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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme says all the fuss over 'wrongful' healthcare benefits in Brownsville, Corpus Christi and the Texas House is misplaced. Universal healthcare makes that problem disappear!

John Coby at Bay Area Houston reported on Bob Perry's attempted take over of a local City Water Authority in order to develop on our golf course. The developers lose big in Clear Lake

Off the Kuff continues his series of countywide race previews with a look at the race for Harris County Tax Assessor.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at right wing blowhards on tour, coming to a local amphitheater near you.

Doing My Part for The Left is thrilled that Another Poll Shows Rick Noriega just 4 points behind Box Turtle.

WhosPlayin notes that along with many more Republicans, Michael Burgess (TX-26) voted AGAINST supporting Mothers Day.

Dembones at Eye On Williamson has the latest on Rick Noriega's run for the US Senate with this post, Republican machine grinding for Cornyn.

The sinkhole in Liberty County catches PDiddie's attention -- not literally, thankfully -- and he blogs about it at Brains and Eggs in "Rural Texas finally collapses from GOP 'Leadership' ".

Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex ponders the civil liberties thicket that Texas AG Greg Abbott could wander in to if he allows the Texas Lottery Commission to use the electronic strip on Texas driver's licenses to verify the age of gamblers at lottery vending machines.

nytexan at BlueBloggin points out Racism In The Secret Service and asks how can the Secret Service perform their jobs when supervisors write and send racist emails to one another regarding interracial sex, killing Jessie Jackson and his wife and ridiculing African American slang.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News talked to a friend of his that received a GOP Push-Poll against local Democratic judges in GOP running Scared in Harris County. He also wondered if this picture is of a Pasadena neighbor who can't spell.

Lightseeker takes a look at What Rick Perry Promised, What the Republicans Delivered over at Texas Kaos.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PREVIOUSLY:

Introduction
District Attorney
County Judge
Sheriff
Tax Assessor

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

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

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

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

All this has chefs, cooks and owners improvising.

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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