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November, 2015:

Interview with Sharon Moses

Sharon Moses

Sharon Moses

There are six citywide runoff races coming up, with early voting to start on Wednesday. The large fields and high turnout among less-frequent city voters gave rise to some unexpected results in the At Large races, which means those of us who vote in the runoffs needed to do some extra homework to decide who to support in December. One such race was At Large #5, where late entrant Sharon Moses caught a wave and made it into overtime against CM Jack Christie. Moses is a native Houstonian and attorney with a Masters in Transportation Planning and Management from Texas Southern University. She is no stranger to City Council, having served as an Agenda Director and Policy Researcher under former City Council Member Ada Edwards, District D. Since that time, she has worked for the Solid Waste Management Department doing public education and outreach on sustainability, recycling, and the like; she has served as Producer/Anchor/Host of the municipal channel’s Solid Waste Management show on H-TV, “Wasting Time”. Since the November election, she has received the endorsement of the Harris County Democratic Party and some but not all Democratic clubs and like-minded organizations. I myself did not know much about Sharon Moses, so I thought the best way to address that, for myself and for other voters, would be to do an interview with her. I’m glad to have gotten that opportunity. Here’s what we talked about:

A statement issued by the Moses campaign regarding her position on equality and HERO is here. I will post links to interviews I have done with other runoff candidates tomorrow.

Harris County keeps considering vote centers

Perhaps one of these days they will move forward on this.

vote-button

Seeking to making voting easier on Election Day, Harris County officials are considering shifting to a system that would allow voters to cast ballots at any county polling place rather than only at their neighborhood precinct.

These so-called “vote centers,” modeled after the countywide polling sites used during early voting, have been implemented by at least 33 Texas counties, including neighboring Fort Bend, since the state Legislature authorized a pilot program in 2005.

Four of the five members of Harris County’s Commissioners Court said they support the idea, citing a desire to make voting more convenient.

“As a concept, it makes all the sense in the world,” Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said.

[…]

Yet despite broad interest in vote centers, Emmett and Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart cited technological and logistical impediments to making the change soon in Harris County under current state law, which does not allow for adjustments based on county size.

Counties adopting vote centers for the first time are required retain 65 percent of the number of precinct polling places they otherwise would have used for that election. In subsequent elections, they must keep half the precinct polling sites.

That means if Harris County had transitioned to countywide polling places for November’s general election, it would have needed to open 492 vote centers in place of 757 precinct polling locations.

By contrast, the county of 4.4 million residents offered just 41 early voting sites.

“That’s totally illogical. That defeats the whole purpose,” Emmett said.

Explaining that he does not think Harris County would be able to participate without a legislative change allowing them to offer fewer voting centers, Emmett proposed opening 100 countywide polling places for the two weeks leading up to and through Election Day.

“That would make it easier for people to vote,” Emmett said.

See here for previous blogging on this subject. As I’ve said before, I think this is a good idea, and by now we have enough examples, including those of our neighbors in Fort Bend and Galveston, to see how this works. If we need a new law to allow for a more realistic number of vote centers, then let’s crank up the machinery to help make that happen in 2017. While we’re at it, let’s try again for online voter registration, too. Whatever we can do to improve the voting process in Harris County.

Paxton can get others to pay his legal bills

It’s Christmas in November for our felonious Attorney General.

Best mugshot ever

Best mugshot ever

Texas’ ethics regulator has carved a path for Attorney General Ken Paxton to tap out-of-state donors to pay his legal tab to defend against felony fraud charges.

The Texas Ethics Commission, responding to an inquiry from an anonymous employee at the attorney general’s office, is scheduled Monday to offer guidance for workers at the agency that could have big implications for how Paxton funds his team of lawyers.

A draft opinion circulated ahead of the meeting lays out proposed steps for an employee of the attorney general’s office to take to avoid violating the state’s gift-giving laws while accepting a “benefit” from a donor in certain situations.

The regulators’ preliminary finding: A state worker could accept a benefit from a donor lacking ties to Texas, like residency or business operations, and who is not believed to be subject to the agency’s jurisdiction.

“We conclude that a public servant working for the OAG would not be prohibited … from accepting a benefit from an individual who does not reside in Texas or from an entity that does not operate in Texas if the donor’s only connection with the jurisdiction of the public servant and the OAG is the act of giving the benefit,” according to a copy of the draft opinion obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.

[…]

Experts have said the ethics commission’s opinion could give Paxton and his lawyers the blueprint to make use of big-money donors for legal services. The bipartisan commission’s eight members are appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker.

Whether the attorney general’s office has oversight to regulate or investigate a donor is key to the inquiry. The agency’s jurisdiction is broad, and ranges from defending the state in court to enforcing antitrust laws.

State law prevents an official at an agency like the attorney general’s office from accepting a “benefit” from someone under the agency’s authority.

Lawyers for the anonymous official at the attorney general’s office asked the ethics commission to issue an opinion to clarify a slightly different question: Under what condition could a specific set of out-of-state donors provide a benefit if they were not believed to be subject to regulation or investigation by the agency?

The commission, in its draft, recommended the employee at the attorney general’s office conduct his or her own “diligent” internal analysis of specific facts to avoid conflicts – one that examines pending or contemplated litigation, business records and information directly from the donor. But the draft opinion cautions that “the extent of any necessary inquiry will depend upon what the public servant knows or suspects about the potential donor.”

The eight-member panel of ethics regulators is scheduled to vet the draft opinion for the first time Monday, when a vote could also be taken to adopt the guidance. A copy was circulated ahead of the meeting.

See here for the background. The person who requested this opinion from the TEC is anonymous, and if you believe it’s not Ken Paxton or someone acting on his behalf, then I have some oceanfront property in Midland to sell you. What could possibly go wrong by allowing Ken Paxton’s legal defense to be sponsored by various out of state benefactors who we all pinky-swear have no business in Texas that might possibly fall under the purview of the OAG? Pretty sweet deal, I tell you what. Hope your overlords get their money’s worth from your attorneys, Kenny.

UPDATE: Looks like I spoke too soon on this. Bad for Paxton, good for the rest of us. I’ll do a separate post on this.

Would you like to sit in armed or unarmed?

From Houstonia:

Imagine it’s a Saturday afternoon. You stop into Whataburger to pick up lunch with your kids in tow, the only thing on your mind remembering which kid doesn’t want ketchup on his burger, which kid only wants ketchup on his burger, and whether you want to add jalapenõs to your own. You place your order and are pulling out your wallet to pay when a man walks in with a Sig Sauer strapped to his belt. He’s not in any kind of uniform; he’s not wearing a badge. He’s just a guy with his gun, and you’re just a guy with his kids. Are you okay with this scenario? Maybe so. Or maybe you can’t understand why a guy would need to bring his gun into a fast-food restaurant, and you decide to leave without your burgers.

Whataburger has long bet that a good portion of its customers belong to the latter group, hence its company-wide policy against open carry, which has been legal for years in other states where the chain operates, from Arizona to Arkansas. In advance of the new statewide law that goes into effect in Texas this January 1—the much-discussed House Bill 910 that makes Texas the 45th state to allow residents to openly carry and display their handguns—the Corpus Christi–based company recently reiterated that policy.

[…]

The thing is, there’s still a great deal of confusion surrounding the impending changes, as business associations large and small, reluctant to enter the quagmire of gun control politics, have been slow to provide guidance to private entities that may want to ban open carry. (The Greater Houston Restaurant Association didn’t even return Houstonia’s requests for comment.) As a result, getting those signs up in the first place is proving tougher than expected.

And in fact, rules for the necessary signage are complicated. “Business owners that want to ban guns from their property must post a new sign that adheres to strict wording, colors and text size,” says Terry McBurney, president of the Greater Montgomery County Restaurant Association, one of the few restaurant associations to provide assistance in advance of the new gun laws. Those colors, the Texas Department of Public Safety mandates, must be contrasting. The lettering must be block, and at least one-inch high, for maximum legibility, with the notice in both English and Spanish, posted “conspicuously” at the entrance to the business itself. Any sign that isn’t absolutely perfect, down to the letter, will be null and void.

I would note that State Rep. Diego Bernal of San Antonio has taken it upon himself to help businesses who want to opt out on open carry by printing signs that conform to all of the mandated requirements, which he is providing free of charge. Perhaps one or more of our local legislators could follow that example – I’m sure plenty of businesses would appreciate it. Regardless, I wonder how long it will take before some establishments use open carry as a marketing tool, catering to whatever side they think represents a bigger opportunity for them. I feel reasonably confident saying that there will be more than a few establishments in my neighborhood that feature these signs, and that more than a few of them will not be shy about advertising themselves as such. Should be fascinating to watch.

On a tangential matter:

During a panel [recently] addressing Texas’s new open-carry law, Houston Police Chief Charles McClelland, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, and City Attorney Donna Edmunson encouraged citizens to ask as many questions as possible.

Mostly, they asked McClelland and Anderson to consider a myriad of hypothetical situations.

For example, many asked, what if you’re just sitting on a bench at a park with your gun in your holster, and some concerned “mad mom” calls the police on you because she and her kids are alarmed by the very presence of your gun? Are the police really going to detain you and ask that you show your CHL even though you’re just sitting on the bench eating a ham sandwich? Isn’t that a bit invasive?

The resounding answer from McClelland and Anderson, to all of the above types of questions, was basically this: we understand your concerns, but you’re just going to have to deal with it.

Chances are, they explained, you’re going to come across a CHL holder openly carrying his or her gun inside of a Walmart, a Taco Bell, a JCPenny (not a Whataburger, which already said it’s not going to allow guns inside). And chances are, for CHL holders, a police officer is going to ask you to show your license once someone’s kids get scared and they call 911, and you’ll just have to comply, because that’s the law—even if you’re just sitting on a bench eating a sandwich.

This is going to be so much fun, isn’t it? There are already plenty of disagreements about what this law means and what if any restrictions can be legally enforced in various places. I suspect the courts are going to be very busy next year, and the Lege will be back to revisit this in 2017.

Weekend link dump for November 29

“Crime overall in 2015 is expected to be largely unchanged from last year, decreasing 1.5 percent.”

“No, really. It’s an actual glossy, full-color magazine called Dabiq, complete with feature articles and photo spreads. So, in the interest of understanding just what makes these violent lunatics tick, I read through 700-plus pages of this oddly well-put-together propaganda and learned …” (via)

Reading this lamentation for teen girl dramedies makes me think Olivia would probably like Ten Things I Hate About You.

“In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did.”

The Illustrated and Admittedly Incomplete History of the Turducken. A rerun, but it always makes me laugh.

Maybe too much polling is a problem.

Turns out that calling something “terrorism” can be pretty damn controversial.

“HIV is not a punishment for bad behavior. It’s an illness.”

How you should have handled those awkward holiday conversations with your family. Including those awkward baseball conversations.

“Perhaps the most intriguing finding, however, is that climate denial is faddish. Certain themes get hot for a while and then get replaced by others.”

Four no-hope GOP Presidential candidates will get their equal time on NBC thanks to Donald Trump and Saturday Night Live.

Animal Planet gets sued for being bad to animals and the planet.

A group of youth activists are suing the federal government to force action on climate change.

“Student protesters at Princeton performed a valuable public service last week when they demanded that the administration acknowledge the toxic legacy of Woodrow Wilson, who served as university president and New Jersey governor before being elected to the White House. He was an unapologetic racist whose administration rolled back the gains that African-Americans achieved just after the Civil War, purged black workers from influential jobs and transformed the government into an instrument of white supremacy.”

Lying liars should be held accountable for their lies.

“So the next time you think of Billy Mitchell, remember that he is not the floating, alien head that you might have seen explode in a cartoon. He is a real man who is very good at video games. We hope this clears things up.”

Get to know some of the Presidential Medal of Freedom winners that you don’t already know but should.

RIP, Guy Lewis, longtime University of Houston basketball coach.

Feds respond to request for delay of immigration appeal

Counterpoint:

JustSayNo

It was the federal government’s move Tuesday, and the U.S. Department of Justice asked the court to reject Texas’ request for a 30-day extension to file its brief in the case, but says it is open to an eight-day delay if the response is “physically on file” at that time.

A full delay could mean the high court doesn’t render a final decision on the program — known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — until June 2017, U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said in a letter to Supreme Court Clerk Scott S. Harris. That would be more than two years after the president announced the policy that would protect more than four million undocumented immigrants from deportation proceedings and allow them to apply for three-year work permits.

[…]

It’s unclear when the high court will decide on the extension, but the justice department said it’s prepared to press on should the extension be granted.

“We note, however, that should state respondents’ request for a 30-day extension be granted, we anticipate filing a motion for expedition and a May argument session to permit the case to be heard this Term,” Verrilli wrote.

See here, here, and here for the background. Not much to add here. I trust we will know soon enough what the answer is, because if we’re left to wait for a response then won’t be anything to respond to. A statement from the Texas Organizing Project is beneath the fold, and the Current and SCOTUSBlog, which has a copy of the feds’ response, have more.

(more…)

Hey look, a Regent Square update

Sometimes I forget this is still a thing.

In 2007, longtime urbanites said goodbye to the Allen House Apartments, a decades-old complex along Dunlavy just south of Allen Parkway. The multiblock property was a Houston institution, housing hundreds of college students, senior citizens and professionals behind brick walls and wrought-iron balconies that gave it a decidedly New Orleans feel.

The demolition of most of the units there – while marking the end of an era and eliminating scores of reasonably priced inner-city apartments – was done to make way for a more modern development covering 24 acres of prime property. The land has sat mostly dormant during the years following the initial announcement, but several new signs point to a coming revival of the project, Regent Square.

The development was the subject of a meeting Wednesday night of the North Montrose Civic Association. Scott Howard, the association’s treasurer, presented details about the project to residents. He said he had met with an official from the Boston-based development company earlier in the week.

“They’re ready to go,” Howard said, explaining how the project had been shelved during the recession. He showed off booklets the developer had passed along containing renderings and site maps. It was dated Nov. 16, 2015.

Howard told the group, which was meeting in the library of Carnegie Vanguard High School in the Montrose area, that the project would contain 400,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, 240,000 square feet of office space, 950 multifamily units and 4,200 parking spaces.

Plans for an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, an entertainment concept that combines a movie theater and dining, in Regent Square are still in the works, as well.

“Alamo is coming to Regent Square,” Neil Michaelsen of Triple Tap Ventures, owner of the Houston locations, said Thursday in an email.

See here for prior updates. The last news we heard about this was almost three years ago, when the announcement was made about the Alamo Drafthouse. The developers did recently finish off a high-end apartment complex a bit down the street on West Dallas, so they haven’t been completely inactive, but I think it’s fair to say the main event has taken a lot longer than anyone might have expected. At this point, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Another lawsuit against Uber

Hard to keep track of them all.

Uber

A former San Antonio-area driver for Uber has filed a class-action lawsuit against the ride-hailing company, alleging it pays drivers less than minimum wage, makes them eat expenses it should pay for and misleads users into thinking they do not have to tip drivers.

David Micheletti is among a growing number of drivers to accuse the San Francisco-based company, which matches riders with drivers through a smart-phone application, of shorting their paychecks by treating them as independent contractors instead of employees.

Micheletti filed his suit weeks ago in state district court in Bexar County, but Uber denied the allegations and moved it this month to federal court.

The suit seeks to be certified as a class-action for other drivers with similar claims as Micheletti. His attorney, Marie Napoli of New York, said she has a handful of similar class-action lawsuits in other cities where Uber operates, and they might end up being consolidated in multidistrict litigation with others filed around the country.

“This case is about one thing: Thousands of hard-working drivers struggling to get by while Uber, a company valued at more than $50 billion, exploits them to bolster its bottom line,” the lawsuit said.

Uber responded to inquiries about the suit with a statement that said, “Driver-partners are independent contractors who use Uber on their own terms: they control their use of the app.

[…]

The suit said Uber pays its drivers weekly, taking 20 percent and leaving drivers with the remaining 80 percent. Micheletti made $500 to $600 per week and incurred $100 to $200 in expenses like gas, tolls, lease payments and car repairs, the suit said.

So, after expenses, he made about $5 an hour, or $2.25 less than minimum wage, the suit said. It also said Uber misappropriated money from driver’s fares, including $1 from each fare to pay for background checks, driver safety education and safety features in its mobile application, which Micheletti believes Uber should pay, not the drivers.

The suit said Uber fails to honor its financial commitment to drivers. For instance, it’s supposed to compensate drivers $6 for each canceled fare. But in Micheletti’s case, he was only compensated for 20 canceled fares but not paid for more than 70 others.

Micheletti claims Uber told him he would get a credit card that gave him discounts on gas once he completed 20 fares, but he never received the card. He also alleges Uber misleads drivers regarding the amount of money they can earn — up to $20 an hour in fares at certain peak times. He never made anywhere near that, the suit said.

There have been multiple lawsuits filed against Uber, here in Texas and elsewhere. I don’t know if this one will be folded into the other class action lawsuit over how Uber classifies its drivers are independent contractors, but I won’t be surprised if other drivers join in. We’ll see how it goes.

Runoff endorsement watch: Frazer breaks the tie

The Chronicle has a bit of unfinished endorsement business to take care of as we approach early voting for the runoffs. In the At Large #1 and #5 races, their endorsed candidate from November did not make it into the second round, while in the Controller’s race they double-endorsed, with both of their recommended choices making the cut. They narrowed their preference down to one by endorsing Bill Frazer.

Bill Frazer

Bill Frazer

When selecting their next controller, Houston voters should look for someone who can keep a focus on these core problems – someone who is unafraid to ring the siren about Houston’s approaching financial crisis.

Of the two candidates left in the runoff, Bill Frazer has proven himself most willing to do the dirty business of the controller’s office and warn the public about the looming fiscal wreck.

[…]

We don’t agree with Frazer on every policy. His support for the city revenue cap smacks more of political signalling than financial wisdom. However, the controller’s office does not make policy, and Frazer’s skeptical eye on city spending would be a healthy counterbalance to the political incentive for mayor and City Council to splurge on their constituents.

Frazer’s opponent, Chris Brown, has an impressive resume of his own. He’s worked as a trader for an investment bank, chief of staff on City Council and currently serves as chief deputy city controller. But when he met with the Houston Chronicle editorial board, Brown emphasized compromise and coalition-building as key to solving the city’s financial problems. Political problems are in the mayor’s portfolio. Controller, on the other hand, should be playing bad cop in the fight over Houston’s financial numbers.

As noted in the editorial, the Chron had endorsed Frazer in 2013, so this is neither a stretch nor a surprise. I’m not sure how much more of a “bad cop” Frazer would be than any of the other candidates – best I can recall, every candidate I interviewed espoused some variation on a stance of “not there to antagonize or collaborate but to call balls and strikes and provide accurate information to the Mayor and Council”. Perhaps the way Frazer said it was the more appealing to the Chron. Be that as it may, Frazer is certainly a qualified candidate, and he demonstrated some crossover appeal both in 2013 and in this November. For his part, Brown has been busy collecting endorsements from just about every Democratic elected official in town. It should be an interesting race.

Saturday video break: I Can’t Give You Anything But Love

Reaching back to the 1920s and the legendary Duke Ellington:

I love me some Glenn Miller, but of all the big band leaders of that era, I think Ellington had the best overall body of work. The movie The Cotton Club is a mess in many ways, but its Ellington-infused soundtrack can’t be beat. Naturally, there are more vocal-oriented versions of this song, and the one I have is by the Hot Club of Cowtown:

That’s my musical crush Elena James on vocals and violin. I don’t care how old this song is, it was written for her to perform.

Feds say No to Abbott on refugees

What now, Greg?

The federal government on Wednesday informed refugee resettlement agencies in Texas and across the country that states do not have the authority to refuse to accept Syrians.

The statement, made in a letter obtained by the Houston Chronicle, appears to mark the first time federal refugee program officials formally have rejected statements by governors, including Greg Abbott of Texas, that their states will not accept any Syrian refugees.

It also may signal that federal officials will place Syrians here and elsewhere regardless of governors’ wishes.

“States may not deny (Office of Refugee Resettlement)-funded benefits and services to refugees based on a refugee’s country of origin or religious affiliation. Accordingly, states may not categorically deny ORR-funded benefits and services to Syrian refugees,” wrote Robert Carey, director of the office, adding that states and agencies that do not comply would be violating the law and “could be subject to enforcement action, including suspension or termination.”

Carey’s two-page letter also emphasized that refugees seeking to come to the United States undergo heavy scrutiny over an average of two years of waiting, a point that President Barack Obama and other federal officials have been trying to make in recent days.

[…]

Carey’s letter came the same day that Obama made a special statement at the White House to reassure Americans that there is no specific and credible threat to the country right now. It also came the same day that the Texas Catholic Conference announced that its refugee resettlement agencies would continue to accept Syrian refugees and would work with agencies to ensure safety is upheld.

“The Texas Catholic Bishops encourage all parties – including governmental leaders, political officials, and advocates – to avoid impulsive judgments in setting public policies regarding the placement of Syrian refugees, the organization said in a statement. “The horrors of modern terrorism are frightening, but they demand from us a strong renewal of our faith and our commitment to Christian teachings and the common good.”

Another faith-based group, Texas Impact, has said it believes there is momentum toward finding a way to accept the refugees.

See here and here for some background. On the one hand, I can’t see Abbott caving in to the feds. His whole career is built on this kind of obstinate petulance. On the other hand, I doubt he wants to get into a pissing contest with religious groups, even if they’re mostly of the do-gooder variety and not suburban megachurches, who care about refugees about as much as he does. I still can’t quite see Abbott bringing down the hammer on faith-based organizations, but if that’s his line in the sand, it’s his bluff that’s getting called. I have no idea how this one ends.

The Mexican abortion option, part 3

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Misoprostol

Between 100,000 and 240,000 Texans have attempted to terminate their pregnancies without medical assistance, according to new research released Tuesday. Based on interviews and a statewide survey, the unprecedented study by the Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) estimates that between 1.7 and 4.1 percent of Texas women between the ages of 18 and 49 have attempted to end their own pregnancies outside of a clinical setting.

According to TxPEP’s interviews with Texans who’ve attempted self-induction, the top four reasons they tried to end their pregnancies on their own fall into four categories: financial constraints for the cost of the procedure or travel to the nearest clinic, clinic closures, recommendation from a family member or friend, or an intention to avoid shame or stigma of going to an abortion clinic, especially if they had had an abortion before.

“I didn’t have any money to go to San Antonio or Corpus,” one woman living in the lower Rio Grande Valley told researchers. “I didn’t even have any money to get across town. Like I was just dirt broke. I was poor.”

The study also found that Latina women living near the Texas-Mexico border are more likely to have attempted to induce their own abortions, or know someone who has, than non-Latina Texans.

[…]

Researchers believe the likelihood of self-induced abortion in Texas is higher than elsewhere. According to a 2008 national study by the Guttmacher Institute, less than 2 percent of American women reported taking something to terminate their pregnancies on their own. In 2012, TxPEP conducted a survey of Texans seeking abortions and found that 7 percent of women interviewed spoke to reported taking something to induce their own abortion.

Lead TxPEP researcher Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at San Francisco, warned that clinic closures after HB 2 may lead to an increase in self-inductions.

“This is the latest body of evidence demonstrating the negative implications of laws like HB 2 that pretend to protect women but in reality place them, and particularly women of color and economically disadvantaged women, at significant risk,” Grossman said in a press release. “As clinic-based care becomes harder to access in Texas, we can expect more women to feel that they have no other option and take matters into their own hands.”

The most common method women reported using to induce their own abortion was a medication called misoprostol, also called by its brand name, Cytotec.

Spoiler alert: we have heard this before. I have often heard it said that trying to ban or regulate something – guns, drugs, gambling, what have you – doesn’t work and can’t work because people will still want those things, so the net effect is to push the activity in question underground and thus make it more dangerous for everyone involved. Funny how that never seems to be applied to abortions, especially by those who so piously intone that they’re just making them safer because they care so much about women’s health. Thankfully, at least some federal judges have been willing to point out the dangerous absurdity of the recent spate of anti-abortion laws; whether SCOTUS follows suit or not remains to be seen. The AusChron, the Press, and ThinkProgress have more.

More on the high speed rail station in Houston

The Chron frets about it not being downtown.

After hearing so much about how the proposed Central Texas Railway will help people commute between the central business districts of Houston and Dallas, it turns out that the Houston station will be built near the Northwest Mall at U.S. 290 and Loop 610.

Unless your business is antiques, that location isn’t exactly central. In fact, the French have a phrase to describe rail stations that sit outside central business districts, surrounded by little more than a parking lot: beet field stations.

We’ve heard arguments that, while it isn’t an economic core itself, the proposed rail terminus serves as the center of Houston’s economic footprint, balanced between the energy corridor, Galleria area, downtown, The Woodlands and the Texas Medical Center. But it isn’t just about placing riders at the physical center of a region. Central business districts offer convenient connections to riders’ end destinations. This means walking to hotels or businesses, grabbing a cab or connecting to a local mass-transit system. Downtown Houston is one of the few parts of town that can meet all those standards.

Rail stations on the edge of urban areas aren’t necessarily a bad thing, according to a June report by Eric Eidlin of the U.S. Federal Transit Administration that documented best rail practices from around the world. Sometimes it makes sense to build on more affordable, suburban property. However, those stations function best when they’re at the core of a transit node. Metro’s Northwest Transit Center isn’t enough.

[…]

Metro’s version of commuter rail – Park and Ride – has stations that are little more than parking lots. Those are the dreaded beet field stations that, according to Eidlin’s report, do little to attract economic development.

There’s plenty of opportunities for Houston’s high-speed rail station to connect with the rest of the city, such as a Metro’s planned dedicated bus lanes in Uptown, or even light rail toward downtown. But according to best practices, that groundwork for a mass-transit hub should already be laid by the time the new high-speed rail station is built. Keith said the Central Texas Railway planned to break ground in 2017. Where is Metro’s corresponding local plan?

Jarrett Walker has a response to this.

In Citylab, Eric Jaffe gives us the supposedly bad news that the proposed Dallas-Houston High Speed Rail (HSR) line won’t go to “downtown” Houston.  Instead it will end atNorthwest Mall, just outside the I-610 loop in the northwest of the city.

But most of the Houston transit-advocates I’ve talked with aren’t sounding nearly as upset.  That’s because:

  • the proposed terminal is close to the centroid of Houston as a whole.  It’s also very close to Uptown-Galleria, the region’s second downtown, and to Northwest Transit Center, the busiest transit hub in the western 2/3 of the city.
  • the terminal station area is massively redevelopable.  You could easily build yet another downtown there, and if HSR is built, they probably will.
  • the project will provide great impetus for light rail or Bus Rapid Transit linking the station to the original downtown.  These projects have been sketched many times and could include either I-10 nonstop links or a refurbishment of Washington Street, a promising old streetcar street linking the two nodes.
  • in high speed rail, the cost of the last miles into an historic downtown can be a huge part of the cost and grief of the whole project.  So if you want high-speed rail to happen at all, provoking this battle is not always a sensible part of Phase 1.

The bigger challenge, for folks from strongly single-centered cities, is to notice the limits of the term downtown.  As cities grow, there is no correlation between the sustainability of a city and its single-centeredness.  On the contrary, single-centered cities present huge problems for transportation, because they use capacity so inefficiently.  New York, for example, is spending over $10 billion on a project to fit more Long Island commuter trains into Manhattan, and to put them closer to jobs there.  The demand is mostly one-way, so this requires either storing trains all day on expensive Manhattan real estate, or running them all empty in the reverse-peak direction.   It’s very inefficient compared to the transit problem in a multi-centered place like Paris or Los Angeles, where demand is flowing two-way most of the time.

So growing a single downtown isn’t the key to becoming a great transit city.  Quite the opposite, it’s best to have a pattern of many centers, all generating high demand, and supporting balanced two-way flows between them that let us move more people on less infrastructure.  This is the great advantage of Paris or Los Angeles or the Dutch Randstad over Chicago or Manhattan.

There’s a good discussion in the comments to that post, if you want to read some more. My thoughts are as follows:

1. The decision to put the terminus at 290 and 610 was as much a political choice as anything else. Right now, Texas Central mostly has political enemies in the rural and suburban counties between Houston and Dallas, with some spillover into neighboring rural counties. The legislators who represent these areas include some fairly powerful people, but there aren’t that many of them. The one key vote regarding Texas Central, in a Senate committee, went in their favor because there were more Senators from urban areas like the Metroplex and Harris County who favored the idea. The last thing Texas Central needs is more enemies, and that’s what they would have gotten if they had pushed for a downtown terminus, as plenty of inner Loop folks didn’t like the idea of the trains whizzing through their neighborhoods. Yeah, there’s a NIMBY aspect to this, but the fact remains that a downtown terminus would have had more legislators aligning with the anti-high-speed rail folks. Texas Central didn’t need or want that, and this was the easiest solution to that problem.

2. As long as we’re noting the politics of high-speed rail, let’s also note that Metro is where it is today in large part because of political forces, which among other things have forced them to make dubious promises about not building light rail in the dedicated lanes now being intended for the Uptown BRT line. Metro did plenty to sabotage itself during the early days of the light rail approval process, but they have also had to fight against considerable headwinds, for which the main casualty has been the Universities line. I don’t know what the landscape would look like if there had been a more favorable political climate over the past dozen or so years, but I think we can all agree that it would be different.

3. The area around 290 and 610 where this would be built isn’t much to write home about, but let’s be clear: Pretty much everywhere along 610 between I-10 and TC Jester is a wasteland right now, largely because of freeway construction. At some point, all that construction will be over, and the area can begin to develop into something. When that might be, I have no idea. Prospects for that area may be limited regardless, because access to it is limited by the various freeway interchanges. But if there was ever a time to build something around there, now is as good as any because it’s all going to change over the next five to ten years anyway.

4. I think a lot of concerns go away if 1) the Uptown BRT line gets built; 2) an Inner Katy line, which would connect downtown to Uptown via Washington Avenue and the Northwest Transit Center, gets on the drawing board; and 3) the Universities Line gets back into the discussion. Put those things in place, and this terminus much more accessible to the rest of the city. #1 will happen on its own if nothing torpedoes it. #2 has been the subject of what-if speculation for financial assistance from Texas Central. Not clear how that might work, but it sure would be worth talking about. As for #3, I think everyone agrees that once the Uptown line is built and assuming it’s a success, the argument for connecting it to the Main Street line becomes nearly unassailable. Metro would have to hold another referendum to make that happen per the terms of the peace accord with John Culberson, and for sure all the usual forces against any kind of spending on rail construction will come to the fore. But it could happen, and if these things do happen we’ll be much better off.

Friday random ten: The songs Rolling Stone forgot

Here’s their list. And here are ten songs I would have tried to include if I’d had a hand in making their list.

1. Sultans Of Swing – Dire Straits
2. Sunday, Bloody Sunday – U2
3. And When I Die – Blood, Sweat & Tears
4. Take Five – Dave Brubeck Quartet
5. American Pie – Don McLean
6. That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas) – Lyle Lovett
7. Paradise By The Dashboard Light – Meat Loaf
8. After The Fire – Pete Townshend
9. Solsbury Hill – Peter Gabriel
10. My Old School – Steely Dan

With the exception of “Take Five”, I limited myself to the kind of music Rolling Stone generally pays attention to. There’s no big theme here or any claim on my part that these songs are Important or Influential in some way. They’re just songs I really like. What might you have included?

Steve Brown to run in HD27

This ought to shake things up a bit.

Steve Brown

Steve Brown

The bad week for state Rep. Ron Reynolds is getting worse.

Steve Brown, the former chairman of the Fort Bend County Democrats, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that he will challenge Reynolds in the March primary. A formal announcement will be made after Thanksgiving, Brown wrote.

[…]

Despite his legal problems, Reynolds is seeking a fourth term representing House District 27, which covers parts of Houston, Missouri City, Sugar Land, Pearland, Stafford, Fresno and Arcola.

Brown has worked on campaigns and in legislative offices of several public officials, including U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Houston; state Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston; and former U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. In 2014, he lost to Republican Ryan Sitton for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates the oil and gas industry.

Here’s the tweet in question:

See here and here for the background. Brown ran for HD27 back in 2006 against then-Rep. Dora Olivo, getting 39.6% of the vote; Reynolds also lost to Olivo in 2008, then defeated her in 2010. I don’t live in that district, but if I did Steve Brown would get my vote. I’ll have more when he makes his formal announcement.

Houston Zoo reverses its stance on allowing in guns

This was a surprise.

It’s back

The Houston Zoo has reinstalled a series of signs that prohibit the carry of firearms into the gates of the family-friendly attraction almost three months after being forced to take them down at threat of legal action.

Attorney Edwin Walker with Texas Law Shield, a legal services firm for gun owners, sent a demand letter to the Houston Zoo and its corporate entity and the city’s parks and recreation department on Sept. 3 asking that they take down all 30.06 (guns prohibited) signs at the zoo.

The signs came down just a week or so after the letter was received and read.

After the signs came down the zoo staff said that they would be conferring with lawyers to see what the next step should be.

On Tuesday Walker was notified of the zoo’s sign reinstallation and said that he soon plans on taking a complaint to the Office of the Texas Attorney General.

In a statement sent to the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday, Houston Zoo spokesperson Jackie Wallace stated the zoo’s case for bringing the signs back.

“After consultation with legal counsel, the Houston Zoo, Inc. has concluded that Texas government code does not prohibit HZI from lawfully posting signs that ban weapons from its premises because HZI is – at its core – an educational institution,” Wallace wrote Tuesday.

The zoo argues that being an educational institution exempts it from being forced to allow firearms within its gates.

Wallace wrote that the zoo was established for educational and conservation purposes, bringing in some 200,000 children a year.

The zoo, Wallace added, “maintains an Education Department that employs 17 professional educators who develop and deliver educational programming on a daily basis at the Zoo.”

“Given the mission of the zoo and the presence of hundreds of thousands of children on its campus, it is clear that guns and zoos simply do not mix,” Wallace wrote.

“Texas law recognizes that weapons are not compatible with the education of our youth and prohibits weapons at a schools and educational institutions and places where activities sponsored by schools or educational institutions take place,” Wallace concluded, referencing Section 46.03 of the Texas Penal Code.

Walker responded to the statement on Tuesday, calling the signs among other things “provocative.”

“This is a sham,” Walker says. “This is clearly an act of desperation. They are hanging their hat on being an educational institution.”

See here for the background. The original argument, to which the Zoo temporarily acceded, was that since Hermann Park belongs to the city, the zoo counts as a government entity even though it is privately operated, and as a government entity it is required by the new law to allow guns. These fights about where guns may or may not now be restricted are going on all over the state and will be keeping the AG’s office busy for months to come. As the Houston Press noted, the same guy sent a letter to the Dallas Zoo but got a different response from them.

Though the zoo is run by a private nonprofit, it’s owned by the city of Dallas.

Zoo and city officials are adamant that the zoo qualifies as an “amusement park” and an “educational institution” — status that would make the “no guns” signs legal. Edwin Walker, the Houston lawyer, said there is “no way the zoo fits those definitions.”

Now the state attorney general’s office, which has been charged with investigating such complaints, is reviewing the claim to see if legal action is warranted. If the signs are found to be in violation, the city could face fines of up to $10,500 per day.

In the meantime, the Dallas Zoo’s “no guns” signs are staying up.

The “signs prohibiting handgun license holders from bringing concealed handguns into the Dallas Zoo are valid,” wrote David Harper, an attorney representing the zoo. “Therefore, the Dallas Zoo will not be removing those signs.”

[…]

Walker, the Houston lawyer, also filed the grievance against the Houston Zoo. He said his success there caused other gun rights advocates to contact him with similar concerns about the gun prohibition at the Dallas Zoo.

But the Dallas Zoo presents somewhat of a special case, particularly over its standing as an “amusement park.”

The designation typically refers to places like Six Flags Over Texas. But the zoo could potentially meet an eight-point test in state law to qualify. The sticking point appears to be if the zoo’s monorail or other attractions count as “amusement rides.”

That would be “specious at best,” said Walker, who works with Texas Law Shield, an organization that provides legal representation to gun owners.

But Dallas Park and Recreation Director Willis Winters said city officials agree with the zoo’s interpretation.

“The city attorneys are comfortable with it, and we’re glad to let the zoo’s counsel handle any challenges that might come up,” he said.

You can see the correspondence related to this at the link above. Gotta say, the “amusement park” claim seems like a stretch to me, but I suppose it’s possible. If it works, that could be a backup plan for the Houston Zoo. Of course, if it does work – indeed, if any of the current claims are resolved in favor of those who argue for allowing whatever restriction is being challenged – you can be sure the Lege will be back in 2017 to “clarify” the law in a way that obviates the exemption. As I said before, this is the world we live in, and this is how it will be until those who would like to see fewer guns in public places win some elections on that issue. More from the Press here.

Thanksgiving video break: It was like the turkeys mounted a counterattack

The greatest holiday TV episode ever. If you haven’t seen this before, you are in for a treat. And if you have seen it before, you know what I’m talking about:

I hope your Thanksgiving is better and less chaotic than that. Enjoy!

Precinct analysis: Age ranges

Let us one more time ask the question: Just how old were the voters in our 2015 election?


Range       All    Pct
======================
18-30    21,998   8.2%
31-40    32,359  12.1%
41-50    39,074  14.6%
51-60    58,610  21.9%
61+     115,755  43.2%

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The short answer is “not as old as we’ve seen in previous elections“. That’s a high-water mark for the 30-and-under crowd, by a considerable amount, as well as a high score for the 31-to-40 consort. The 61+ group is smaller than it was in the last few elections, though of course that is relative. It’s smaller as a proportion to this electorate, but this electorate was quite large, so the over-60 share is much bigger in absolute terms than before – there were nearly as many over-60s this year as there were total voters in 2011 – even if it’s a smaller piece of the pie.

I can’t easily tell you what the average age of a Houston voter in 2015 was. I’ve heard several people cite a figure of 69 years old, which I believe comes from the KUHF/KHOU poll in October. Based on the ranges I’ve shown above, I’d guess that 69 is a little high to be the average age, but it’s probably not too far off from that. The point I’m trying to make here is that this election wasn’t driven by a frenzied turnout of senior citizens. Turnout was up across the board, and while this electorate was hardly young – less than 35% were under 50 – there was more age diversity than we have seen in the past.

Where you will legitimately find a younger electorate is in the new voters than showed up this year. Here’s that table, with the accompanying one for the set of folks who voted in all elections since 2009 following it:


Range       New    Pct
======================
18-30    17,106  16.8%
31-40    19,522  19.2%
41-50    17,889  17.6%
51-60    20,528  20.2%
61+      26,557  26.1%


Range       Old    Pct
======================
18-30       351   0.6%
31-40     2,009   3.4%
41-50     5,279   8.9%
51-60    12,233  20.5%
61+      39,766  66.7%

A majority of the new voters this year were 50 and under, with 36% being 40 and under. That’s not too shabby. As for the old reliables, here “old” is an appropriate word. If you told me the average age of this group was 69, I’d believe it. I will say, if the revised term limits ordinance stands, it’s going to be more challenging to talk about new and experienced voters in our every-four-years elections, simply because there will be so much turnover in the voting population. Under the new system – again, if it stands – the last three elections would be 2011, 2007, and 2003. Three elections from now would be 2027. Of course, with incumbents limited to two terms, maybe there will be that much more emphasis on the last election, and less on others except for open seats. Who knows? One way or another, we are headed into uncharted waters.

I hope you enjoyed this trip through the data. I may take a look at recent runoff rosters to see if there’s anything there worth writing about. Happy Thanksgiving!

Reynolds receives jail sentence in barratry case

He got the max for the misdemeanor charge on which he was convicted.

Rep. Ron Reynolds

State Rep. Ron Reynolds could spend up to a year in jail after he was sentenced Monday to the maximum penalty following his conviction on charges arising from what prosecutors called an “ambulance chasing for profit” scheme.

A Montgomery County jury sentenced Reynolds to up to 12 months in jail and a $20,000 fine following the attorney’s conviction last week on five counts of misdemeanor barratry, or illegally soliciting clients.

The Missouri City Democrat showed no emotion as County Court-at-Law Judge Mary Ann Turner read the sentence late Monday. He took off his suit jacket and tie and handed it to a friend, and gave his cellphone and watch to his wife. Then he was escorted from the courtroom by deputies and taken to county jail.

The sentence comes as Reynolds, the first African-American since Reconstruction elected to the Texas House from Fort Bend County, was starting to campaign for a fourth term. The misdemeanor convictions don’t require him to give up his seat, but deal a blow to his political and legal careers.

Reynolds’ attorney said he intends to appeal, and the court scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on his request to remain free pending that appeal.

See here for the background. You know how I feel about this, so let me just note that a lot of people have called for our indicted Attorney General to step down from his office. To be sure, the charges hanging over Ken Paxton have had an effect on his ability to do his job, but he’s a long way from seeing a courthouse, much less being convicted of something. If one believes Paxton is unfit to serve, it’s hard to see how one argues in favor of Rep. Reynolds staying in office, and that’s before taking into account the possibility that his jail sentence (if it stands) might overlap with a legislative session. Rep. Reynolds has been barred from practicing law while his appeal is ongoing, which I suspect will put a lot of pressure on him and his family. Again, it brings me no joy to say any of this, but the facts are the facts. The Press has more.

HCC versus Dave Wilson, the continuing story

It’s a fight over legal fees.

Dave Wilson

Dave Wilson

Dave Wilson has long been a thorn in the side of Houston Community College trustees. That hasn’t changed now that he’s one of them.

Wilson, a controversial figure long before he was elected to the HCC board in 2013, has done nothing to diminish his gadfly reputation in his first two years as a trustee. From a campaign criticized as deceptive and a dispute over whether he lives in the district he represents, to a complaint filed against the college and a legal tussle over his exclusion from an executive session, Wilson’s actions have rankled his fellow trustees since he took office in January 2014.

Now Wilson is preparing to sue HCC over roughly $50,000 in legal fees stemming from a lengthy and ongoing dispute over the election that put him on the board.

[…]

Wilson has won several rounds in the court dispute over his residency, which the county is continuing to appeal, saying that the case raises important issues of law.

“We believe that a person should not be able to claim the benefit of a residential homestead at one location while registering to vote at a different location,” Robert Soard, first assistant county attorney, said in an email. “More fundamentally, an elected representative should not be allowed to serve and set the tax rate for a district in which he does not personally reside.”

Wilson says HCC should cover his legal fees, but his fellow trustees disagreed. Wilson wasn’t able to garner the votes needed to put the item on an agenda after the state attorney general ruled last month that the college would have to prove paying the fees was for a public good.

“Based on the attorney general opinion we’ve received regarding this request, I don’t feel we have the authority to reimburse trustee Wilson from tax dollars,” board chairman Zeph Capo said in a text message. “Wilson’s legal dispute with the county began prior to beginning his term as a trustee. Given the AG ruling, I’m taking the advice he often gives us in similar circumstances … Let ’em sue.”

And that’s what Wilson plans to do.

“It’s going to be soon, it’s going to be real soon,” Wilson said Monday, after failing to get support from the trustees at last Thursday’s meeting.

Here’s the AG opinion in question. I Am Not A Lawyer, but my layman’s reading suggests the board is on reasonably firm ground here in exercising its discretion about whether or not to pony up. The concluding paragraph:

In sum, the College has discretion to reimburse a trustee for the expense of defending a quo warranto action only if it determines that the expenditure concerns a legitimate public interest of the College and not merely the trustee’s personal interest and that the quo warranto action involves acts that were undertaken by the trustee in good faith within the scope of an official duty. Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. GA-0104 (2003) at 4. Any determination by the College to reimburse a trustee’s expenses in the circumstances you describe would likely be subject to an abuse of discretion standard by a reviewing court. See Tex. Att’y Gen. Op. No. DM-450 (1997) at 9 (stating that a “decision by an institution of higher education will be set aside if it is arbitrary or umeasonable, or if it violates the law”). Thus, while it is for the College to make the initial determination, given the precedent involving election contests, a court is unlikely to conclude that the College has a public interest in paying the legal expenses associated with a challenge to a trustee’s qualifications for office.

There’s a footnote at the end that says they “cannot conclude that there could never be circumstances under which it is appropriate for a governmental entity to reimburse an official for costs he or she incurred in the defense of a quo warranto proceeding”, so Wilson could prevail in court. AG opinions are not legally binding, and clearly nothing is going to stop Wilson from having his day in court. We’ll see how it goes.

Texas blog roundup for the week of November 23

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone a happy Thanksgiving as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Precinct analysis: Where the voters came from

Yesterday we looked at the voting history of the people who participated in the 2015 election. Today we’re going to take a look at how those numbers broke down by Council district.


Dist   All 3    None    Rest   Total
====================================
A      4,686   7,238   8,173  20,097
B      4,873   8,829   8,738  22,440
C     11,471  17,129  18,588  47,188
D      6,988  10,196  11,204  28,388
E      5,906  14,302  13,392  33,600
F      2,348   5,456   4,942  12,746
G      9,703  13,523  17,630  40,856
H      3,035   7,452   6,958  17,445
I      2,897   5,939   5,856  14,692
J      2,001   3,437   3,305   8,743
K      5,730   8,101   8,846  22,677

Total 59,639 101,603 107,630 268,872

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Just a reminder, “All 3” refers to voters who had also participated in the 2013, 2011, and 2009 elections; “None” refers to voters who voted in none of those three elections; “Rest” refers to the people who voted in one or two of those elections, but not all three. The first thing to notice is something I hadn’t noticed till I started working on this post, which is that for all the talk about “new” voters, there were a lot of “sometimes” voters in this election. Perhaps one of our oft-quoted poli sci professors could put a grad student or two on the question of why people vote in some city elections but not others. Obviously, some people are new to town or are newly eligible to vote, but what about the others? Why skip one election but vote in another? I don’t understand it. I wish someone would make the effort to try.

The other number that jumps out at you is the number of “None” voters in District E. It’s fair to assume a significant number of these were anti-HERO voters. Notice that E wasn’t the only district that saw the number of new voters be more than double the number of old reliables – F, H, and I also fit that bill. Why might that be? Could be any number of reasons – HERO, a disproportionate number of new and/or newly-eligible residents, the fact that there weren’t that many old reliables to begin with, some other reason. Of course, even the district that had a lot of old reliables, like C and D and G, saw a lot of newbies show up as well. What can you say? There were a lot of new voters. Even in this high-for-Houston-elections-turnout environment, there are still a lot of other people who vote in other years.

Another way of looking at this: The share in each district of each kind of voter:


Dist   All 3    None    Rest   Total
====================================
A      7.86%   7.12%   7.59%   7.47%
B      8.17%   8.69%   8.12%   8.35%
C     19.23%  16.86%  17.27%  17.55%
D     11.72%  10.04%  10.41%  10.56%
E      9.90%  14.08%  12.44%  12.50%
F      3.94%   5.37%   4.59%   4.74%
G     16.27%  13.31%  16.38%  15.20%
H      5.09%   7.33%   6.46%   6.49%
I      4.86%   5.84%   5.44%   5.46%
J      3.36%   3.38%   3.07%   3.25%
K      9.61%   7.97%   8.22%   8.43%

Again, you can see the differential in E. No matter how you slice it, District C is the leader, but who comes in second and third and by how much C leads the way varies. Again, I have no broad conclusions to draw, I just think this is interesting. What do you think?

Tomorrow we’ll have a look at how old the voters were this year. Let me know if you have any questions.

Planned Parenthood sues Texas

Here we go.

Right there with them

Right there with them

Planned Parenthood’s Texas affiliates on Monday filed a federal lawsuit to keep state health officials from booting them from the state’s Medicaid program.

Following Texas’ announcement in October that it would stop funding any care for poor women at Planned Parenthood clinics — a response to what state officials called “acts of misconduct” revealed in undercover anti-abortion videos — the women’s health organization is asking the courts for a reprieve.

Ten patients joined Planned Parenthood in the lawsuit, according to the organization. One of those is Kendra Hudson of Houston, who said a pap smear she got at a Planned Parenthood clinic allowed her to identify an abnormal growth and prevent it from developing into cancer.

“They were the provider that I trusted and felt comfortable with,” Hudson told reporters on Monday. By cutting off Medicaid funding to the women’s health organization, Planned Parenthood argues that thousands of other women could lose access to similar services they couldn’t get elsewhere.

The state’s move wouldn’t just end state funding for Planned Parenthood services like pregnancy tests, contraception and cancer screenings. It would also end the allocation of federal dollars to Planned Parenthood through Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurer of last resort that is administered by Texas. In 2015, Texas spent $310,000 of its own money on the women’s health organization while distributing $2.8 million in federal dollars.

[…]

The legal challenge in Texas is the latest in a series of lawsuits filed across the country over how Medicaid dollars are disbursed to Planned Parenthood clinics. Texas’ move comes weeks after a federal district court in Louisiana temporarily halted similar efforts there until the courts could better examine the issue. Other lawsuits are also making their way through the courts in Alabama and Arkansas.

Federal health officials notified the Texas Health and Human Services Commission late last month that kicking Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid could be a violation of U.S. law.

See here, here, and here for the background, and here for a copy of the lawsuit. The Observer adds a few details:

Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups have long claimed that other providers would be able to fill the void left by any Planned Parenthood ouster. Not so, said Dr. Hal Lawrence, CEO at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, during a press call announcing the lawsuit.

In fact, he said, it’d be “next to impossible” for non-Planned Parenthood providers to provide the same volume and quality of care. “It’s very difficult in many states to get Medicaid patients in to see other providers, schedules are already full,” Lawrence told reporters.

Planned Parenthood officials, who were given 30 days to respond to the Texas health commission’s Medicaid termination, said Monday that they are bypassing the commission’s appeals process in favor of filing their lawsuit. But attorneys did say that Planned Parenthood is complying with the inspector general’s requests for thousands of pages of billing and patient documents and subpoenas issued days after the termination letters.

One irony of all this is that one of the often-proffered reasons for not expanding Medicaid is that there aren’t enough doctors in the state who are willing to take new Medicaid patients. So of course kicking out a big Medicaid provider and forcing all its patients onto the mercies of the open market for doctors who will take them makes all kinds of sense.

I presume we all know how this is going to go: Planned Parenthood will win at the district court level, the ruling will be overturned on dubious grounds by a couple of the worse judges on the Fifth Circuit, and then we all get to sweat out another appeal to SCOTUS. Lather, rinse, repeat. In the meantime, this may speed up the timeline for the HHSC Inspector General to produce whatever report he’s going to produce on the claims that PP has been fraudulently billing Medicaid, the investigation of which was spurred by those latest ridiculous “sting” videos. Round and round she goes. Trail Blazers, the Statesman, the Chron, the AusChron, the Press, the Current, Daily Kos, and ThinkProgress have more.

State wants delay on immigration appeal

Of course it does.

JustSayNo

The Texas Attorney General’s office is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for an extra 30 days to respond to the Obama Administration’s appeal of lower court rulings that have blocked controversial changes in immigration enforcement.

The move could affect the timing of a final decision on the program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, which has been blocked for more than a year since the state of Texas filed suit to halt the program.

[…]

The state’s request, if granted, would give the office of Attorney General Ken Paxton until Jan. 20, 2016 to respond to the White House’s filing. Advocates of the president’s program have already expressed concerns that a final determination by the high court could come as late as June, about six months before the president leaves office. It’s unclear what the timeline would be if the extension is granted.

The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, but in Friday’s request the agency argues the case “warrants immediate review.”

In the state’s request for an extension, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller says the state has “numerous pressing deadlines in other cases” before the Supreme Court that were pending before the White House filed its petition.

Keller also argues that the White House could have asked the high court to take the matter up sooner.

“After the district court and court of appeals months ago denied petitioners’ motions to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal, petitioners declined to seek a stay from this Court,” he wrote.

See here and here for the background. The complaint that the Obama administration has slowed things down is pretty ridiculous; this appeal was filed less than two weeks after the Fifth Circuit issued its ruling, and there was no request made for an en banc review. If you really want to complain about the timing, take it up with the two judges that wrote the majority opinion, as their dissenting colleague criticized them for taking so damn long to rule. I’m rooting for SCOTUS to deny this request.

More rules against polluting your neighbors proposed

Good.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed tougher new limits on Tuesday on smokestack emissions from Texas and 22 other states that burden downwind areas with air pollution from power plants they can’t control.

At the same time, the EPA moved to remove two states — South Carolina and Florida — from the “good neighbor” rules, saying they don’t contribute significant amounts of smog to other states.

[…]

The EPA’s proposal on downwind pollution follows a federal appeals court ruling this summer that upheld the agency’s right to impose the clean-air standards, which block states from adding to air pollution in other localities. Some states and industry groups had argued that the rule was overly burdensome.

The rule applies mostly to states in the South and Midwest that contribute to soot and smog along the East Coast.

Under the EPA’s proposal, states would have to comply with air quality standards for ozone, or smog, set by the George W. Bush administration in 2008. Current rules are based on pollution standards developed in the late 1990s.

“This update will help protect the health and lives of millions of Americans by reducing exposure to ozone pollution, which is linked to serious public health effects including reduced lung function, asthma … and early death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement.

The proposal reinforces the obligations states have to address air pollution that is carried across state lines, McCarthy said.

See here for the background. The ruling in question struck down some earlier regulations, but affirmed the EPA’s authority to set regulations on this. I won’t be surprised if there’s another lawsuit over these rules, but one way or another in the end there will be new rules.

Precinct analysis: Old reliables, newcomers, and everyone else

I have three more views of the 2015 electorate, now that I have a copy of the voter roster. With that, and with the past rosters that I have, I can try to paint a more detailed picture of who voted in this election, and perhaps make some comparisons to past elections. Today we’re going to look at voting history. How many voters this year were new, how many had voted in one or more recent elections, and how do those numbers compare to previous years?


Year    All 3   1and2   1and3   2and3   Just1   Just2   Just3    None
=====================================================================
2015   59,639  13,150  26,170   8,714  33,993   6,566  17,964 101,603
2013   46,582  22,044   4,721  13,148  12,239  20,690   6,046  48,662
2011   44,744   9,706  15,360   4,302  15,559   2,830   5,394  19,927
2009   55,117   5,818  22,122  25,227  10,907   7,684  20,218  38,755

vote-button

Let me translate what those column headers mean. “All 3” is the number of people in that election who had voted in each of the three prior city elections. For the year 2015, that means the number of people who had voted in 2013, 2011, and 2009. For 2013, that means the number of people who had voted in 2011, 2009, and 2007. I trust you get the idea for 2011 and 2009; I have rosters going back to 2003, so that’s as far back as I can do this exercise. These are your old reliable voters – year in and year out, they show up and vote.

The next six columns specify one or more of these prior elections. A 1 refers to the election immediately before, a 2 refers to the election before that – i.e., two elections before – and a 3 is for three elections before. Again, for 2015, those elections are 2013 (“1”), 2011 (“2”), and 2009 (“3”). Thus, the column “1and2” means all the people who voted in 2013 and 2011, but not 2009. “1and3” means means all the people who voted in 2013 and 2009, but not 2011. “2and3” means all the people who voted in 2011 and 2009, but not 2013. Along similar lines, “Just1” means all the people who voted in 2013 but not 2011 or 2009, and so forth. Substitute other years as appropriate, and you’ve got it. Lastly, “None” means the people who had voted in none of the past three elections. These are your new voters.

I presume I don’t have to tell you that 2015 was indeed an outlier in this regard. We knew going in that years with high profile referenda have higher turnout than other years, and that’s what happened here. In addition, you have to remember that “high turnout” is a relative thing. Turnout for the Harris County portion of the city of Houston was 268,872, which is more than any odd-year election since 2003, but pales in comparison to the turnouts of recent even years in which city props have been on the ballot. In 2010, for example, 389,428 voters came out in the Harris County part of Houston – 40.9% turnout – with 343,481 casting a vote on the red light camera referendum. In 2012, for the four bond items and two charter amendments up for a vote, there were 565,741 voters, with as many as 435,836 ballots cast. Point being, there are a lot of even-year city voters. Some number of them decided to vote this year as well. I’m not in a position to quantify it further than that, but at a guess based on the other years, I’d say 30 to 50 thousand of those 101,603 were true newbies, while the rest had some prior voting history in Harris County. As we’ve discussed before, new people move in all the time, and some other people become newly eligible due to turning 18 or becoming citizens. If and when I get more details on that, I’ll be sure to share them.

Here’s another way of looking at the data: The proportion of each class of voter for these elections.


Year   All 3   2 of 3   1 of 3   0 of 3
=======================================
2015   22.3%    17.9%    21.9%    37.9%
2013   26.8%    22.9%    22.4%    27.9%
2011   38.0%    24.9%    20.2%    16.9%
2009   29.7%    28.6%    20.9%    20.9%

“2 of 3” and “1 of 3″ refers to voters who had voted in two of the previous three elections, and one of the previous three elections, respectively. Again, the share of new voters this year was clearly higher than in other years. It’s no surprise that the share of new voters was so low in 2011. It was a low turnout year – just over 117,000 voters in total – so you’d expect that a large majority of them would be the regulars. By the same token, the old reliable share this year was lower than usual, for the same reason. I’m fascinated by how stable the 1 of 3” share was across the four races. As we saw in the table at the top, the one prior election in question can be any of the three predecessors. It’s not just folks who’d been new the year before. That number is directly affected by the turnout levels of the election in question and the one before it.

So that’s our first look at this data. I don’t have any broad conclusions to draw here, I just find this stuff amazing. Who would have guessed that over 2,800 people who voted in the low-turnout 2011 election had also voted in the low-turnout 2007 election, but not the higher-turnout 2009 or 2005 elections? Well, now you know. I’ll have more tomorrow.

Our partisan Mayoral runoff

I’m shocked, shocked to find that there are partisan interests in the Mayoral runoff.

Sylvester Turner

Sylvester Turner

Even though Houston elections officially are nonpartisan, the contest between Bill King and Sylvester Turner has evolved into a test of party might as voters prepare to elect the Bayou City’s first new mayor in six years.

King has framed the runoff as the choice between a businessman and a career politician, a common appeal by Republican candidates against Democratic incumbents. Trying to paint King as too extreme for Houston, Turner’s campaign has taken to invoking the tea party and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the latter-day bogeymen of the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the local Republican and Democratic parties have endorsed their favorites and affiliated groups are gearing up their ground games to phone bank and knock on doors for their preferred candidates.

The result is a race without overt party identification, but with all of the trappings of a partisan battlefield.

“We’ve seen across the country the intensity of the partisan division grow,” University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray said. “It’s not that the overall population has become more partisan and polarized, but people who vote, particularly in a low-turnout election like a Houston mayor runoff, tend to be partisans.”

Murray said he expects turnout to be about 20 percent in the Dec. 12 runoff to replace term-limited Mayor Annise Parker, down from 27 percent on Nov. 3.

[…]

Murray said the race is more partisan than usual for city races, attributing the dynamic in part to the equal rights ordinance thought to have brought many conservative Republicans to the polls.

“It’s not surprising that the Democrats particularly, since they have a significant edge in partisanship within the city, would try to make this a partisan race,” Murray said. “And Republicans hope that they can counter and in a low-turnout election get enough of their partisans to go to the polls to squeak out a win.”

I will note that 20% turnout for the runoff will equate to over 190,000 votes, which would be higher turnout than the 2013 or 2009 November races. The 2003 runoff had 220,725 votes, while the 2001 runoff had 326,254 votes. I feel confident saying we won’t reach that level. Both races were D versus R like this one, with Bill White winning by a huge margin in 2003 and Lee Brown squeaking by in 2001. The latter election had “first Latino Mayor of Houston” possibilities (so did the 2003 one, but by then the shine had largely come off of Orlando Sanchez), and it was heavily polarized by race. This runoff certainly won’t reach 2001 levels, and probably won’t reach 2003 levels, but I doubt it will be low enough for it to be particularly favorable to Republicans. I’ll say again, I think for King to win he’s got to blunt Turner’s appeal outside of his African-American base. That was the intent of the Bell endorsement, except that a large number of Bell voters were repulsed by it. The partisans are going to turn out, as they always have in these races. If Democrats of all stripes back Turner, he ought to win. If King can cut into that enough, he can win. That’s how I see it.

And before anyone bemoans all those dirty partisans besmirching their innocent non-partisan city race, please note that there are also significant policy differences between the two. HERO, the revenue cap, and Rebuild Houston are the headliners for that, but the list doesn’t end there. I for one would rather have a Metro Board Chair nominated by Turner than one nominated by King. It’s not like these guys largely agree on things and it’s just a matter of whose flag they fly. Sylvester Turner’s Houston and Bill King’s Houston will be different places. By all means, base your choice on that. From my perspective at least, the two roads lead to the same destination.

Paxton fires back at prosecutors

Incoming!

Best mugshot ever

Lawyers in Attorney General Ken Paxton’s ongoing securities fraud case have fired back against special prosecutors in the latest in a series of back-and-forth court filings.

In their Thursday filing, Paxton’s attorneys called the prosecutors’ reply to their motions to drop three felony charges “bombastic and diversionary.”

“Attorneys Pro Tem attempt sarcasm and inappropriate fictional analogies to mask their unsubstantive Reply that repeatedly misrepresents both Paxton’s arguments and the law,” the court filing said. “They are under the misguided belief that sound bites and quotes from fictional characters somehow trump law and documented facts.”

[…]

Paxton’s attorneys say the reply does not address their actual argument of improper grand juror qualification and that Paxton’s right to due process under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was violated.

The latest filing also claimed that prosecutors are enabling Oldner’s inappropriate actions as they “concoct a fiction that is unsupported in law or fact, to excuse his behavior.”

See here and here for the background. At this point, I think all future filings related to this should be more like this:

I’m far too amused by this case.

Now who’s messing with religious freedom?

What is Greg Abbott’s beef with faith organizations?

A prominent Texas faith organization signaled Friday that refugee resettlement agencies in the state may not comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to turn away Syrian refugees, writing a letter “to express shock and dismay” with the directive.

The governor’s order “constitutes an unprecedented attempt on the part of a state agency to pressure private, nonprofit organizations to violate federal law and their federal contractual obligations,” wrote Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, which works closely with resettlement agencies affiliated with religious institutions.

The letter asked the state to convene a meeting with resettlement agencies and federal authorities to clarify whether Abbott has the authority to issue such a directive.

Moorhead told the Houston Chronicle that among resettlement groups, “there seems to be some energy developing around convening them as a coalition to work on this issue.”

Moorhead’s letter came hours after the state’s top health official wrote refugee resettlement agencies in the state to say Texas was invoking its legal right to “require that you provide immediate and ongoing consultation with the Health and Human Services Commission Office of Immigration and Refugee Affairs (OIRA) regarding any plans that may exist to resettle Syrian refugees in Texas.”

“If you currently have plans to participate in the resettlement of any Syrian refugee in Texas, please notify us immediately, but not later than 4:00 p.m. Friday, November 20, 2015,” executive health Commissioner Chris Traylor wrote, adding the agencies should discontinue those plans and “further, please notify us immediately if, in the future, you learn that a Syrian refugee is proposed for resettlement with your organization.”

See here for some background, and here for a copy of the letter. The Statesman adds on.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office appears headed toward a legal showdown with refugee resettlement agencies and their sponsoring faith organizations over Abbott’s efforts to keep any Syrian refugees from resettling in Texas in the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks.

Following Abbott’s directive, Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Chris Traylor on Thursday sent a toughly worded letter to 19 refugee resettlement agencies in Texas — including Caritas and the Refugee Services of Texas in Austin — asking that they scrap any plans to resettle Syrian refugees in Texas and that they notify his office by 4 p.m. Friday if they had any plans to resettle Syrians in the state.

Refugee resettlement is generally a federal matter done in cooperation with national and local nonprofit, often church-based, resettlement agencies. The states play a supportive role and pass federal money onto the local agencies.

However, in his effort to make good on his pledge to keep Syrian refugees from coming to Texas, Abbott, a former state attorney general, is relying on a section of the 1997 legislation authorizing the refugee resettlement program. It states that it is the intent of Congress that “local voluntary agency activities should be conducted in close cooperation and advance consultation with state and local governments.”

Traylor cites that provision in his letter, and warns, “We reserve the right to refuse to cooperate on any resettlement on any grounds and, until further notice, will refuse to cooperate with resettlement of any Syrian refugees in Texas.”

“It’s a very disturbing effort by the state to coerce nonprofit organizations into ceasing the important services that they normally provide to vulnerable refugees to allow them to integrate into our community,” said Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law.

“The agency is seeking to force nonprofits to join the governor’s misguided policies that discriminate on the basis of national origin,” Gilman said. “Most disappointing of all is that those harmed will be families who have fled unspeakable violence in Syria, who have undergone a lengthy and cumbersome process to ensure that they present no threat, and who desperately need protection and support to recover some stability in their lives here in the United States.”

That’s religious nonprofits that Abbott is trying to coerce. At a time when for-profit corporations have been granted the right to impose the religious beliefs of their owners on their employees and when plaintiffs in a lawsuit who happen to be pastors getting subpoenaed is taken as an assault on freedom on religion. Again, this is Greg Abbott exerting government power to influence what religious organizations can do. I’m at a loss for words here. Thankfully, Lisa Falkenberg was able to find a few.

On issues like birth control, abortion and gay marriage, conservative politicians routinely charge into the fray like moral warriors, vowing to protect the sacred constitutional right to religious liberty.

Hobby Lobby. Kim Davis. They got your back.

But when it comes to a basic tenet of Christianity – caring for the stranger – the warriors have turned their swords against Scripture.

What would Jesus do, Greg? Feel free to ask a bishop if you need help with that.

Weekend link dump for November 22

An oral history of Turkeys Away, the greatest episode of WKRP in Cincinnati and one of the greatest TV episodes ever.

“As the Internet of Things grows, we can scarcely afford a massive glut of things that are insecure-by-design.”

“The World Fantasy award trophy will no longer be modelled on HP Lovecraft”.

“Traditionally, most American white supremacists claim to be Christians…[but] a number of white supremacists are abandoning Christianity for a very different religion: Odinism”.

Silver insurance plans on the Healthcare.gov exchange are your better bet.

“But while PhD students are not so naive as to enter the program expecting an easy ride, there is a cost to the endeavor that no one talks about: a psychological one.”

Aaron Rodgers is a mensch.

“Our policy in Syria should be to destroy ISIS. Everything else can come after that.”

The case against killing baby Hitler.

Yogi Berra and Willie Mays will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom this year.

The best thing you will read today is this conversation with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem.

You are now free to wear a colander on your head for your drivers license photo. In the state of Massachusetts, anyway.

“So it was either loiter outside or sit in the river. We just thought we’re not going to get beaten by a river, we’re going to have a beer.” You have to admire that level of commitment.

“Lets’s start with the dick jokes. Oh, the endless dick jokes.”

John Kasich and Lindsey Graham demand equal time on NBC.

The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is an emoji. Trust me, your kids will love it.

“I’ve taught refugee kids. I mean no-shit refugees, kids who’ve spent much of their youth in UN camps and whose experiences and losses make the worst moments of my life look like a Disney comedy by comparison. I’ve taught in rooms full of multiple different accents and Somalis and Russians and Southern Asians and kids from Mexico and points further south. Hijabs everywhere. And you know what? They’re GREAT KIDS. They’re HAPPY TO BE HERE. They’re poor and often they’re behind the academic curve because they’re still working on language acquisition as high school students. And they’re a joy to work with, because they know how good they’ve got it just by being here.”

Give yourself a security freeze for Christmas.

Don’t know much about geography, Ben Carson edition.

RIP, Smaug, the Komodo dragon at the Houston zoo.

I support the Interstate Swatting Hoax Act, even if it is limited in scope.

What Scalzi says. And also what Russell Moore says.

“A political analyst who spends months predicting the fall of a candidate who shows not only resilience but a towering increase in polling over that time clearly fails to understand the subject s/he is talking about in such a profound way that their credibility and expertise should be permanently undermined.”

Precinct analysis: The Harris County bonds

Courtesy of Mike Morris at the Chron.

It’s an open secret of local politics that, when Harris County needs voter approval for big projects, they turn not to suburban county residents but to those in the city of Houston’s urban core.

Just look at this month’s elections: Though county offices are on the ballot in even-numbered years, county leaders put four propositions on the ballot, when Houston voters had much more of a reason to turn out (for an open mayor’s race and two city ballot measures) than those in the unincorporated area.

Once again on Nov. 3, Houston’s urban dwellers delivered, backing the county bond measures by wide margins even though they will see comparatively little of the spending in their neighborhoods (a note on that imbalance below).

It’s important to note that the vast majority of suburban precincts also passed the bonds, but the map below makes clear that support was weaker in the outlying areas and particularly strong in City Council District C, the progressive crescent west of downtown that was also the only district to support the city’s rejected equal rights ordinance.

for comparison’s sake, here’s how the 2013 jail bond went. That one was totally uncontroversial, but was basically left to its own devices. It passed – barely – with just enough support from Houston to overcome the (mild) opposition from the rest of the county. The lesson I took at the time was that you have to have some kind of campaign for even the most milquetoast issues. Doesn’t matter if all the Right People supported it, doesn’t matter if there’s no active opposition, you need a campaign. These bonds had one – it wasn’t much more than a couple of mailers, but it existed and that was good enough.

Rep. Ron Reynolds convicted of misdemeanor barratry charge

The word “tawdry” applies to this.

Rep. Ron Reynolds

State Rep. Ron Reynolds was convicted Friday of illegally soliciting clients in an “ambulance chasing for profit” scheme, a verdict that carries the threat of jail time and deals a blow to his political career but won’t require him to leave office.

A Montgomery County jury convicted Reynolds, a Missouri City Democrat, of five counts of misdemeanor barratry after a week-long trial in which he represented himself. He was among eight Houston-area lawyers charged in 2013; Reynolds is the only one who did not accept a plea deal.

A teary-eyed Reynolds hugged his wife after the verdict was read. “I always respect the jury’s verdict. But while I respect it, I disagree. Based on the evidence, it did not show that I ever knowingly accepted a solicited case,” said Reynolds, the first African American elected state representative in Fort Bend County since Reconstruction.

Reynolds said he planned to appeal because he doesn’t believe the law was followed.

See here for the past history, and be sure to read the whole story to see why I described it the way I did. I’ll say again what I’ve said before: I like Rep. Reynolds personally, and I value his service as a State Representative, including and especially his leadership on important issues. It is with no joy that I say it’s time for him to conclude his service in the Legislature so he can straighten out his personal life. However well he has served the people of HD27, it’s time for them to have another choice.

Pro softball returns to Houston

Didn’t know we had pro softball here, but it’s cool that we do.

The new sports franchise debuting here this summer is appropriately named: the Houston Scrap Yard Dawgs.

After an eight-year absence, professional women’s fastpitch softball is coming back to Houston and will be based at an 82-acre complex that is erecting a 4,000-seat stadium near The Woodlands.

Yet two stars of the sport, Cat Osterman and Christa Willams-Yates – both University of Texas standouts and gold-medal Olympians from the Houston area – know the players on this team will have to be scrappers to succeed.

Williams-Yates, 37, who now coaches at Friendswood ISD, was a pitcher with a windmill arm that used to send the ball flying across the plate for the last pro-team based here, the Texas Thunder.

This franchise played three years in League City until its base operations were moved to Rockport, Ill., in 2007.

“I had a great experience playing in the pros,” said Williams-Yates, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, originally from Pasadena. “It was always a challenge. You are playing against the best players in the world. In college, they’re spread out, but now they’re concentrated together.”

Nonetheless, she won the pitcher’s triple crown in 2005 for her wins, strikeouts and earned run average while playing in the National Pro Fastpitch league. She quit after her team relocated to Illinois.

“The lack of media attention killed us in Houston. Nobody knew about us. I can count on one hand in my three years on the team that there was anything in the news about us,” Yates said.

[…]

But while the National Pro Fastpitch league has struggled with rebrandings under two other names since its launching in 2004, Osterman and Willams-Yates believe the best years are ahead for this league.

They say the league has a new weapon: national TV coverage.

“We had consistent coverage this past year of our games. They were shown every Monday and Tuesday on the CBS sports network,” she said. “You could count on finding it there, which has helped grow awareness of the kind of excitement the game can generate.”

Men ages 35-55 are the primary audience for the NCAA world series in softball on ESPN, said the Scrap Yard’s general manager, Kevin Shelton.

I’m in that demographic. I enjoy watching the Women’s College World Series. It’s sort of like baseball, but very different in ways that make it really interesting to watch. I’m intrigued by a pro league in Houston, though having it out by The Woodlands dampens my enthusiasm a bit. I’m glad to see more opportunities for female professional athletes, and I wish the Scrap Yard Dawgs lots of success.

Saturday video break: How High The Moon

Didn’t get my act together in time to post a video last week – sorry about that. This Saturday we get a little jazzy with the great Charlie Parker:

If you’re a sax player, then Charlie Parker is one of your gods. Wish I could have seen him perform live. As with many jazz songs, there are instrumentals and there are vocals, and when you think of the latter, you think of The Manhattan Transfer:

I asked myself, what could be better than the MT singing this song, and the answer I got was having Ella Fiztgerald join them doing a bit of scat singing. The only problem is that it was over too quickly. A slightly longer Transfer-only version, with a nifty guitar solo where Ella did her thing, is here. Enjoy!