorism, Frost points out that his wife, an Army major general, is on assignment in Iraq and that he, unlike Sessions, served in the military.
"He has made himself into a conservative," a long-time Dallas Republican activist said of Frost. Which is a neat trick, especially for a former member of the House Democratic leadership.
In the debate, when Sessions criticized Frost for voting for tax increases, Frost recalled the again-burgeoning federal deficit and his support for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. "I believe in fiscal sanity," Frost said.
Frost also believes in exposing Sessions' hard-right record, seeing it as more suited to his opponent's former constituents in rural counties than to city dwellers in some of Dallas most sophisticated, if conservative, neighborhoods.
"I want people to know he's pretty far out on the fringe and not just your run-of-the-mill Republican," Frost said after the debate.
In their televised confrontation, Frost pointed out that Sessions was one of the handful of House Republicans to perpetually sponsor a bill to withdraw the United States from the United Nations.
Frost's campaign, given such daunting odds, is noted by some staunch area Republicans.
"I think Martin Frost has done a really good job of doing a complete campaign -- yard signs, public appearances, communications," said conservative political consultant Pat Cotton. "He's done it very cleverly."
Primary POLL:
40% REPUBLICAN VOTERS WANT
“SOMEONE OTHER THAN TOM DELAY”
Suddenly, momentum has been building in this campaign.In the next week 10,000 flyers are going out to people in the district, reaching some of the 40% of Ft. Bend Republicans who refused to vote for Rep. DeLay
in the March 9 primary and don’t know (yet) that this former GOP candidate is
now running as an independent. Add 10-15% moderate Democrats to that 40%, and I will have a majority on November 2.
But wait! There's more!
I grew up on a farm near a town smaller than Rosenberg, but got to see the world as a young negotiator for Houston companies. In my travels I came across a Chinese saying: "You have to kill a chicken to scare the monkeys."
Speaking of crazy Senate candidates, did you catch this story?
TULSA, Sept. 16 -- A woman who claimed in a lawsuit 13 years ago that the Republican Senate candidate here, a family physician, sterilized her without her consent came forward Thursday to stand by her story, throwing one of the most competitive Senate races in the country into further turmoil.Her voice shaking at times, Angela Plummer said that while Tom Coburn saved her life during a 1990 surgery to remove a fallopian tube in which a fetus had lodged, she was "stunned" to learn that he had also removed her remaining good tube.
"Dr. Tom Coburn sterilized me without my consent -- verbal or written -- and I know he's stating that he got oral consent. That is not true," Plummer said at a news conference. "I'm not up here to smear him. I'm up here because I wanted to have more children, and he took that away from me."
If all goes well, I'll be doing some voter registration at the HCDP's new Sharpstown office this afternoon. I'll report on that later.
UPDATE: Well, they had the voter reg stuff covered at the HCDP Sharpstown office, so I hung out with Greg and took some pictures of visiting candidates. I got to meet Harris County District Attorney candidate Reggie McKamie, and he agreed to do a blog interview with me, so watch this space for more.
Oh, and I've finally seen a campaign ad on TV. Nick Lampson has some ads running on ESPN during baseball games - I saw one each on Wednesday and Friday. We'll see if there are any others this year.
Rick's Cabaret comes to the Big Apple.
The only publicly traded chain of topless and swinger's clubs is expanding into Manhattan with the acquisition of a topless bar near Madison Square Garden.Rick's Cabaret — a club where Anna Nicole Smith met her millionaire husband — is traded on the Nasdaq and operates a dozen upscale adult clubs in Texas, Minnesota and New Orleans.
The chain said yesterday it will pay $7.62 million for Paradise, an adult club on W. 33 between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, just a block from Madison Square and behind the Empire State Building.
Its shares rose 3 cents to $2.50. The company said it would remodel the club into a three-level, 10,000-square foot playland using its Rick's Cabaret format, to open early next year.
The company also operates swingers' clubs under the "Encounters" brand, and a sports bar format called "Hummers."
CEO Eric Langan, who says the clubs strictly forbid any sexual contact, plans to expand all the club formats elsewhere in New York but gave no details.
He said the buxom celebrity Anna Nicole met her rich spouse while dancing at the Houston flagship club.
"Thirteen performers from the clubs have become Penthouse Pets . . . and three became Playboy Playmates," Langan said.
Rick Perry sure does want to come down on the losing side of the school finance debate, it seems to me.
While Gov. Rick Perry on Friday questioned whether a state district judge's ruling on public school finance would be upheld by the Texas Supreme Court, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said that state leaders should improve education regardless of the outcome of an appeal."Even if this is appealed and the state won, we can't let our schools be second-tier, second-rate," said Hutchison, R-Texas. "I think the Legislature and the leaders of our state should be focusing on doing what's right, not being forced by the courts. We know that we don't have a system that is fair in taxation
"We don't have a system that produces a quality education for every child in Texas and that should be our goal."
Hutchison, thought to be eyeing a Republican primary run against Perry in 2006, commented on the case after an appearance at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce convention.
Perry spoke to the same group earlier in the day. The governor then took questions from reporters on Wednesday's ruling by state District Judge John Dietz of Travis County, who said the state isn't putting sufficient money into the schools in violation of the Texas Constitution.
Dietz said a key factor in his ruling is a 10-point "educational achievement gap" between students who are well off and those from lower socioeconomic and bilingual families.
Perry took issue with the judge's comments.
"That's Judge Dietz's opinion and, with all due respect, that is one individual's opinion. I happen to think this state has made great progress," Perry said, citing improved scores among blacks and Hispanics on standardized tests.
"The Legislature is where this needs to be addressed, not in the courts."
Perry also questioned testimony during the trial that the richest schools have $1,000 more per child to spend than the poorest schools.
"I don't know that to be a fact," said Perry.
"Testimony before one judge is just that. This is going to go to the Supreme Court of the State of Texas."
Congratulations to Barry Bonds for his 700th career home run. I don't think I really thought he was going to break Hank Aaron's record until I realized a few weeks ago how close to 700 he was. He's still more than a full season away, and anything can happen, but barring a debilitating injury or a sudden and freakish drop in his level of performance, I'd say mark your calendars for summer 2006. I'm glad I saw it on ESPN last night so some day I can tell Olivia about it.
If I could add one thing to this anti-DeLay editorial in today's Chron, it would be to note that one other side effect of his egregious redistricting scheme has put DeLay himself into a hotly contested race for the first time in forever. Sadly, the Chron seems incapable of mentioning Richard Morrison's name. Still, it's a nice piece to read, and it promises more on the Congressional races from Cragg Hines. Better late than never, I guess. Taking on Tom DeLay, which also notes some more Fort Bend coverage of the phony Boy Scout award, and The Stakeholder also picked up on this.
The Chron has finally gotten around to replacing the departed John Williams as the weekly local-politics columnist, and I think they made a good choice in Kristen Mack. Most of today's piece is about the two cap-related city propositions on the ballot in November, but there's this priceless tidbit at the end which I think portends a good future for Ms. Mack:
State Rep. Talmadge Heflin says he's in tune with his district. On a recent television show Heflin said: "I have been very much in touch with the district. It covers part of Katy school district, part of Alief, part of HISD, part of Spring Branch and part of Stafford. I know the district, I know the schools, I know the needs."Apparently he doesn't know it as well as he thinks. Turns out no part of the Spring Branch School District is in State House District 149, according to Heflin's Web site.
UPDATE: Rob notes that there is in fact a small slice of Spring Branch ISD inside SD149, though from the sources he cites it appears there are no actual people there. So, Heflin's statement is in fact accurate, if in my opinion somewhat misleading - does one truly represent a piece of land with no people in it? I'll say this - he's welcome to all of the available votes in SBISD.
UPDATE: Rob has now dug up some data which indicates that there are indeed people in SD149's slice of SBISD. Fair enough - I concede the point.
Now that a judge has forced the issue, Tom Craddick is stating the obvious: We need a real tax to replace the useless corporate franchise tax.
"I really believe we've got to find a broad-based business tax in this state, across-the-board that everybody pays," Craddick said during a speech to the Texas Farm Bureau.[...]
Craddick said the state might have to raise as much as $9 billion to lower property taxes and provide more education funding. He said that amount of revenue couldn't be raised solely through higher sales taxes.
The state now is paying for 38 percent of the $30 billion school system, with local property taxes making up the rest. Craddick said when the current school finance system was set up, the state was going to pay for 80 percent and 20 percent would be "local enrichment."
But now, with many districts at or near the $1.50 cap on local school maintenance and operations taxes, and unable to tax higher, the system is "totally broken," said Craddick, R-Midland.
"I also believe that we need to look at where we're spending our dollars in education and making sure we're getting every dollar's worth out of it," he said. "I don't think we are, and I think we need to look at that."
Craddick assured the crowd that he would oppose any efforts to eliminate property tax exemption for land used in agriculture. Exemptions for agriculture, timber and wildlife management take $91 billion worth of property off the tax rolls statewide.
Craddick also said that the court ruling might make the House more likely to reconsider expanded gambling as a revenue source to replace property taxes. In an interview after his speech, Craddick said that although a measure to allow video lottery terminals at horse and dog tracks failed in the House during last spring's special session, it might be revived.
"You're kind of under the gun to get it done and if people see we've got a definite plan, it might be (an option now)," he said.
Houston consultant Paul Colbert, a former lawmaker and school finance expert, said the Legislature doesn't necessarily need the threat of court action to find new solutions.He said lawmakers acted to improve education in 1975, even after the state Supreme Court refused to take a case challenging the Texas system. The Legislature attempted again in 1984 in response to a lawsuit that exposed the system's inadequacies.
"So in both of those instances, even though the Legislature didn't feel the direct pressure of being ordered to do something or the schools would close, the Legislature still responded positively," he said.
Still, he said, school finance is one of the most vexing issues a lawmaker can face. To improve schools often requires more money, which ultimately means raising taxes.
"Almost everyone campaigned on improving education – or ending Robin Hood – and on keeping taxes low," he said. "When you have two contradictory promises, one has to be broken."
Mr. Colbert said there are only three state services big enough to be cut to provide revenue for schools: health care, higher education and prisons. He said more reductions in those areas would be hard to justify.
Dr. Jillson said Mr. Perry would be lucky if the Supreme Court upheld Judge Dietz's ruling."Right now, he's in the position of fighting against what many people consider inadequate funding for quality education. That's an unsustainable position going forward," Dr. Jillson said.
For 20 years, governors have made quality education the top issue in their campaigns so that voters expect to see progress in public schools, he said. And now most school districts – many of them from Republican strongholds – are complaining that they are inadequately funded and are cutting back on educational opportunities, Dr. Jillson said.
"It would almost be a godsend for the governor to be told, 'You've got to do this,' because in the end, he will have to do it anyway," Dr. Jillson said.
"It's not like the first time around," a veteran observer said, recalling court battles over funding equity in the 1980s and 1990s."And it's not real until the (Texas) Supreme Court says it's real," the observer said, referring to Attorney General Greg Abbott's plans to appeal to the nine-member high court, a step expected to take at least three to four months.
"Everybody's yawning," a Republican leadership aide conceded, adding that the ruling from the Democratic state district judge in Travis County had been expected and his promised deadline for legislative action — October 2005 — seems distant.
[State demographer Steve] Murdock, now of the University of Texas at San Antonio after quite awhile at Texas A&M University, has been making presentations around the state to various groups about the population changes in Texas, which is growing at twice the rate of the country as a whole.Of the 22.1 million Texas residents, about 6.7 million are Hispanic – almost three times as many as a decade ago.
Over the same period, the number of Anglos grew from 10.3 million to 11 million – about 7 percent.
Seventy percent of the deaths are Anglos, and 62 percent of the births are minorities.
By 2010, Hispanics will make up about 39.3 percent of Texans, and Anglos will have dropped to about 45.1 percent. By 2020, Hispanics are expected to outnumber Anglos, 46.5 percent to 37.3 percent.
Murdock makes it clear, and Dietz reiterated, that if Texans fail to adequately educate their have-not population, which currently lags 10 points behind the haves in academic achievement, Texas will be poorer, will have fewer taxpayers and will have more people in prison and on welfare.
On the other hand, Dietz said, if the state educates all its people, the median income will go up, not down; more will be paid in taxes; there will be fewer people in prison and on welfare.
Would you call the former CFO of Dell Computers an "anti-job growth, anti-business" activist? Mark Strama's opponent did just that, after the Dell CFO and some other business leaders dared to endorse the Democratic challenger for State House District 50. Strama, profiled here, here, and here on Texas Tuesdays, is one of the Dems' best shots at a State House pickup. Byron has some pictures of Strama and Kelly White, another great pickup opportunity, from a rally at UT. Check it out, and show Strama and White some love.
Elsewhere at BOR, some good poll news for Max Sandlin. Sandlin will have his turn on Texas Tuesdays soon, but don't let that stop you from helping him out now.
There's always something big happening when one's computer access is restricted, isn't there? Taking on Tom DeLay has you covered on the DeLay ethics complaint,, while The Stakeholder informs us that someone has finally raised an official complaint regarding the phony Boy Scout award. Check 'em out, I've gotta run - more family just arrived.
Some state lawmakers wanted a court ruling before they got to work on school finance reform. They have one now.
A state district judge declared the school funding system unconstitutional Wednesday, saying Texas faces a bleak future if it fails to spend more on public education."Are we prepared for a future in Texas that is dismally poor, needy and ignorant?" asked Judge John Dietz of Travis County. "The answer is, 'I think not.' "
In a landmark decision that could result in sweeping changes to Texas' tax structure, Dietz ruled that the school funding law violates the Texas Constitution's requirements that the state provide sufficient and equitable funding for public schools.
The judge gave lawmakers until October 2005 to come up with a new system. If they fail to come up with a plan, he said he would halt state funding.
[...]
[T]he system does not provide enough money for schools charged with meeting higher state and federal standards, Dietz said. He also said lower test scores among low-income students indicate a widening gap in educational achievement between rich and poor districts.
"The solution seems obvious. Texas needs to close the education gap," Dietz said. "But the rub is that it costs money to close the educational achievement gap. It doesn't come free."
[...]
Many of the districts that sued the state have been forced to tax at the statutory cap of $1.50 for school maintenance and operations. They argued that amounts to an unconstitutional statewide property tax, and Dietz agreed.
"These districts have lost all meaningful discretion for setting the tax rate for their districts," said Dietz.
Dietz also declared that the $30 billion system does not meet the constitutional requirement of being efficient because of a "significant gap of more than 10 points in educational achievement" between economically disadvantaged students and those who are not economically disadvantaged.
"Half of our students in Texas are significantly behind in achievement compared to the other half," said Dietz.
Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick all said they will work to find a legislative solution on school finance. The three were unable to agree on how to raise taxes to provide additional funding for schools during a special session called by Perry last spring.
"I will continue to work with legislators to find common ground on property taxes and school finance regardless of how the courts ultimately rule," said Perry.
Dewhurst said he's discussed with Perry declaring school finance an emergency measure in the next regular session. Such a designation would allow lawmakers to avoid legislative rules that can delay passage of bills.
Judge Dietz gave these remarks before his ruling. It's pretty clear from them where his thinking was coming from.
UPDATE: More from Hope.
Mom and Dad, sister Eileen, and nephew Declan arrived today for Olivia's baptism on Saturday. Sister Kristin and her boyfriend Mike arrive Friday, as do Olivia's godparents (my college roomie Greg and Tiffany's cousin Emilie, plus their respective spouses and Emilie's son). Expect spotty blogging over the next few days. And many pictures to be taken.
Want an example of former Bush voters switching to John Kerry? Try this on for size. And check out this interview (scroll down) that Kristen Breitweiser, 9/11 widow and Bush voter in 2000, did with Judy Woodruff:
BREITWEISER: ...I spent, along with the other 9/11 family members, three years trying to get 9/11 issues addressed by this administration.And it's been a long fight, and I use the word fight because that's what it was.
And I think it's disappointing to be this far removed from 9/11 and to still not feel as safe as we could be feeling...
...We tried to have accountability assigned, and it's just not happening under this administration.
And I have a five-year-old daughter. I want to know that I'm safer than I am right now.
And President Bush has not put me in that place, and I believe Senator Kerry will.
WOODRUFF: You said that you voted for George W. Bush in 2000. What has turned you around?
BREITWEISER: I think my own personal experience in the last three years...
...I'd hoped that President Bush -- someone that I voted for, that my husband voted for -- would have been my biggest ally in trying to correct the problems that occurred on the morning of September 11th and trying to make this nation safer.
And what I found out, for the last three years, is that he was our biggest adversary.
And I'm very disappointed --
WOODRUFF: Specifically because he what?
BREITWEISER: With regard to the 9/11 Commission, President Bush:
Fought the creation of the commission;
Fought the legislative language to make sure the commission was set up in a bipartisan manner;
Fought the funding of the commission;
Fought an extension for the commission;
Fought access to individuals and documents.
...
WOODRUFF: But in the last analysis, the president did come around on most of that, didn't he?
BREITWEISER: He came around after he was backed into a corner and after a 90-8 vote in the Senate. And it was a long year.
Man. Has this been a crappy hurricane season or what? And it's just September 15. To Mac and everyone else in the path of Ivan, please stay safe. Over here in Houston, where we're waaaaaay overdue to get creamed by one of these suckers, we know fully well that there but for the grace of God go we.
Oh, and you can expect gas prices to go up after Ivan goes away, thanks to all of the refineries and rigs that have been closed down in preparation for it.
Want a reason to dislike TXU beyond their desire to charge poor people extra? According to this Texas Observer article, they may have committed securities fraud in the wake of the Enron collapse. There are two lawsuits pending against them, one a class action and the other a whistleblower claim, which make those allegations. Check it out. Via Tom.
Here's an update to the House Ethics Committee investigation of Tom DeLay, which is fast approaching the deadline they set for themselves when they chose to defer the matter in July. Unfortunately, it looks like this may wind up a total partisan clusterboink, in which all other considerations are subservient to protecting ones' flanks. The complete Roll Call story, sent to me separately by AJ Garcia and RZ, is reproduced below.
In an “option of last resort” that has never been used before, leaders of the House ethics committee — apparently unable to agree on how to handle a complaint against Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) — have thrown to the full panel the decision on whether to move to an official investigation of the Texas Republican.
This development sets up the possibility of deadlock within the ethics committee and thus no investigation of the allegations against the powerful Majority Leader.
Reps. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the chairman and ranking member of the committee, had until Monday to act on the DeLay complaint or else ethics rules would automatically trigger an investigation. The committee has been studying the charges against DeLay for nearly three months.
But Hefley and Mollohan postponed a committee meeting scheduled for today during which the DeLay case was to have been discussed.
Either Hefley or Mollohan has now placed the DeLay complaint on the committee’s agenda for a future vote by all 10 Members of the panel, according to people familiar with the matter. A majority of committee members at this point will have to vote affirmatively for an investigation of the charges against DeLay, meaning that at least one Republican on the panel would have to support such a probe in order for the committee to move forward.
The move to place the DeLay case on the agenda is significant because it could signal a disagreement about the complaint between Hefley and Mollohan and sets up a potentially lengthy partisan fight that could result in no action being taken on the allegations against DeLay. While the two lawmakers could actually agree on a recommendation, their failure to act within the 90-day deadline has forced them to take this unusual step.
It’s still possible that the committee may take up a portion of the three-part complaint, which was filed by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas) back in June. Committee rules allow the panel to investigate all or some of the charges against any lawmaker who faces an ethics complaint. But any decision to do so would require a majority vote on the evenly split panel. The vote could take place as early as next week, according to Democratic sources.
Forcing a vote in the ethics committee on whether to proceed with an investigation has never happened in the seven years since the ethics rules were rewritten. A major goal of the 1997 reforms was to prevent complaints from lingering with no resolution if the committee failed to take action.
The task force that rewrote ethics rules — which acted after the long political battle over charges against former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) — foresaw only limited circumstances in which the committee would have to vote on what steps to take next because panel leaders could not agree on a joint recommendation.
“Such action would be taken, for example, if the chairman or ranking minority member disagreed about whether a given complaint should be forwarded to an investigative subcommittee and one of them desired a vote on that question by the full Committee,” stated an analysis of the ethics changes promulgated by the task force.
“Because of the procedural consequences that result from placement on the Committee agenda of whether to establish an investigative subcommittee, the Task Force expects that such action by the chairman or ranking member will be viewed as an option of last resort.”
Ethics watchdog groups that had been pressing for an investigation of DeLay were dismayed by the latest developments.
“This is just stunning,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the watchdog group that helped Bell draft the complaint. Sloan said she fears the move means the committee will deadlock on a 5-5 vote that will leave the complaint in limbo until the expiration of the 108th Congress. When the 109th Congress convenes in January, Bell won’t even be a Member and Hefley will no longer be chairman of the ethics committee. At that point, the committee would have to vote to carry over any unresolved complaints — a situation likely to produce another deadlocked vote.
“It is incredible that they managed to manipulate the system to keep it from ever being investigated,” Sloan said. “It is just astonishing that the process can be manipulated that way. The rules are already bad enough as they are.”
Bell, who lost the Democratic primary in March, still held out some hope that the committee would proceed with an investigation of DeLay.
“The Republicans on the committee know DeLay would not survive a full investigation, so they’re trying to protect their party boss,” said Eric Burns, Bell’s spokesman. “The committee faces a very clear choice: They can stand up for the integrity of the House, or they can protect politics as usual.”
DeLay’s office declined to comment on the issue.
In his complaint, Bell alleged that DeLay illegally funneled corporate funds to Texas state legislative races, traded legislative favors for corporate campaign donations from Westar Energy Corp. and misused his office to intervene in the Texas redistricting fight last year.
DeLay has vehemently denied all the charges and has asked the ethics committee to dismiss the case.
We got a huge response yesterday to Richard Morrison's appearance on Texas Tuesdays. Who knew so many people didn't like Tom DeLay? There's a long list of thank-yous here and a personal message from Richard here. As always, it's never a bad time to donate to Richard Morrison, to donate to any Texas Tuesday candidate, to donate to the DCCC, or to find a worthy candidate and volunteer your time and energy.
We'll keep bringing you information about Texas' fine slate of Democratic Congressional incumbents and candidates. There's no room to let up - those fun-loving folks at the Club for Growth are spending their nickels on two Texas races, setting their sights on Nick Lampson and Chet Edwards. Chron columnist Cragg Hines takes a look at Edwards' race against Arlene "Memorial Day Massacre" Wohlgemuth. This is what we're up against, folks. Please do what you can to help.
Greg notes that the Chron is running op-eds with ridiculously underinformative bylines. Again. The piece in question touts the "success" of Prop 12, the ridiculous tort "reform" measure passed last year, and was written by the Chairman of the State Republican Executive Committee, not that you'd know that from the Chron.
Be sure to follow the other link to this Statesman piece, which tells of the other side of Prop 12.
In 2003, the Legislature, led by Republicans, took the wrong approach to the problem by passing Proposition 12. That constitutional amendment, later ratified by voters, puts a $250,000 cap on damages in malpractice cases for anything other than direct financial losses. That means my damages would have been limited to $250,000. Why? Because I am a full-time mother and housewife and therefore do not make a direct "financial contribution" to my family. My lasting physical pain, as well as the emotional scars that I confront every day, apparently mean nothing to our legislators and their friends in the insurance industry.
This is ridiculously short notice, but if you're in Houston and have an interest in local transportation issues, the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) is holding an open house tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 PM to discuss the three-year Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). You can see a list of TIP candidate projects for 2006-2008 here (PDF). The public comments period for this is already open and runs through October 1, so check it out and speak up if you want to be heard. Open house details are here.
Via Ginger, the Chicago Tribune explores the Houston: It's Worth It campaign. I can't tell you how happy I am that they took the initiative to contact Elyse Lanier to ask her what she thought of this campaign. Her answer is everything you'd expect:
The last time Houston's slogan got much attention was in 1997, when Elyse Lanier--wife of former Houston mayor Bob Lanier--led a $5 million effort to boost the city's image. Her group's catchphrase: "Houston. Expect the Unexpected.""When people ask me about Houston, I tell them about the theater district or the medical center," Lanier said. "I don't even acknowledge that cockroaches are alive. . . . It would never occur to me to talk about mosquitoes."
Lanier was calling from Malibu, where she was vacationing at the beach to escape the brutal summer here. She admits that Houston in August is miserable, but to build an ad campaign around the sweltering heat "would not be my approach," she said. "I prefer to focus on the positive, but I hope whatever they do works."
UPDATE: Kevin notes that this was actually an LA Times article which was picked up by the Chicago Trib (among other papers), and he has his fun with Elyse Lanier and Jordy Tollett as well.
What Dwight says. This sort of thing should not happen in a civilized country.
I've been flogging the various Tom DeLay scandals and outrages for some time now. I do this for two reasons. One is that I think DeLay is a corrupt, morally bankrupt charlatan who can't be removed from power quickly enough. The other reason, one which I think is even more important, is that I believe in Richard Morrison. Having met and spoken to him several times, I can say in all earnestness that he's the kind of person I want to see in Congress. He'll represent the people who live in his district, and not the prevailing moneyed interests. He'll stand for the sensible middle that everyone complains gets the short shrift, rather than the extreme fringe. He'll care about good and efficient governance, rather than government as a means to an ideological end. I can't say enough about him, and I strongly encourage you to check him out for yourself.
Texas Tuesdays is proud to feature Richard Morrison, the next Congressman from Sugar Land. The intro is here and the latest interview is here. There may be a guest post later, so check back for details. You can help Richard Morrison by making a donation, or if you live in the area, by volunteering to help the campaign. You can see our earlier interviews with Richard on the Texas Tuesdays ActBlue page, where you can also make a donation to him or any of the other Texas Democratic candidates. And finally, you can help the DCCC help Morrison. We've got seven weeks left, and every little bit counts.
I seldom use my Blogrolling links on the sidebar to read blogs these days, since my Bloglines subscriptions do a much better job of keeping track of what I have and haven't read for me, but if I'm going to have something on this site, I ought to keep it maintained. Thus, after much not-so-benign neglect, I've finally updated the sidebar blogroll. Some of the new links there should have been there a long time ago, and I apologize to the proprietors for taking my time about it. Please note that it's the Bloglines subs which are a more accurate picture of what I read (though not fully complete, since there are still a few RSS-less blogs out there), and please note that I may add a few more to the sidebar before I'm satisfied.
On a side note, I'm pleased to hear that StoutDem has worked through his Blogger issues and is publishing again. He also now has inline Blogger comments enabled, so drop by and pay him a visit.
After the Rice-UH game at Reliant last Sunday there was a fair amount of complaining by fans about the parking and traffic situation. Turns out they had even worse problems for the opening Texans game.
"It took us an hour to circle around and park — they wouldn't let us in," said Bryce Miller of Spring, a club seat ticket holder who had a permit to park in the Blue Lot. "It's kind of annoying when it's prepaid parking."Miller and other Blue Lot parkers said they exited westbound South Loop at Fannin Street and then were forced by police to turn right onto Fannin instead of proceeding straight to Kirby, where the lot's entrance is located.
They said it was a disaster to get over to Main and reach Kirby from the west side. And once they got in the lot, many club and suite patrons found the reserved parking area full and had to park in the far corner along with Six Flags AstroWorld customers.
"It only took us 15 minutes to reach the Fannin exit but then more than an hour to get in the Blue Lot," said Shaun Austin, who drove up from Pearland. "They are closing off the roads at the wrong spots."
Maps sent by the Texans to Blue Lot permit holders instruct fans coming from the east to "avoid delays" by exiting the Loop at Fannin, staying on the frontage road and turning right on Kirby. The traffic headaches frustrated some season-ticket holders, who described last year's parking as more efficient.
"I want a refund," said an irate John Wald of Spring, walking toward the stadium 55 minutes after kickoff. "Those three cops made everyone turn. We couldn't go straight. We sat for two hours."
Fans parking in other lots said they also got stuck in the congestion around the stadium.
More than 5,000 football fans crammed MetroRail trains Sunday in the first NFL regular season test of the Main Street line.Riders, several on board for the first time, had mostly favorable reviews of the new way to get to Houston Texans contests. Metro said about 5,100 took the rail to Reliant Park, 7 percent of the 70,255 people who had tickets to the game.
The passenger count Sunday, while higher than the Metropolitan Transit Authority's initial projection of 4,500, was down 19 percent from ridership of 6,262 to the preseason opener against the Dallas Cowboys last month.
Richard Zook of River Oaks had a $20 Red Lot parking permit that came with the tickets he bought. But he decided to park instead at his downtown office tower Sunday and hop on the light rail with his 8-year-old son, John, and a friend of his son instead.
"It saves time and trouble by taking the train," Zook said. "I've parked at the stadium in the past and getting in there can be a nightmare."
I work near Reliant, and I know how nasty the traffic can be around there when there's a big event. The problem is that there's only so many routes you can take, and getting out of the parking lots themselves can take forever. I grew up taking the #4 train to Yankee Stadium, so taking the light rail line to a Texans game would be a natural for me. We'll see if more fans take that message away after this week.
I will say this: I'm surprised that a normally well-run operation like the Texans, especially in their third year of existence, could screw up Game One like this. Very much not what you'd expect.
Remember this?
Reps. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.) and Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the panel’s chairman and ranking member, respectively, now have until early September to decide if their panel will take up a complaint against DeLay that was filed by Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas).On Thursday, DeLay filed a lengthy response to Bell’s complaint — a massive filing that one GOP insider described as a call for the ethics panel to dismiss Bell’s “invalid, illegitimate and politically motivated” complaint.
Bell has alleged that DeLay illegally solicited campaign contributions in return for favorable legislation, misused a Texas political action committee to improperly funnel corporate donations to Texas state candidates, and abused his office.
DeLay and his GOP supporters have vehemently denied the charges.
The ethics committee was scheduled to release a statement tonight or early tomorrow announcing its decision, but no statement was released by press time.
In the meantime, the ethics committee is also continuing its investigation into whether GOP lawmakers improperly pressured Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) during a Nov. 22 vote on Medicare reform legislation, said House insiders. The panel now hopes to complete that investigation by the end of September, although it is unclear when Hefley and Mollohan expect to have a final disposition in that case.
UPDATE: Looks like the Ethics Committee will meet Wednesday, and their deadline is next week. Thanks to rpreston in the comments, who saw this tidbit on the Quorum Report.
The Chron reports on the five people with a Houston connection who made Capitol Inside's list of top political donors in Texas. I'm not sure what Capitol Inside's algorithm was, but I really don't see why they bothered with Linda Pritzker:
Linda Pritzker, the reclusive 50-year-old heiress to part of the Hyatt Hotel fortune, shows up on some campaign finance watchdog lists as the most generous of all political donors in Texas.And while it's true that Pritzker has shelled out more than $5 million to organizations working to keep President Bush from being re-elected Nov. 2, she is not, as frequently listed, a "Houston investor" or even a Texan.
Actually, Pritzker -- the second of five children of billionaire Robert Pritzker of Chicago, one of the hotel chain's founders -- lives in a small town in western Montana, where she practices and teaches Tibetan Buddhism.
Pritzker also identifies herself as a psychotherapist in a recent article she wrote for Northwest Dharma News, a bimonthly Buddhist newsletter published in Seattle. Phone messages left for her in Montana last week were not returned. A woman who answered the phone said Pritzker had no comment on her political donations or any ties to Houston.
Pritzker's connection to Houston appears limited to Sustainable World Corp., which was incorporated in Texas on Dec. 10. The corporation's registered agent is Lewis Linn, a certified public accountant in Houston, who, according to Forbes Global magazine, helped set up various trusts for the Pritzker family after its holdings were restructured in 2001.
Linn said that Pritzker "is a client of mine, and I'm a Houstonian, but she is not a Houstonian."
Pritzker, alone and through Sustainable World, has contributed $5 million to the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, which in turn has donated most of its money to Media Fund and America Coming Together, both of which are devoted to defeating President Bush.
Her donations do not include any Texas or Harris County races. In fact, Harris County Democratic Party Chairman Gerry Birnberg said, "I've never heard of the lady. She has no connection with the Harris County Democratic Party."
Of the four more relevant names on the list, two are Democrats and two are Republicans. The difference is that the two Republicans, Bob McNair and Bob Perry, gave $2.2 million of their $2.8 million total to state candidates and PACs. One of the Democrats, John Eddie Williams, had a similar profile - $896,000 of his $977,000 stayed in Texas - but the other, Maconda Brown O'Connor, sent most of her money elsewhere - only $15,000 of her $974,000 went to state candidates. I'm not sure if more big Democratic donors giving a bigger percentage of their money to state candidates will be a leading indicator of the party's resurgence or a trailing indicator, but I'd bet a fairly substantial sum that there will be a pretty tight correlation between the two.
The Star-Telegram has a brief overview of the five Congressional races which involve redistricted Democratic incumbents. No real new info, though it does nicely tie together current fundraising data plus the ratio of Democratic to Republican voters in each district. Basically, it's a decent TV Guide-style capsulized review for those who want a quick update.
One quibble, from the Nick Lampson/Ted Poe race:
The X-factor: Turnout in a two-headed district. More than half of the district is in conservative Harris County, but Lampson could have a shot if he gets the sort of support that Democrat John Sharp got in that part of the district in his unsuccessful 2002 run for lieutenant governor.
Popular scratch-off games and a record lottery jackpot propelled the Texas Lottery to its second-highest sales during fiscal year 2004.Unaudited sales figures of all products totaled nearly $3.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31. Fiscal year 1997 was the largest-ever sales year, with more than $3.7 billion worth of tickets sold.
"For years I've heard that the lottery's in trouble, the lottery's not delivering," said Reagan Greer, executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission. "The fact we're back to some of the highest numbers of the late 1990s, and the second highest ever, that's huge."
The sales resulted in a contribution of $1 billion to the Foundation School Fund, which helps support public education, an 11 percent increase over last year. Since 1997, the lottery has generated more than $6.6 billionto benefit public education.
The lottery paid out $2 billion in prizes, up from $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2003.
Instant tickets were by far the most popular product, accounting for more than $2.3 billion in sales. Lotto Texas sales came in at $478 million, and Cash Five accounted for $122 million.
[...]
The figures show that changes made by the Lottery Commission in recent years are paying off.
The Powerball-style game the lottery adopted in 2003 made the odds harder to beat, allowing the higher jackpots that generate ticket sales.
Last December, Texas joined Mega Millions, a multistate lottery. It registered sales of $190 million.
The Chron's weekly Let's Check In On The Congressional Elections Report takes a look at Charlie Stenholm versus Randy Neugebauer in CD19. A few things of interest:
"This redistricting can do nothing but hurt the agricultural interests of this part of the state," said Don Etheridge, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at Texas Tech University.Last year's redistricting has Neugebauer and Stenholm facing off in the reconfigured 19th Congressional District, which takes in parts of the Panhandle and High Plains, zigzagging from Abilene to Lubbock.
"I don't know of anybody who likes this redistricting," said Steve Stovall, a real estate agent from Abilene who says he usually votes Republican but who is working for Stenholm. "It's something people in Austin forced on us."
As head of the Conservative Democratic Forum in the 1980s, Stenholm was a key ally of President Reagan, and he takes pride in bucking the leadership of both parties. He was one of the few Democrats who voted to impeach President Clinton, and, as a supporter of balanced budgets, he has been an outspoken critic of President Bush's tax cuts.Stenholm said he and other conservative Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition provided the president the winning margin in more than 40 key votes over the past four years. "But that doesn't count with Tom DeLay," he said, referring to the House majority leader, who engineered last year's redistricting in Texas. "If you're not with him 100 percent of the time and you're a Democrat, you're expendable."
Neugebauer, 54, was president of the Texas Association of Builders when he emerged from a field of 17 candidates in a special congressional election in June 2003.
"My opponent comes to the district and talks conservative," he said last week. "Not only do I talk conservative, I vote conservative."
[Michael McDonald, a voting and redistricting expert at the Brookings Institution] said Stenholm and the four other Texas Democrats who are facing long odds represent the center in an increasingly polarized House. "Southern moderate and conservative Democrats are a vanishing breed," he said.
If you don't currently have a baby, you may not be aware of the stunning advances in stroller technology that have been made lately.
The higher-is-better philosophy is the chief selling point of the Stokke Xplory, a new entrant in the luxury stroller market. At $749, it is $20 more expensive than the Bugaboo Frog, which is a souped-up stroller from a Dutch design company and is favored by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow.In any case, the Xplory trumps competitors in height. According to Stokke, the adjustable seat can be positioned up to 27.6 inches from the ground.
Though Stokke reeled off other features that differentiate the Xplory, like the telescoping handle and the arched bar between the rear wheels so mommies don't bang their shins, the stroller's marketing campaign focuses on height.
"Children deserve a better view," declares the sales brochure, juxtaposing the slogan with the jumble of human feet and asphalt that babies in low-slung strollers must face.
Take a look at this Chron editorial which criticizes the expiration of the assault weapons ban despite its overwhelming popularity in Texas and everywhere else, and tell me if you can spot what's missing.
Give up? Here's a hint:
Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, whose power over the House exceeds that of Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said early on that the House wouldn't take it up. Delay told The New York Times last week that he wouldn't change his mind even if the president asked him to -- and that hadn't happened.
House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said he would permit a House vote but only if the Senate voted first.
In the House, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) calls the assault weapon ban "a feel-good piece of legislation" that does nothing to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals.
Slacktivist is peeved by this Reuters story in which utility company TXU plans on linking credit scores to energy bills.
In a new rate-setting tactic for electric utilities, the unit of Dallas-based TXU Corp. plans bigger rate increases for customers with low "credit scores," which are numeric rankings that take into account customer histories of paying electricity, phone and cable bills, the Wall Street Journal reported.TXU defends the use of credit scoring as an accurate predictor of whether customers can pay future bills, the newspaper said.
I have a bigger philosophical qualm about letting a private entity like the credit-reporting industry have that much power over citizens' lives. Credit scores should not be this pervasive, especially in this day and age of identity theft. I suspect, though, that until a few middle class suburbanites complain about having higher electric bills than their neighbors that this will not be enough of an issue to get widespread attention.
I find the case that the assault weapons ban is not good public policy to be a reasonably persuasive one. For the most part, I'm more concerned with measures to make it harder for felons to buy guns than with measures to define what kind of guns can be bought. That said, from a political perspective, this is pretty darned persuasive, too.
A Texas Poll conducted last month by the Scripps Research Center in Abilene showed that 80 percent of Texans want the 1994 assault weapons ban renewed, and 82 percent believe restrictions on gun sales should remain the same or increase.
Meet Zippy Chippy, the world's worst racing horse.
Zippy Chippy, thoroughbred racing's all-time loser, made it 0-for-100 Friday when he finished last in an eight-horse field at the Three-County Fairgrounds.The 13-year-old brown gelding's awful record has made him something of a celebrity. He was a crowd favorite in Northampton, where plenty of brave bettors wagered on Zippy Chippy at 7-2 odds, including Al Supple, who picked him on a $6 trifecta ticket.
"I think he'll be in the money," Supple said.
He was wrong. Zippy never recovered from a slow start in which he bumped shoulders with Patuxent Wind coming out of the gate.
"He was dead last. Poor thing," said Jean Douglas, who also bet on him, as did her husband.
"We've seen him run three years in a row," Jim Douglas said. "We bought Zippy Chippy shirts and everything."
The horse, stabled at Finger Lakes Race Track in New York, tied the mark for thoroughbred futility in 1998, losing his 85th straight race.
Molly Ivins introduces us to Susan DuQuesnay Bankston, also known as Juanita Jean of the World's Most Dangerous Hair Salon and thorn in the side to Tom DeLay. This week, Juanita has an update on the faux Boy Scout award being given to DeLay, plus the best quote I've seen this week:
I wish to thank the Congress today. It makes me feel good to know that if I’m mowed-down by an assault weapon, at least a married lesbian will not be pulling the trigger.
Sometimes it just isn't possible to respond to a public statement in a calm, rational, and serious manner. With that in mind, let me direct you to Pete and to Norbizness, who have what I think are the proper rejoinders to the Texas State Board of Ed sex-ed kerfuffle and the Vice President's amazing remarks about eBay, respectively. Thank you.
UPDATE: How could I forget The Poor Man and his expose on the Kitty Kelly book?
Kevin Hayden has put together an excellent collection of progressive bloggers organized by states. There's at least one such blogger in 49 of the 50 states - the one holdout is Wyoming, but at least they have an active lefty representative on Polstate. Kevin has 34 Texans listed, including a number that I don't yet have on my Texas political bloggers page. I've sent him a note about the few that I know he's missing - he has an update planned for October 1, so click on the link near the top of his page to remind him yourself if he's overlooked you. There's sure to be some good blogs that are new to you there, so check it out.
I got a good laugh out of Hotshot Casey's column today, in which he imagines a future Swift Boat-style smear against State Rep. Rick Noriega, who is currently on active duty in Afghanistan. Best line in the piece:
"All of Noriega's heroic claims are bogus," says a TV ad script under consideration. "And besides, didn't he used to be the druggie president of Panama?"
There's a new study out which debunks the idea that there's a connection between winning collegiate athletic programs and success at recruiting students.
The study was conducted by Robert Frank, professor of management and economics at Cornell University, on behalf of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which was formed in 1989 to draft a blueprint for curbing financial excesses and academic failures in major college sports."Individual institutions that decide to invest more money in their sports programs in the hope of raising more funds or improving their applicant pools may be throwing good money after bad and would be wiser to spend the money in other ways," Frank wrote.
Given those circumstances, Frank suggested that universities "abandon the 'arms race' in which they are now engaged" to build athletic facilities.
Frank reached his conclusions after reviewing numerous studies between 1979 and 2003 on the topics of student admissions and alumni donations. He said athletic success may generate indirect benefits for universities but they are "almost surely very small."
[...]
Frank said that he had once thought a correlation existed between success in athletics and the attraction of good applicants. He now believes it was a widespread assumption based on two factors: Many students are sports fans, and a big-time athletic program serves much like a national advertising campaign because the successful teams appear frequently in the news.
The most common example to support that theory was produced 20 years ago, when applications at Boston College increased by 30 percent after quarterback Doug Flutie famously completed a long, last-second touchdown pass to win a late-season game at Miami.
Frank also provides a personal anecdote.
"A friend who teaches at Duke had heard that when Duke made the Final Four they got more applications the next year," Frank said Tuesday.
Even so, Frank said, "Beliefs that are generally false are rarely false in each and every instance. I was surprised to discover that programs with consistently winning teams did not have significantly more applications or better-quality matriculants than programs that had losing teams."
Significant positive effects on admissions, Frank said, are "almost always in the wake of a national championship or some other dramatic event. You need a dramatic story line. It's not the perennial powerhouse winning yet another Big Ten title."Frank referred to a study looking at national champions in football and men's basketball between 1979 and 1992, which found that even if there were rises in applications, the study was "unable to find any measurable impact of these increases on the quality of admitted or entering students."
I join with Hope in unreservedly endorsing State Sen. Jeff Wentworth's to-be-filed proposal to force the official recording all legislative votes. It's appalling that bills can be passed or rejected by voice vote alone, and it's long past time someone took steps to ban it. See this Statesman editorial for more.
MyDD has a list of Democratic Congressional candidates who are in line to get help from the DCCC. More details are promised soon. Meanwhile, get ready for some TV ads in a market near you. I note that the Roll Call story cited mentions something a bit worrisome to me:
In the Tyler and Beaumont markets, both in Texas, the NRCC has reserved television time while the DCCC has not.
Thumbs up from the Austin Chronicle on Fifty Years of the Texas Observer. They even noticed the George H.W. Bush "compassionate conservatism" meme from 1964. I'm still lagging behind on finishing this book, but this is as good a time as any to post an update about upcoming in-store events, which includes one here in Houston:
9/9/2004 5-7pm
The Twig Bookshop (San Antonio)
5005 Broadway St
(210) 826-6411
Reading and signing with Char Miller and contributors9/18/2004 2pm
Barnes and NobleFiesta Trails (San Antonio)
12635 IH 10 West
(210) 561-0205
Reading and signing with Char Miller9/19/2004 4-5pm
Barnes and Noble University Village (Ft. Worth)
1612 S. University Dr. #401
(817) 335-2791
Reading and signing with Char Miller9/26/2004 1-4pm
Barnes and NobleVanderbilt Sq. (Houston)
3003 W. Holcombe Blvd
(713) 349-0050
Signing with Char Miller9/27/2004 7pm
Barnes and Noble Westlake (Austin)
701 S. Capital of TexasHwy. #P860
(512) 328-3155
Reading and signing with Char Miller
Regarding all the stuff that has now come out regarding George W. Bush's apparent failure to fulfill his duties in the Texas Air National Guard, I refer you to what Josh says:
And, finally, let's not miss the obvious point here. This isn't about what President Bush did 30+ years ago. Or at least it's not primarily about that. The issue here is that for a decade President Bush has been denying all of these things. He did so last January. He did so again as recently as last month. He's continued to cover this stuff up right from the Oval Office.
The real question now is: what other documents does the White House have? Obviously they've had these sitting around for a while, and just as obviously they've held them back even though they claimed in February that they had made available every known document related to Bush's National Guard record.So what else are they hiding? And when are they going to approve AP's FOIA request to view all relevant microfilm records directly?
Eric Boehlert puts the pieces together into a narrative. Read and decide for yourself.
Finally, I note that Dan Bartlett is saying you can't read the mind of a dead man. (Full transcript of the Bartlett interview here. I have to say, this (PDF) seems pretty clear to me:
18 August 1973
Memo to FileSUBJECT: CYA
1. Staudt has obviously pressured Hodges more about Bush. I’m having trouble running interference and doing my job. Harris gave me a message today from Grp regarding Bush’s OETR and Staudt is pushing to sugar coat it. Bush wasn’t here during rating period and I don’t have any feedback from 187th in Alabama. I will not rate. Austin is not happy today either.
OK, I've seen enough cheap shots at the Yankees for daring to ask Beelzebud Selig to enfore the rules of the game viz the Devil Rays not showing up on time for the scheduled doubleheader on Monday. If you're going to insist on making the Yankees out to be the bad guys, would you please read this Jayson Stark column and this Derek Zumsteg piece first? I'll quote a bit from Zumsteg's article for those who don't subscribe to the Baseball Prospectus:
I'm sympathetic to their plight, and even agree with the idea that games should be decided on the field. But Selig's comment bothers me. Isn't the whole point of having a forfeiture rule in place that you want the games to be decided on the field? If you're a half-game up on a team, with a day left in the season, and want to skip a day to get your rotation right, you could just make up some crazy excuse that involves your families and get away with it. "We were on the team charter bus to the ballpark, see, and we saw this kid by the side of the road, see, so we stopped to help him, see, and he told us his orphanage was on fire, see, and uh, we all got out and helped rescue kids from this burning orphanage for a couple of hours and missed the game. It's weird that this wasn't on the news or anything."There's another valid point that Joe Torre made: "The only thing that bothers me about the whole thing is that we were ready to play a doubleheader yesterday. We had our guys out here all day." And they did. Players don't like doubleheaders. It's six hours guaranteed on the field, even if you play hurry-up ball for one of the games, even skipping batting practice, and that means it's much, much longer than that at the park. There are worse fates, but why should teams be able to inflict that on another team without penalty?
The rule is entirely clear on this. 4.15: "A game may be forfeited to the opposing team when a team (a) Fails to appear upon the field, or being upon the field, refuses to start play within five minutes after the umpire has called 'Play' at the appointed hour for beginning the game, unless such delayed appearance is, in the umpire's judgment, unavoidable."
The Devil Rays didn't appear on the field at all. They forfeit.
What's even stranger is that Selig apparently got on the phone and told the teams to play one game of their doubleheader and that they'd work out the rest later. Technically, 9.04a(6) says that it's the crew chief's duty to decide when a game shall be forfeited, not the Commissioner's. Now, I guess under 4.01, there's a bit of what happened: "Unless the home club shall have given previous notice that the game has been postponed or will be delayed in starting, the umpire, or umpires, shall enter the playing field five minutes before the hour set for the game to begin and proceed directly to home base where they shall be met by the managers of the opposing teams."
The Commish can call the home team, twist their arm, and the home team can give notice that the game's been postponed, but I don't see where the home team has to comply.
I knew that the Poincare Conjecture had to be in the news recently because I was getting a bunch of search engine referrals for it, and here it is: Via Slashdot, a Reuters story that doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. Does its appearance as news mean there's actual progress since this 2003 Mathworld story? I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like it to me - the Yahoo! filing under "Oddly Enough" would seem to be a clue. But hey, I could be wrong.
Eric Zorn asks ArchPundit Five Easy Questions, the latter of which is of interest to me:
5. In all modesty, describe your current place in the blogosphere and where you see that place and your role in the future of this medium.
I think that along with a few folks like South Knox Bubba and Off the Kuff by Charles Kuffner, I'm the first wave of state politics blogs.While I love talking about national politics, it's always seemed to me that state and local politics were the areas that could most be reinvigorated by web logs.
Larger media outlets have limited resources and even Congressional races are only given cursory coverage. Given our lives are most affected by state and local governments from school boards to state legislatures it seems strange that information about them is the most lacking.
I hope that in Illinois, and to a lesser extent in Missouri, my coverage offers insight into those levels of government.
I don't have any pretensions that my site is able to do this all by itself, but I think it may be one of the first to really address those issues and hopefully be a starting point for others.
I've said before that the blog style is well suited for campaign coverage in a newspaper's online edition. Amateurs like me can only do so much. Among other things, I'm not following the school finance lawsuit as closely as I should. Only so many hours in the day and so many brain cycles to go around. But I do think I'm adding something, even if it is just a glorified press-clipping service sometimes, and I'm happy with that. Thanks for the kind words, ArchPundit!
Admit it - yesterday felt like Monday, right? If so, then today must be Texas Tuesday, with our special guest star Jim Nickerson, running against Ralph "I Was DINO Before DINO Was Cool" Hall in CD04. Learn more about Jim here and here, and show him some love. This starts our return engagement with the Congressional races, which will continue through Election Day. We'll have the ActBlue page updated for Nickerson later today and will keep it updated for all of the Texas Tuesdays candidates as we go forward.
What's one more ethics complaint where Tom DeLay is involved?
A formal complaint was filed with the Texas Ethics Committee against the University of Houston-Clear Lake, because of the reception held at the university honoring House Majority Leader Tom DeLay."I believe the university used funds for a political event, which goes against even the university's own ethics policy," said John Cobarruvias, vice president of the Bay Area New Democrats in Clear Lake.
Cobarruvias was one of the key organizers of the Aug. 24 protest that objected DeLay's presence on the campus. The protest included 100 protesters holding signs and one small group who interrupted DeLay's speech, and had to be physically removed from the building by university police.
Eric Gerber, interim director of communications for UH, said the university takes no political stand, but instead had invited DeLay to speak because he is a distinguished alumnus of UH and a "very important lawmaker."
"Tom DeLay is a friend to higher education," Gerber said. "No state funds were spent (for the reception)."
He added that DeLay has supported UH and NASA by helping obtain grant funding for space experimentation and studies, which was another reason for the visit.
Cobarruvias also alleged that the university was plainly showing preference by sending a mass e-mail that invited guests to the reception that would "introduce DeLay to his new district."
"This is not his district, and by the university stating this in their e-mail they are showing political preference," Cobarruvias said. "This isn't fair."
To make it "fair," Cobarruvias suggests the university "do the same for all candidates."
UPDATE: The complaint is against UH-CL, not Tom DeLay as I said originally. Thanks to Patrick for the catch.
And the race for District Attorney in Waller County to replace the outgoing Oliver Kitzman is on.
The Waller County Democratic Party's Executive Committee has chosen Sylvia Cedillo, 39, a civil rights attorney who directs the Domestic Violence Project at Prairie View A&M, according to a statement released Monday.The executive committee of the county's Republican Party last week chose Assistant District Attorney William Parham, 52, said GOP Chairwoman Ann Davis.
Cedillo and Parham will be facing off in the Nov. 2 general election to fill the remaining two years of Kitzman's term.
Decent article on the six historic Wards of Houston, which were municipal government areas from the late 19th century. Unfortunately, the hardcopy Lifestyle cover, which included a map of the wards and famous places within them, doesn't seem to appear online. It therefore may not mean all that much to you when I say that I first lived in the Second Ward, moved to the Sixth Ward, and now reside in the First Ward. But at least now I know this for myself.
Couple of points of interest:
The city's form of government changed in 1906, but nearly 100 years later the wards remain a cultural touchstone, especially in the areas that have remained primarily residential areas from the beginning — the Second Ward, the Third Ward and the Fifth Ward.And so signs proclaiming "Third Ward is our home, and it's not for sale" began sprouting last spring, signaling a grass-roots uprising against developers angling to turn a chunk of the near southeast side into just another plot of town houses and strip malls. The neighborhoods may be modest, residents say, but their roots are worth fighting for.
"Everybody likes to feel they have a past," says local historian Ann Wilson. "I think it's good. I like to see it remembered."
The preservation ordinance went on the books in 1995, but not before city planners turned the law into a running joke by giving property owners two ways to dodge it. First, while the Houston Archeological & Historical Commission, the 12-member panel that administers the law, has the power to deny a demolition permit, the property owner can simply wait 90 days, then legally tear down the structure anyway. A more expedient way around the ordinance is to apply for a "certificate of non-designation" from the city planning department. The non-designation, which is routinely granted if the building hasn't already been given landmark status, allows the property owner to proceed with demolition without first appearing before the historical commission.The inherent weakness of the ordinance has made it impossible to enforce. Not a single citation has ever been issued, not a nickel in fines has ever been levied. Meanwhile, a number of antiquated homes with distinguished-sounding names -- Allen-Paul, Ross Sterling, Brosius-Alexander, DeGeorge -- have been razed, to say nothing of how thoroughly Freedmen's Town, a 40-block neighborhood built and settled by former slaves, has been scraped clean.
From the moment the ordinance was passed, preservation advocates, including the historical commission itself, realized that it was powerless to save the city's architectural and cultural heritage. Three years ago they began revising the law, a process that will culminate later this spring, when City Council considers a series of amendments to the ordinance.
But as it stands now, the proposed new ordinance offers only a slight improvement over the existing one. For example, the 90-day demolition delay has been extended to a proposed 180 days. And the new ordinance still would allow property owners to avoid a hearing before the historical commission by securing a certificate of non-designation from city planners.
The Fourth Ward is trickier territory. It was the hub of African-American life after the Civil War as freed slaves settled in the area there known as Freedmen's Town. Many of the historical landmarks have been razed in the name of progress — replaced with town houses, apartments, restaurants — and the area has been rechristened Midtown.Marcia Johnson, chairwoman of the Fourth Ward Redevelopment Corp., can only sigh. Founded in the late 1990s, the organization is concerned with preserving the area's historical vibrancy, but many people claim it is too late.
"So much has been destroyed," Johnson says.
[Patricia Smith Prather, executive director of the Texas Trailblazer Preservation Association] is more blunt.
"The developers have literally stolen the Fourth Ward," she says. "It's gone. There's no high school there. There's no library there."
On a side note, I'm pretty sure that the Freedmen's area extends into the Sixth Ward. I base that observation on the Freedmen's Town signs I've seen on Weat Dallas just outside of downtown, which is the area I used to live in.
If the charges in this LA Times story are true, then the problems in Waller County go way beyond whether or not Prairie View students can vote in local elections.
In lawsuits, documented complaints to authorities and interviews, civic leaders pieced together a detailed allegation of what they called a "reign of terror" shouldered by the black community here.Kitzman and other white officials denied that anyone had been targeted or harassed because of race.
But black leaders described the county as a throwback to a time the South had tried to overcome — a time when black men were called "boys," or worse, and whites walled off the political and justice systems to keep blacks out.
They allege not only that crude intimidation techniques were used — rocks thrown through house windows, police cars passing slowly and repeatedly by homes of black "troublemakers" — but even schemes to suppress blacks' voting rights.
They charged that authorities routinely declined to pursue cases brought against white residents by black residents. Conversely, they said, flimsy charges and indictments were frequently drummed up against black community leaders, only to result in dropped charges and acquittals, but not before damage was done to reputations and meager bank accounts.
"It is selective prosecution. This is the new front in civil rights," said Waller County Judge DeWayne Charleston, a black justice of the peace who repeatedly faced ethics and timecard falsification charges. He has been cleared by state ethics officials and has not been convicted of a crime.
"The objective is not to get a conviction," he said. "They don't care about that. The objective is to hit you in your wallet, to discredit you, to disenfranchise you."
[...]
[Herschel Smith, the head of an activist group called the Waller County Leadership Council] said many black pastors, government officials and civic activists had become accustomed to an unsettling pattern.
"You get charged, so you have to post bail," Smith said. "Then you have to hire an attorney. Then you've got to take days off of work so you can go to court and deal with the charge. So you lose your job. So you're broke. So you get evicted. Can you believe this still goes on today?"
Smith alleged that he had been assaulted last year by a white politician after a tense meeting. A police detective confirmed that she has filed a misdemeanor assault charge in the altercation, although the district attorney's office so far has declined to pursue the case.
Smith's allegation was one of many contained in the lawsuit and in other documented complaints to authorities.
Jerryl A. Brandyberg, a science and ROTC instructor at an area high school and an election judge, said he had been falsely accused of voting in the wrong place because he maintained a home in San Antonio.
He said he had been charged even though he had told authorities that his family had a second home there because his wife, who is in the military, worked nearby. Brandyberg, who is black, said he had been targeted unfairly and accused of voting irregularities simply because white officials did not like the outcome of a municipal election he recently had overseen. His case is expected to go to trial this year.
"Any charge these people can muster against you, they will take it," he said. "You hear about a new case all the time. Everyone in this county knows it goes on."
My buddy Dan Wallach has an op-ed in the Statesman from a few days ago about Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems and how they're set up to work in Texas. Whatever one thinks about DREs versus other styles of voting machine, I think as can all agree that this is a concern:
Many people also would be surprised to know that the certification of our voting systems happens in secret. The "independent testing authorities" who examine them are bound by non-disclosure agreements with the vendors; we never learn what their testers uncover. Likewise, Texas' own examinations happen behind closed doors, a practice that may violate state laws.Requests made through Texas' Open Records Act to disclose these findings have yielded superficial reports that indicate a lack of time and resources spent on the examination. So we have little evidence to support election officials' claims that DRE systems are meaningfully secure.
Some recommendations and observations:
What about accessibility? The Help America Vote Act mandates that every precinct have at least one accessible voting system by 2006. DREs are not the only systems that can satisfy this requirement. Computer-assisted ballot marking devices have a DRE-like computer interface but print onto standard optical scan ballots. Such systems cost far less money than an all-DRE solution, while preserving the verifiability and transparency of paper ballots.How does Texas compare nationally? Other states have been far more active than Texas in studying the problems associated with DRE systems. Maryland and Ohio have commissioned detailed independent studies by security experts. Nevada and California are adopting requirements that electronic voting systems must print paper ballots that voters will verify. Texas should take similar steps.
What can we do to protect our votes? Several Texas counties use DRE systems for early voting and optical scan systems on Election Day. Voters in those counties can choose to vote on Election Day, creating a permanent record of their vote. Other counties should follow the recommendations of a recent report from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which defines detailed policies and procedures to minimize the risks inherent in DRE systems.
Tiffany is back at work as of today, which means that Olivia is in day care. Only part time, mind you, as Tiffany is working a half schedule through the end of the year, but today is the first day.
I will be the primary dropoff person. Tiffany catches a vanpool ride to work which leaves at 6:45, and the doors at the Esperanza infant house don't open until 6:30, so the margin is too close for her to take Olivia there. This means a change in my work schedule, since I'm used to being at my desk by 6:30, but not that big a change. I may have to insist on taking the Subaru when I drop Olivia off because I can already tell that getting her into and out of the baby seat in the back of our Saturn coupe is going to be a major pain in the rear.
So it's going to be a transition period for all of us. We're easing into it this week - I'm taking Tuesday and Thursday afternoons off in order to spring Olivia from day care early, and Tiffany is off on Wednesday - but the opening chapter of Olivia's life is now complete. Ready or not, the next phase is here.
The Richard Morrison Labor Day Bus Ride got some coverage from KHOU. Fluffy coverage, but still better than no coverage. TV news is good for something, I guess. Via The Stakeholder.
I note at the end of the story that KHOU contacted Tom DeLay for an interview, but never heard back from him. Apparently, he's too busy receiving phony awards from the Boy Scouts for such matters, as well as being too tired out from his most recent campaign flipflop.
Richard Morrison will be featured next week on Texas Tuesdays? But why wait? Give to him now, or give to the other Texas Tuesday candidates. You'll be glad you did.
Some data from the latest Texas Poll:
Fifty-six percent of poll respondents answered "yes" to the question of whether "the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over." Thirty-eight percent said "no," and 6 percent said they didn't know or didn't answer.An identical poll taken in spring 2003 showed 72 percent of Texans agreed with the decision to go to war.
Despite their support for the war, Texans say that it is not going well for the United States, with 67 percent rating progress there so far as "poor" or "fair," while 31 percent answered "excellent" or "good."The poll also shows that a slight majority of Texans say the war on terrorism is not going well, with 44 percent of respondents rating its progress as "excellent" or "good" and 54 percent answering "fair or poor."
Four of five Texans say terrorist attacks on the United States are likely in the next year, with most believing they will come before the Nov. 2 national elections.
Respondents were almost evenly divided on whether the war in Iraq has made the United States safer from terrorism, with 45 percent saying it has and 50 percent saying it has not.
Looks like we'll be getting a weekly dose of Congressional race reports from the Chron now - last week was Lampson v. Poe, and this week is Frost v. Sessions. Not a whole lot of new ground here if you've been following things all along, but I thought this bit was interesting:
The contest features two party loyalists, both members of the influential House Rules Committee, whose rhetoric reflects their clear ideological differences."He's (Frost is) more liberal than people who are from states where they're proud to be liberal. You have to work at that," Sessions said in a recent interview.
And Frost said of Sessions: "While I'm trying to do something for Dallas, he's an ideologue. He's off on the right wing."
Most political experts, including Jillson, say the district's voting history, at roughly 57 percent Republican, will make it difficult for Frost to win.
"He needs some sort of perfect chemical reaction, like cold fusion, to get where he needs to go," said Chris Homan, Sessions' campaign manager.
Frost, who points out that he is the only Jewish member of Congress from Texas, has gathered money and volunteers from North Dallas' sizable Jewish community and has mobilized union support from the area's defense and aerospace plants. He is working particularly hard to register Hispanics, who make up 36 percent of the district's population but only 13 percent of its voters.
"(Former Dallas Mayor) Ron Kirk was not able to get that done when he ran for Senate, and they spent a ton of money and time trying to maximize that vote," said state Rep. Kenny Marchant, a Republican from suburban Carrollton who was influential in Austin in shaping North Texas' congressional districts.
Marchant, who has all but won the safely Republican 24th District congressional seat, said Sessions' district is likely to become more competitive in the future if Hispanics become a political force. Sessions, who is seeking a fifth term, said he is not conceding the Hispanic vote and has hired a young political consultant from Houston, Neftali Partida, to work the area.
"If we're going to be the party of the majority, we have to talk to the majority of the people," Sessions said. "We're going to reach out. If they don't want to reach back, that's their business."
Frost will indeed have to do better than Ron Kirk did in 2002 at registering and bringing out Hispanic voters, and he'll have to do it without a Hispanic candidate at the top of the ticket. I like to think that Kirk laid some ground for him two years ago, but we won't know that until November.
Martin Frost will be featured again on Texas Tuesdays in the coming weeks. I interviewed Martin Frost a few months ago, as did Byron. You can donate to Martin Frost here, you can visit the Texas Tuesdays ActBlue page and give to any of the Texas Democratic candidates, and you can give to the DCCC to help them help Frost and others take back the House.
Rice 10, UH 7. Sweeeet. Shoulda been a shutout, but the Rice secondary finally got burned on the last play of the game for UH. Best defensive effort I've seen in a long time, and given how effective UH was at stopping the Rice option, it was needed. Way to go, Owls!
If any of you were at that game, those were my dulcet tones you heard over the PA during the MOB pregame and halftime show. I've now done everything there is to do in the MOB - I've conducted, I've show-assistanted, and now I've narrated the halftime show.
Oh, and as noted in the game writeup on Owlzone:
Now all three rivalry trophies (Bayou Bucket, Bayou Cup and Silver Glove) belong to the Owls
College football gets started a day late for me, as the Rice Owls open their season today. I surfed through a few games on TV yesterday and was reminded often that for me, in many games involving a BCS program, the question is not who I'm rooting for but who I'm rooting against. I don't particularly care about Utah, for example, but I'm perfectly happy to see them whip the Aggies, and had I come across that game on TV I'd have been there pulling for the Utes.
I think college football fans are motivated at least as much by whom they don't like as by whom they do, but I'm curious if you agree with me on this. Note, by the way, that this is about football. I can understand wanting to see the Duke basketball team lose, but is their football team worth getting worked up about? With that in mind, which college football teams give you the most pleasure by losing? Here are mine:
1. Texas A&M - Hiring Coach Fraudchione was about the only thing they could have done to make me like them any less.
2. Nebraska - Does anyone actually need a reason to dislike the Cornhuskers?
3. (tie) Colorado, Colorado State - The Buffs for their recent record of overall thuggery that would make Lawrence Phillips blush and for having foisted Bill McCartney on an unsuspecting world, and the Rams for being the instigators of the clandestine breakup of the WAC-16. Yesterday reminded me how much I wish it were still possible to get a tie in college football, since there's no longer any desireable outcome when they play each other.
4. Texas Christian - A late entrant to my list, but their relentless social climbing and remarkably obnoxious fans would be enough to merit consideration even if they weren't the springboard for Coach Fraud to gain national prominence. The shame of it is that TCU is the kind of school I'd rather root for - smallish, private, decent academic standards, rich football history. I did root for them in the Jim Wacker days. I give Fraudchione much of the blame for their transformation from good guys to louts, but his departure changed nothing, so here they are.
5. Florida State - Two words: Bobby Bowden.
So who do you love to see lose?
I mostly want to take the weekend off from politics, but Houstonians ought to be sure they read this article on the upcoming fight over differing revenue cap proposals. As I said before, I plan on voting against both of them, but may be forced to vote for Prop 1 if it looks like both will pass since I think it's not as bad as Prop 2. You won't see any Presidential advertising around here, and you may or may not see some Congressional ads, but you'll see plenty of ads for and against these two propositions. Get ready for it.
The New Improved Redesigned Style Section of the Houston Chronicle has a feature called Street Fashion which caught my eye on Thursday. Basically, they photograph a couple of women on the street and ask them about their clothes. One of the women this time was a 27-year-old who was wearing a T-shirt that read "Product of the 80s". There's no direct link, but if you go to the Arts and Entertainment page and click on "Street Fashion", then choose the profile for Leslie, you'll see what I mean.
Now I figure Leslie, who was born in 1977, is no more a product of the 80s than I (born in 1966) am a product of the 70s. Sure, I grew up on 70s TV, but for the most part, I didn't really experience the culture of the decade because I was too young. By my reckoning, the decade in which one is in high school and college is a much better fit for "Product Of" status than the decade in which one was in elementary and middle school. That's when I really soaked up things like the politics, the fashion, the music (most of which, I note, I really hated at the time, an irony not lost on me every time I listen to The Point). How can I call myself a product of the 70s when I don't really remember the 70s? It just makes more sense to me that I'm a product of the 80s, which in turn makes Leslie a product of the 90s. Right?
Tiffany disagreed with me on this. She says we're already shaped as a child by the fashions of the prevailing decade which our parents made us wear. I'm the exception, having gone to Catholic school and thus wearing a boring uniform for much of my 70s-era childhood, not the rule. Besides, she said, "There's plenty of the 80s to go around." I had to concede that point.
So I ask you, the reader. Which decade are you a product of? What age were you during that time? What's the biggest factor in determining which decade imprints on you?
The Guv's numbers are better than before, but they're still net negative.
Some 47 percent in the Scripps Howard survey rated the governor's job performance as fair or poor, a five-point drop from last spring's poll during a failed special legislative session on school finance, when more than half disapproved.The results, showing Perry's approval rating at 43 percent, are contained in the latest Scripps Howard survey of 1,000 adult Texans Aug. 9-26. Last spring, Perry was popular with only 37 percent of Texans.
The latest poll includes 38 percent Republicans, 26 percent Democrats and 25 percent independents.
Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said the governor continues to base policies on principles rather than polls, but a political scientist said the latest results look bad for Perry.
The relatively high percentage of Republicans polled underscore how troubling Perry's ratings are, said Bob Stein, Rice University political scientist.
"This is not an incumbent governor who should feel good about being re-elected," said Stein. "This is going to only add additional evidence that Kay Bailey Hutchison and the comptroller will think seriously about running against the governor."
Hutchison's popularity soars ahead of all other state leaders, the poll shows, with 62 percent saying she's doing excellent or good versus 24 percent who rate her fair to poor.
[...]
Strayhorn rates positively with 45 percent of Texans polled, versus only 39 percent during the ill-fated legislative session last spring.
She rates negatively with only 23 percent of those polled. Another 32 percent said they didn't know either way.
Strayhorn, formerly known as Carole Keeton Rylander, said she thinks her numbers would markedly improve if voters were asked what they think of "one tough grandma," a campaign slogan that stuck.
"I'm extremely pleased. I've never been on the ballot as Strayhorn before," she said. "The voters are giving me a 2-to-1 approval rating. This year I have been aggressively in the trenches, speaking up, speaking out about critical issues in this state. People like that."
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst also has fairly low name recognition, the poll indicates, with 36 percent polled saying they didn't know enough to rate him. He rated favorably with 35 percent of those polled and unfavorably with 29 percent.
It was rumor and now it's reality.
Mike Toomey, a former lawmaker and lobbyist who had served as Gov. Rick Perry's chief of staff for nearly two years and served as a chief architect of Perry's legislative initiatives, announced today that he will resign on Labor Day.A replacement was not immediately announced. Kathy Walt, Perry's press secretary, said the governor plans to "move rather quickly" to fill the key post, but she gave no timetable.
[...]
Toomey, 52, could not immediately be reached for comment on his plans. His departure to return to lobbying and government consulting had been rumored for several weeks.
The governor's office says the resignation was anticipated because Toomey agreed to serve and help the governor through the 2003 legislative session. Now that session is over, Toomey plans to return to the private sector.
UPDATE: More from the Chron. No mention of the grand jury, but they did note his connection to a gambling industry lobbyist.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled today in favor of the Dallas Observer and against two Denton County public officials who sued the alternative newspaper over a 1999 satire it published.The 8-0 ruling by the court came in a lawsuit over a Dallas Observer article about the fictional arrest of a 6-year-old girl.
The piece, published in 1999 under the headline "Stop the Madness," was a parody of the actual arrest of a 13-year-old Ponder student for reading a graphic Halloween story to the class. The fictional story was about a girl jailed for a report on Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are."
Denton County Court-at-law Judge Darlene Whitten and District Attorney Bruce Isaacks said the fictional story was presented as news and damaged their reputations.
The Dallas Observer said the article, which some readers thought was true, was satire and designed to poke fun. An attorney for the newspaper argued the piece was protected by the First Amendment.
The court agreed, saying a reasonable reader of the entire article would realize it was not true and was intended as satire. The justices rejected lower court opinions and said Whitten and Isaacks should take nothing in the case.
Cindy's trouble began Monday morning, when the mother of one of her classmates called school officials to complain that students at Ponder were encouraged to read books that could cause students to think dangerous thoughts. The officials then contacted Dr. Byron Welch, who runs the Denton county school district, who in turn contacted juvenile authorities."In this day and age, you never know what students might do, and I can't risk another Columbine," Welch says. "Frankly, these kids scare the crap out of me."
Welch also confirmed reports that school representatives will soon join several local faith-based organizations, including God-Fearing Opponents of Freedom (GOOF), and ask publishers to review content guidelines for children's books.
By 5 p.m. Tuesday, the day's events were beginning to take their toll on Cindy, who asked her mom to bring her pink pajamas, the ones with the kangaroos on them, before lights-out."I don't get why everyone's so mad," Cindy said in a phone interview from the detention center. "Just 'cause I like how Max told his mom he wanted to eat her up and ran away in his mind and did a rumpus with the monsters doesn't mean I would do those things."
Cindy scoffed at the suggestion that Where the Wild Things Are can corrupt young minds.
"Like, I'm sure," she said. "It's bad enough people think like Salinger and Twain are dangerous, but Sendak? Give me a break, for Christ's sake. Excuse my French."
UPDATE: How Appealing has links to actual serious commentary plus a PDF of the court's decision. Via Seth.
UPDATE: Beldar has some good commentary on this in the comments. Check it out.
Another controversy in Prairie View as the Waller County Commissioners voted along racial and partisan lines to reject a second voting location on the PVAM campus.
The 3-to-2 vote surprised minority leaders who thought county Judge Owen Ralston, a white Republican, would be willing to join with the court's two Democrats, both black, to approve the voting location on the mostly minority campus.The Commissioners Court recently approved the use of the county's community center at the south edge of the campus to serve as the lone polling place for both the university and the small, mostly black town that adjoins it.
Proponents of the central campus site said the community building, five minutes by foot from the center of campus, is inconvenient and intimidating to student voters.
However, Ralston countered that the Memorial Student Center, proposed by minority and student leaders for the second voting site, is too noisy and crowded to meet legal security requirements for voting.
"There's not a place in that building that meets the election code," he said. "We need to find a better place if there's to be voting on the campus."
Ralston then voted with Republicans Frank Pokluda, Precinct 2 commissioner, and Louis Canales, Precinct 4 commissioner, to kill the central campus polling site. Both commissioners are white.
Supporting the site were Precinct 1 Commissioner Leroy Singleton and Precinct 3 Commissioner Milton Whiting.
Prairie View Mayor Frank Jackson, who urged commissioners to approve the second polling place in "the spirit of democracy," called the surprise outcome "a double-cross." He said the university administration had agreed to take steps to close off part of the student center to ensure voters' privacy.
"We came here thinking this had all been worked out," he said. "Then they come up with this."
State Rep. Al Edwards, D-Houston, called the court's decision "pure racist" and vowed to complain to the Texas secretary of state and the U.S. Justice Department.
The Justice Department has overseen Waller County elections for years, and the department launched a civil rights investigation related to student-voting issues last year.
I'm trying to make sense of this op-ed piece which ran in the Chron and the WaPo yesterday, in which Kenny Boy Lay claims that there's a political motive behind his criminal indictment. (It's also now the sole content on KenLayInfo.com.)
[W]hy can't we get on to trial? Perhaps, as my lawyers said in a court filing, it's because the acting attorney general was "unable to determine whether he was announcing an indictment or holding a political rally" and finally decided on the latter. Some other statements at that rally:● Linda C. Thomsen, deputy director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission: "[T]he President's Corporate Task Force, which celebrates its second anniversary tomorrow... [has demonstrated that] just the mention of the name Enron evokes images of duplicity and greed."
● Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark W. Everson: "[T]he corporate culture of Enron guided by Mr. Lay is now synonymous with corporate fraud and greed at its worst. And Enron's crooked 'E' logo depicts the corporate management team at Enron—crooked."
Are these signs of a dispassionate prosecution of crime? To me they look more like part of a political campaign. Perhaps most telling: In the Justice Department's news release on my indictment, one must get to the 19th paragraph (third from the last) before there is any mention of "presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty."
In March, when the Enron Task Force's long-term director, Leslie Caldwell, resigned, it was announced that Andrew Weissmann would replace her. In four months his new team did what the two previous teams were unable, or unwilling, to do after more than two years of intensive investigation: It indicted me on peripheral violations having little or nothing to do with the collapse of Enron. Then it illogically tagged me on to an earlier mega-indictment against others that had already been declared "complex." The maneuver meant that I had been accused and thus "taken off the table" as a political issue for this year's election, the assumption being that I could not possibly get an open, public trial before November.Now, I know about politics. I have been active for years and I ask neither sympathy nor special treatment. But justice is a different issue. The tragic circumstances surrounding the collapse of Enron and the harm it caused to so many victims is something I will take to my grave. My inability to save Enron is one of my greatest regrets. But I am guilty of no crime and eager to prove my innocence. Our Constitution guarantees justice and a speedy trial. Yet, without the agreement of the President's Task Force, as hard as I may try, I may not be granted either.
There's attention now, but not in the way that Lay implies. From where I sit, the main effect of the indictments has been to excite Bush opponents and to bring the whole Enron story back into the news. If there's any benefit to that to the Bush administration, why aren't they making a point to talk about it and brag about their impending victory for justice? The fact that they're not is why I believe if there were political calculations being made here, the task force would have deferred everything until after November, not brought them to the forefront now. I don't see how Lay's interpretation of it makes sense.
But all this is almost irrelevant anyway. I just don't see Enron being a deciding factor in anyone's vote this year regardless. I thought it might have an effect in 2002, but there wasn't. I don't believe it will be any different now.
Last week I saw a neighbor wearing an It's Worth It button. Yesterday I saw an It's Worth It bumper sticker on a car. That's already way more popular acceptance of any marketing scheme for the city of Houston than I've ever seen.
Scroll down to "Is This Job Worth It?" in this week's Hairballs and you'll see that the HIWI scheme may have one more salutary benefit.
When you get elected mayor of the country's fourth-largest city despite being charisma-free, you tend to be thankful to the guys who ran your ad campaign. And Houston Mayor Bill White certainly is.So when those ad guys -- the company sports the precious name ttweak -- put together a pro-bono PR campaign to boost Houston's image, you would think most city bureaucrats would say it's just wonderful.
That's not, however, what Jordy Tollett did. Tollett, the head of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, has been giving a cold shoulder to ttweak's "Houston -- It's Worth It" campaign. He told the Houston Chronicle the campaign's point -- listing things like heat and traffic, then saying the city is still Worth It -- only highlights negative aspects of what he prefers to call Space City. He later refused to talk to a New York Times reporter for a story on it.
White is annoyed and is looking to oust Tollett, the rumor mill says.
I've been puzzling over Speaker Hastert's bizarre (and in a just world, libelous) claim that George Soros may have made his fortune through narcotics trafficking (see video of it here, see Soros' response to Hastert here (PDF), and see Josh Marshall's commentary to Hastert's lame and misdirected response here). Thankfully, this Slate piece helped me figure it out - Hastert is apparently a stooge of Lyndon LaRouche.
Where did Hastert get the notion that Soros might be getting money from drug cartels? A good guess would be the organization headed by political fantasist, convicted felon, and perpetual presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. This campaign literature from the "LaRouche in 2004" Web site, dated Oct. 29, 2003, makes the drug charge directly:
Years of investigation by LaRouche's associates have answered that question in grisly detail: Soros's money comes from impoverishment of the poor countries against whose currencies he speculates, and from deadly mind-destroying, terrorism-funding drugs.
(Emphasis in the original.)The LaRouchie slander of Soros dates back to the early '90s. Michael Lewis recorded an anti-Soros protest by LaRouche followers in a Jan. 10, 1994, profile in the New Republic. Since then, the drug charge has been a LaRouche literature mainstay. See, for example, this cached copy of a 2002 interview with LaRouche from his organization's Executive Intelligence Review.
Of course, what Jack Shafer and everyone else seems to be overlooking is that the LaRouchies are traditionally associated with the Democratic Party. Is the Republican Speaker of the House actually a stalking horse for the paranoid lunatic fringe that plagues his political opponents? I'm saying we just don't know.
Taking on Tom DeLay and The Stakeholder note that Tom DeLay has been kept very much under wraps at this year's GOP convention, which is not how it was back in 2000. I'll let you follow their links - here's one they missed, which is more about the lack of media access to many convention events and which touches on the NYSE event which I giggled about yesterday.
Meanwhile, Rich Connelly takes note of the UH-Clear Lake reception for DeLay, for which NASA made a pretty fast flipflop in its policy about employee campaign activities.
Brian Leiter comments on Rice's new President and gives his thoughts on how it can beef up its humanities departments. Check it out.
One comment, since I know my Rice friends will make note of this:
Rice's gross endowment ranks 17th in the nation, just behind Duke, and ahead of Cornell, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Brown, NYU, and many others. More significant is that the value of its endowment per student is $640,569, making Rice the 12th wealthiest school in the country...[T]he endowment is used, in part, to keep the tuition relatively low compared to peer schools. That is plainly an advantage in terms of maintaining an outstanding student body. But one imagines that some of this great wealth could also be utilized to strengthen the faculty in some target areas.
Lorenzo Sadun is now an official write-in candidate for CD10, as the Secretary of State certified his petition signatures. He's been challenging Mike McCaul to debate him, but so far McCaul hasn't responded. Can't say I blame him, since the frontrunner seldom has more to gain than to lose in any debate format, but one might still ask what exactly McCaul is worried about. I'm sure he can take a few minutes out from his busy schedule of lining up committee memberships to speak to the voters.
Lorenzo Sadun will be featured in the upcoming weeks on Texas Tuesdays. You can donate to him now, you can give to all of the Texas Tuesday candidates, and you can help the DCCC help them all. So many choices, so little time.
The Houston Press has a fascinating interview with former Astros great JR Richard. If what he says is true here, he really got screwed by his former team:
DH: How did the Houston Astros organization help you during your recovery?JR: I don't see anything they've done at all to help me recover.
DH: They didn't check in on you at all?
JR: Yeah, to see if I could pitch again. That was the checking they did.
DH: They weren't interested in J.R. Richard the person?
JR: No, they were not. I think it was pretty self-evident how they were interested in me. If they had been interested in me and I was such a valuable asset to the ball club, why wasn't I checked earlier? Why wasn't I checked all those times I was complaining?
[...]
DH: What did Nolan Ryan or other Astros do to help during your recovery?
JR: Nothing. Not a thing.
[...]
DH: In the winter of 1994 you were broke, homeless and living under a Houston freeway bridge. Was there no one you could turn to?
JR: There may have been, but there wasn't anyone I knew of.
DH: What about the Astros?
JR: The Astros? As a matter of fact, the Astros stole $300,000 from me.
DH: How'd they do that?
JR: My deferred compensation. I needed some money, so I went there [to the Astros] and got some money. And, they took $300,000 because I got the money.
DH: So they penalized you for taking the money early?
JR: Right, which is some BS. I'll tell you about the Astros. I went to them to see if I could do some public relations for them. They said, "Okay, we'll get back to you," and time passed and passed and passed. Nothing. Then, I see they hired Nolan Ryan. Now what does that tell you? They retired jerseys for Mike Scott and Larry Dierker. I got a better record than both those guys. What does that tell you?
The Orange Show is doing some repairs on their headquarters and on the Beer Can House.
For the Orange Show, wind and dust attack its fragile sculptures and painted surfaces constantly, while one of the wettest Junes on record compounded problems like peeling paint and rust, and forced the popular East End attraction to close last month for repainting and other repairs.For the Beer Can House in Houston's West End, the threat is partly weather-related, too, but it stems from multifamily development on either side of the popular house.
"We normally close the Orange Show for maintenance three months in the winter, but we had to do it (last) month because all the rain we've had complicated things," said executive director Susanne Theis. Bigger preservation issues include a cracking foundation and failing plumbing.
Adrian de la Cerda, in charge of general maintenance and surface restoration, has worked four years for the Orange Show. " The biggest challenge is keeping up, chasing after the weather," he said. "We paint one area, and three years later we're back where we started.
"Most is relatively easy work -- scraping, sanding, repainting. I don't do anything that is not reversible. Things like plumbing -- we had a leak in the men's room -- and foundation repair, is left to the experts."
[...]
Two years ago, the organization raised $194,000 to acquire its second art environment, the shimmering Beer Can House. The foundation also renamed itself the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art last fall to reflect its broadened role and physical expansion.
Beneath its sheath of glittering aluminum, the Beer Can House at 222 Malone in the West End is a traditional pier-and-beam bungalow built in the late 1930s. Over decades, its late owner, John Milkovisch, transformed it into a mirage, with streamers made from the tops and bottoms of his emptied aluminum cans. Milkovisch hung the streamers from eaves all around the house and dangled them from trees. He also flattened the dissected cans to decorate his fences and planters and to use as a substitute for commercial aluminum siding.
The aluminum streamers are losing their shine as pollution and rust from their steel wire links take their toll. Trees on adjacent lots that once protected the house and shaded the garden have been replaced by townhouses on one side and cut down in advance of more building on the other. Runoff is creating drainage problems, and the loss of trees has promoted an invasion of weeds that is wreaking havoc on the hand-made concrete walkways.
"We've been trying to come up with a solution," Theis said. One scenario is to restore the house on site and prevent development from harming it, she said. That would entail buying the now denuded adjacent lot (or at least a portion of it) to accommodate parking and protect the house's environment. The lot in question is slated for five, three-story townhouses. The developer is willing to sell it -- for $450,000.
A second scenario is to move the house to the East End near the Orange Show and restore it there.
Ralph Nader's bid to overturn Texas' ballot access laws was rejected by a federal court today, meaning that he is still not on the Texas ballot.
Nader's campaign had claimed Texas ballot access requirements for independent candidates are the toughest in the nation and unconstitutional, noting they are more stringent than those faced by third-party candidates.Texas has one of the earliest deadlines to qualify for the presidential ballot and requires independent candidates to collect about 20,000 more signatures than those required by third-party contenders.
Nader's campaign tried to get him on the ballot by collecting voter signatures but turned them in two weeks after the state deadline in May.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled state ballot access laws did not create an unconstitutional burden.
Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said the campaign would appeal.
"We find the position to be unpersuasive and it doesn't look like the judge understands the issues," Zeese said.
At trial, Nader's attorneys argued the state has no legitimate reason to have different requirements for independent and third-party candidates.Lawyers for the state argued the signature and time requirements were not unreasonable and could have been met with a better effort by Nader's group.
Nader was required to collect at least 64,076 signatures by May 10 from registered voters who did not vote in the Democratic or Republican primaries. That equals 1 percent of all votes cast for president in the last election in Texas.
Third-party candidates needed to collect 45,540 signatures by May 24, the day Nader's campaign turned in its signatures. Earlier this week, the Libertarian Party was certified for the Texas ballot.
Of the 80,000 signatures Nader's campaign filed in May, a random sample by the state showed that between 56,215 and 63,374 were valid. Those numbers would have qualified Nader under the third-party access rules but not as an independent candidate.
Elsewhere, Nader appears to have been nominated by the national Reform Party, or whatever is left of it after their debacle of 2000. Anyone who thinks that the two major parties are incoherent should ponder what an organization that would have Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader in succession as its standard-bearer might represent. Anyway, in doing so this appears to have gotten Nader on the Florida ballot, though that state's Democratic Party seems likely to challenge him.
I'm still laughing at a bit in Dave McNeely's blog, which you'll have to scroll down to see:
Choice: the Hammer or the media. No contest.
When members of the Texas press were called and uninvited to a convention-eve party at the New York Stock Exchange for the Texas delegation to the Republican National Convention, they were told it was because of belatedly discovered stock exchange policy barring media at private events.But a GOP source says the real reason was that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, informed the Texas group in no uncertain terms that if the media was there, he wouldn’t be.
The thought was that the exchange folks had agreed to take the blame. But when reporters called to check, turned out there was no such policy.
As noted directly underneath, there's a fundraiser in Austin for Richard Morrison tomorrow night for the purposes of getting his ad on TV. Check out the ad, and help him out if you can.
You want further evidence that KBH is looking to relocate to Austin in 2006? You got it.
Renewing debate over Texas' commitment to children's health care, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison criticized state government Tuesday for failing to spend millions of dollars in federal health care funds."We left 600 million in federal dollars on the table," Hutchison told Texas reporters.
"I got part of it back, and I think that we're hopefully now on the road to providing that coverage ... It's very important to cover these children and do it right."
More from the Morning News.
Subtle jockeying to be the Lone Star in Texas is being played out this week between possible contender U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is a co-chair of the Republican National Convention, and Gov. Rick Perry, who is heading the state delegation. Meanwhile, potential candidate Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn is a presence, even though she will miss the convention to remain at her desk in Austin."It's not even attempting to be a well-kept secret," delegate Norm Mason of Sugar Land said, particularly about the squabbling between Mrs. Strayhorn and Mr. Perry, whose low approval ratings have attracted possible challengers from his own party.
Mr. Mason said almost all those who attend national conventions are the door-knocking, vote-gathering and fund-raising volunteers who are essential to grass-roots campaigns. And these conventions are a good time for elected officials to raise their profile and extend their appreciation.
"Someone who uses these opportunities wisely gets the benefits that accrue," he said.
[...]
Mr. Perry is pleased with his popularity among the social conservatives who are at the heart of the Texas GOP.
"I was chosen by the grass roots to lead the Texas delegation, so there's a clear message about whom they wanted to lead them to New York for the convention," he said.
Ms. Hutchison told reporters Tuesday, "I am not thinking about 2006, and I don't think anyone else here is, either." But she questioned why the governor's office has challenged her over the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.
The senator said recently that she has been working to get millions of federal dollars left on the table that could have gone to help Texas children. Mr. Perry's office quickly rejoined that the dollars were left because Texas was late in joining CHIP – a problem that occurred during Mr. Bush's term as governor.
"I was not being critical," Ms. Hutchison said Tuesday. "I think the governor got a little trigger happy."
Then she invited members of the Texas media to join her as she dashed through the city, gave interviews to network news organizations and toured the Madison Square Garden stage, from which she spoke Tuesday night.
Mrs. Strayhorn said she would love to be in New York to cheer on the president – and to visit with her youngest son, Scott McClellan, who is the president's press secretary.
"Unfortunately, I can't set aside my responsibilities as a public servant for my personal preference to be at the convention," she said.
As Gov. Rick Perry wrapped up a speech to the Texas GOP delegation, a chant broke out: "Four more years! Four more years!"Delegate Pat Peale said the chant referred to both President Bush and Perry, whose re-election bid is two years away but who faces rumblings of a challenge from U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn.
Of the three, only Perry so far has said he'll seek the seat.
"We'll take both. We want our president to win. It would be wonderful for us to have Gov. Perry four more years," said Peale, of Gainesville.
But she said she'll face a hard decision if Hutchison challenges him.
"I have been very strongly supporting Sen. Hutchison in all of her races," Peale said. "If she throws her hat in, it's going to be a very difficult choice. But she hasn't at this point, so I certainly support our governor. And I think he's doing a good job."
Ray Myers of Forney, a former school principal attending the convention as a guest of a delegate, said of a potential Strayhorn-Perry match: "I think Strayhorn would beat him. ... The lady has broad appeal and crosses all tracks."
He added, "She struck gold when she came up with (the slogan) 'one tough grandma.'"
[...]
"All things being equal, I plan on running for re-election in 2006 and will certainly look at running for governor in 2010," Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said.
He said he supports Perry's effort to spend another term in the office he assumed after Bush became president. Perry was elected to a full four-year term in 2002.
"I believe the governor is going to run for re-election in 2006. I'm supporting Rick Perry for re-election," Dewhurst said.
Asked whether he expects Perry would support him in 2010, he said, "You'll have to ask him that question, but I would be surprised if he wouldn't."
[...]
As for a timetable for disclosing her 2006 plans, Hutchison said, "It's way too early."
Pretty strong stuff here from William Saletan about Bush's "heroism" after 9/11. The Talent Show notes that Bill Clinton arrived in New York before Bush did, even though he'd been in Australia when the attack occurred. Somehow, I don't think that's gonna get mentioned all that much this week.
Yesterday, I noted some shenanigans in State Rep. Ray Allen's office, and mentioned that Allen is being challenged by Katy Hubener. Thanks to some quick work by Byron, you can now learn more about Katy Hubener on Texas Tuesdays. Check it out.
