Knowledge Is Good
Since today is actually New Year’s Eve, I thought it would be appropriate to break the pattern for this classic torch song. Here’s Kacey Musgraves asking you what are you doing New Year’s Eve:
Props for the clarinet solo. there aren’t nearly enough clarinet solos in popular music, if you ask me. And because there are a ton of recordings of this song and I can’t help myself, here are Zoey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt doing their thing:
Happy New Year’s Eve. I’ll see you on the other side.
It depends, but basically it’s up to the new Solicitor General, since he is the one defending the federal government’s actions.
Best mugshot ever
Since Paxton assumed office as AG in January 2015, Texas has sued the federal government more than a dozen times, raising questions about White House policy on such a wide range of topics as internet governance, overtime pay, transgender bathrooms, clean power, clean water and immigration.
Now that the Oval Office is awaiting a new Republican occupant, the question arises: What will happen to Paxton’s brand as a White House challenger and to all those lawsuits?Paxton has not yet showed exactly how he will respond to the new administration, although he supported President-elect Donald Trump’s candidacy.
Marc Ryland, a spokesman for the Texas AG’s Office, emailed this statement in response to a request for comment for this story: “We have a host of cases pending against the federal government due to the Obama administration’s overreach. Some cases challenge statutes only Congress can change, some challenge agency rules that go through notice-and-comment rulemaking, and some challenge informal agency guidance. We will continue to pursue all of these cases and look forward to working with a new administration to seek to conform its actions to the Constitution.”
Neal Devins is among those who expects the federal government, under the new administration, to take steps to undercut the basis of the Texas AG’s legal challenges.
In instances in the past, when the party occupying the White House has changed, the federal government has changed its policies and asked courts as a result to moot lawsuits against it, according to Devins, a professor at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Virginia, who tracks state attorneys generals litigation.
“This has happened. The Solicitor General confesses error,” Devins said.
But that new-sheriff-in-town approach doesn’t always go smoothly.
Devins cites the 1981 federal lawsuit against Bob Jones University, whose tax-exempt status was being litigated over its discriminatory policies. (*) Ronald Reagan’s administration tried to moot the issue by changing federal policy, but there was a political backlash and the case continued, with SCOTUS eventually denying BJU its tax exemption. I suppose something like that could happen with one or more of the cases that the Trump Justice Department might seek to drop, but I wouldn’t count on it. Assume these will all be wins in some form for Paxton, and go from there.
(*) This, as the Slacktivist has reminded us, was the true genesis of the religious right as a political movement. Not abortion, but Bob Jones’ desire to maintain tax exempt status while remaining racially segregated. Molly Ivins once said “I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point–race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.” This is what she was talking about.
More than 17 years after the shooting death of his pregnant wife, former football coach David Temple walked out of the Harris County jail Wednesday and into the waiting arms of his family, ready to stand trial again if necessary for a murder he steadfastly maintains he didn’t commit.
Wearing a bright red shirt, Temple embraced his mother, father and two brothers, telling the media his release was possible only through God and the support of his family and attorneys.
“It’s been a long journey, and fortunately a portion of that journey has been completed,” Temple said. “We’re waiting for justice to be served, and for the people who put me there, who lied and cheated, be held accountable … .”
But Temple’s appellate attorney, Stan Schneider, cut him off, advising him not to speak further about the case.
Temple, 48, was released on a $30,000 bond and is set to appear in court Jan. 4 to show he will cooperate with any potential retrial or other proceedings. His conviction was overturned by the state’s highest criminal appeals court amid findings of prosecutorial misconduct.
[…]
Temple was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2007 after a volatile trial that pitted prominent defense attorney Dick DeGuerin against legendary prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who later became the star of her own TV show.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded last month that prosecutors withheld significant evidence from defense attorneys, including information about an alternative suspect. Siegler has defended her actions in the case but could not be reached for comment.
Incoming District Attorney Kim Ogg – who takes office next week – has indicated her office will review the case and decide whether to proceed with a new trial.
Temple was granted a new trial late last month, with the district court ruling that found prosecutorial misconduct coming down last July. It will be interesting to see how Kim Ogg handles this, as it’s not clear to me there’s an obviously correct path to follow. One could reasonably conclude that despite the misconduct findings, Temple is still guilty and should be tried again, this time with all of the known evidence available to the defense so there are no further questions about the DA’s behavior. One could also conclude that even if Temple did do it, the odds of convicting him now are too slim to be worth the investment of resources it would take to re-try him, and he did serve nine years so it’s not like he got away with it. I don’t envy Ogg the decision.
One more thing:
The appeals court ruled DeGuerin was denied access to approximately 1,400 pages of offense reports, including an investigation of another possible suspect – a teenage neighbor accused of stealing two shotguns similar to the one used in the murder.
It was the fifth time since 2015 that the state’s highest appeals court has ordered a review of murder convictions based on prosecutorial misconduct in the Harris County District Attorney’s office.
Emphasis mine. Whatever you think of Kim Ogg or Devon Anderson or Pat Lykos or whoever else, if at the end of her tenure we can say that the Court of Criminal Appeals did not question any of her murder convictions based on prosecutorial misconduct, she will have accomplished something significant. The Press has more.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to say Goodbye to 2016.
1. Every Time We Say Goodbye – Julie Murphy
2. Good-Bye – Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin
3. Goodbye Girl – Squeeze
4. Goodbye Liza Jane – Elana James
5. Goodbye Mursheen Durkin – Flying Fish Sailors
6. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – Elton John
7. Goodbye, Cousin Early – Asylum Street Spankers
8. Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye – Leonard Cohen
9. Kiss Him Goodbye – Georgetown Chimes
10. So Long-Farewell-Goodbye – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Which is not to say that 2017 will be any better – indeed, it has a lot of potential to be worse – but it hasn’t started yet, and it isn’t 2016. So there’s still hope.
Harris County has been sued in federal court for the third time in less than a year for yet another issue related to the county’s tough arrest and pretrial detention practices.
This time, civil rights advocates allege that county officials routinely charge and jail thousands of people each month without a warrant and without ever requiring police officers to supply sworn statements taken under oath that adequately describe the crimes for which the defendants stand accused, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Southern District of Texas.
The plaintiffs are a pair of non-violent offenders arrested and jailed over the Christmas holidays.
Lucas Lomas was arrested Christmas Eve for allegedly pilfering “five DVDs and a speaker,” according to a document prepared by a prosecutor and co-signed by an officer. The filing provides no details about how the arresting officer determined Lomas had stolen the items. After a video hearing that is typical in Harris County, a hearing officer found probable cause. Lomas was released after posting $15,000 bail.
Carlos Eaglin was arrested Dec. 26 for alleged possession of less than 2 ounces of marijuana. Court papers co-signed by an officer and prosecutor accuse Eaglin of marijuana possession, but do not indicate a statement from the officer about how the substance was discovered or determined to be marijuana. After his video hearing, Eaglin was jailed on a $5,000 bond – the highest amount specified for any misdemeanor in Harris County’s so-called bond schedule. He remains in jail.
The lawsuit seeks to compel the county to provide all arrestees with a more detailed statements of facts that are supported by an oath or information provided by a police officer that is consistent with both state and federal law. Those documents then could be reviewed by what the case describes as a neutral magistrate.
You can see a copy of the complaint here. The other two lawsuits are about bail practices and detention time, with the city being the defendant in the latter case. I Am Not A Lawyer, but what the plaintiffs are asking for in this action sure seems like a reasonable thing to me. As with the other lawsuit, incoming DA Kim Ogg will have to decide how she wants to handle this.
These are busy times for fact checkers.
The last line of defense against the torrent of half-truths, untruths and outright fakery that make up so much of the modern internet is in a downscale strip mall near the beach.
Snopes, the fact-checking website, does not have an office designed to impress, or even be noticed. A big sign outside still bears the name of the previous tenant, a maker of underwater headphones. Inside there’s nothing much — a bunch of improvised desks, a table tennis table, cartons of Popchips and cases of Dr Pepper. It looks like a dot-com on the way to nowhere.
Appearances deceive. This is where the muddled masses come by the virtual millions to establish just what the heck is really going on in a world turned upside down.
Did Donald J. Trump say on Twitter that he planned to arrest the “Saturday Night Live” star Alec Baldwin for sedition? Has Hillary Clinton quietly filedfor divorce? Was Mr. Trump giving Kanye West a cabinet position? And was Alan Thicke, the star of “Growing Pains,” really dead?
All untrue, except for the demise of Mr. Thicke, which was easily verifiable.
“Rationality seems to have fallen out of vogue,” said Brooke Binkowski, Snopes’s managing editor. “People don’t know what to believe anymore. Everything is really strange right now.”
That is certainly true at Snopes itself. For 20 years, the site was dedicated to urban legends, like the purported existence of alligators in New York City sewers, and other benign misinformation. But its range and readership increased significantly during a prolonged presidential election campaign in which the facts became a partisan issue and reality itself seemed up for grabs.
[…]
But the role of fake news and misinformation in Mr. Trump’s surprise win quickly reached a fever pitch, prompting questions about the extent to which Facebook, where many of these bogus stories were shared, had influenced the election. Reluctantly, the social media giant was forced to act.
The plan is for Facebook to send questionable links to a coalition of fact-checking sites, including Snopes. If the links are found to be dubious, Facebook will alert users by marking stories with a “disputed” designation.
Mr. Mikkelson, speaking from Washington State, declined to claim this new initiative was a potential turning point in the quest for truth on the internet, or even in the history of Snopes.
“I said, ‘O.K., we’ll give it a try,’” he said. “It doesn’t really involve us doing anything we wouldn’t already be doing.” As for Facebook, he thinks it had to do something but had few good options. Blocking content outright, for instance, would be a public relations minefield.
You know, I’m so old I was once subscribed to the soc.urban-legends Usenet feed, from whence David and then-wife Barbara Mikkelson got their start in this business. I’m glad that Facebook has enlisted Snopes’ services to try and separate truth from lies, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope that it will make much difference. People are going to believe what they want to believe, and when those too-good-to-be-true stories align with their politics, good luck with that. But you still have to do something, so we can hope this will help even a little bit.
There will be a lot. You may or may not get to hear about it.
When an expected 1 million people descend on Houston for 10 days of Super Bowl concerts, contests and championship football, they will be protected – and watched – by a security operation built on secrecy, technology and the combined efforts of dozens of agencies.
Unlike in recent Super Bowls, however, the public here won’t likely see lines of officers with fatigues, military-style rifles and armored vehicles.
The message for visitors? Relax and enjoy the fun.
“We don’t think we need to display a heavy militaristic presence to provide a safe environment,” said Executive Assistant Houston Police Chief George Buenik, who heads the event’s public safety committee. “We are keeping it a lower visible presence, meaning we are not going to be displaying all of our resources and assets, just like we are not getting into numbers or specifics. A lot of our security plan is what we consider confidential.”
[…]
The hype, media attention, massive crowds and more than 100 million expected television viewers make for an over-the-top party but also offer a unique challenge for law enforcement.
Keeping such events safe has grown even more complex in recent years, with the proliferation of terrorist attacks and new technology and social media that can connect or inspire like-minded persons.
The Houston events will be spread out across the city, from the football game at NRG Stadium to live concerts, fan festivals and other events at Discovery Green and the George R. Brown Convention Center 13 miles away.
Lakewood Church – which sits between the two sites in a former indoor sports arena near Greenway Plaza – will host an NFL Gospel Celebration.
Law enforcement agencies have been preparing for the events since not long after Houston was selected in May 2013 to host the big game.
Delegations have been sent to the last three Super Bowls to learn and figure out what might be done differently in the Bayou City. Houston has experience with big crowds, having previously hosted the Super Bowl in 1974 and 2004 and other big events.
The city is expected to spend about $5.5 million, mostly for security, but that is expected to be reimbursed by the game’s host committee.
The federal government also is covering some security costs, with the FBI; Homeland Security; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies participating, though those details are – not surprisingly – not available.
Local preparations have included combing through NRG Stadium and other Super Bowl-related venues and installing additional surveillance cameras in key areas, but authorities decline to reveal exactly what they are doing.
NRG Stadium will be surrounded by a special zone, where police will control foot traffic and commercial vendors. And the nearby Astrodome – which originally had been considered for special events – will remain shuttered.
Flight restrictions will be in place for certain aircraft, and a “No Drone Zone” is expected to be declared, as it has for previous Super Bowls.
And local law enforcement officers are racking their brains to think of new threats they might have missed. Representatives of various local, state and federal entities gathered in recent days in a conference room at NRG Stadium to think up new scenarios and how they would respond.
I don’t remember what the number of visitors for Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004 was. I do remember that the number far exceeded the total number of seats available in Reliant Stadium, enough to make me wonder what these people were traveling for, if they couldn’t see the actual game. What I’m getting at is that I don’t know if that “one million people descending on Houston” estimate is realistic or not, but based on past history it is a lot higher than you might think. Regardless, I’m sure we’re all relieved to know that the city will be reimbursed for its police and other Super Bowl security-related expenditures. My general advice to avoid the area at all costs unless you really have to or really want to remains in effect.
Ross Ramsey plunges in, and no I don’t regret that at all.
Gov. Greg Abbott wants lawmakers to take a bathroom break, and you can’t blame him for trying to find relief.
The next legislative session hasn’t even started and regulation of which restrooms transgender Texans use is getting the kind of attention usually reserved for taxes and immigration.
Abbott told reporters last week that he wants to wait and see what lawmakers come up with before he’ll take a position. At a forum last month, House Speaker Joe Straus downplayed the issue in a different way, saying it’s not “the most urgent concern of mine.”
If those two officials sounded mild to untrained ears, they were perfectly clear to those with political antennae. Their intended audience knows that this issue is not on the fast track some in their party want it to be on.
A slowdown might turn the bathroom fight to the back burner. Republicans attribute it to a directive from the federal Department of Education on how school districts should deal with the needs of transgender students.
Abbott doesn’t like the federal directive and tweeted his support for the state’s challenge to it early last summer.
But he is unwilling, at this point, to endorse legislative efforts to remedy the situation. The policy questions around facilities and transgender people are complicated and the politics are gnarly.
[…]
It’s always possible that the incoming Republican administration in Washington will retract that initial federal directive and remove the declared reason for state action — the kind of bureaucratic “never mind” that could ease the political pressure for new laws.
The courts might take care of that for them. A federal judge in Texas already put the federal rules on hold, saying the feds didn’t jump through the right hoops when putting the regulation into effect. The Obama administration is appealing that ruling.
It is already clear that the drum major at the front of this particular parade in Texas — Patrick — is trying different variations of a transgender bathroom bill to find an acceptable option. Sen.-elect Dawn Buckingham, R-Lake Travis, said earlier this month that “my understanding is the businesses, the sporting venues, will not be affected by this law” — i.e. the bill could be limited to schools and other public buildings.
That might solve some problems. But the North Carolina law was aimed only at public buildings and still ran into opposition from businesses and from sports groups like the NCAA and the NBA.
A lot of this is stuff that we’ve talked about before. I’m glad to see someone other than me read the Buckingham and Abbott statements as showing the effect of business lobby arm-twisting, though I remain concerned that those folks will cut and run at their first opportunity to declare victory. But it seems clear now that they are making a difference, and that’s all to the good. Those of us who want to see this dead and buried and not just neutralized need to keep the pressure on to make that happen.
I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, but here we are.
Conservative Republican Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, said he wants to strengthen families and reinforce the sanctity of marriage by eliminating no-fault divorces, which now allow couples to split amicably with neither legally alleging blame.
“I don’t know if we don’t take our vows as seriously as we used to, but I think getting rid of the no-fault divorce piece of this may make folks concentrate on this a little harder before they enter into that relationship, or stick it out to where they can restore that relationship and the tough times in marriage,” he said.
Krause, who has been married for 14 years, said he wants modern culture to better value the importance of family to ensure a healthy society, and said stable families will result in better outcomes for children.
Under a bill he plans to push in the 2017 legislative session, the state would strike “insupportability” as grounds for divorce. A couple who wants to dissolve their marriage peacefully will have to live separately for three years before filing for divorce. Those opposed to waiting would have to accuse their partners of cruelty or adultery, or allege their partner abandoned them after a year living apart. Other grounds include conviction of a felony or confinement in a mental hospital.
“That’s a terrible idea,” [Cindy Diggs, of Holmes Diggs Eames & Sadler, a Houston law firm that concentrates on divorce and family law,] said.
Doing away with no-fault divorces will enrich divorce lawyers because clients will pay more in fees to come up with reasons to legally justify splitting from their spouse, she said.
“He’s forcing the fight,” she said of Krause’s bill. “Even as a divorce lawyer, I don’t think that’s right. I think you should make divorce easier for those who want it because those who want it are still going to go and file and get it. It’s just going to cost them more and cause their families and their children more strife.”
[…]
Krause proposed the bill in the 2015 legislative session, supported by pastors and Concerned Women for America, a national conservative advocacy group that seeks to weave biblical principals into public policy, both of which argue children in single-parent households are more likely to struggle than their peers.
The bill won a narrow 4-3 bipartisan approval in a legislative committee but failed to reach the floor.
“We are not a church, we are a government,” said Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, during a hearing days before voting against the bill. “When people get married, they get married. They’re adults. … That is really getting in the middle and I’m not so sure it fixes things. I think, if anything, it makes things worse.”
Krause rejects the suggestion that forcing couples to wait out a divorce infringes on their personal freedom.
“They still have every right, whether they’re going to get into that union or not,” Krause said. “But once they do, I don’t think it’s bad for the state to say, ‘Hey, if you’re doing this and you’re entering into this union, let’s make sure you’re very serious about it, knowing the societal benefits that can happen when there’s a happy married couple and knowing the societal concern that we see as a consequence when there’s a proliferation of divorces.”
The bill in question from 2015 was HB454, which did get voted out of committee but never got a vote on the House floor. As the story notes, the divorce rate has been falling nationally and in Texas, so this strikes me as yet another solution in search of a problem. It’s also another mockery of the alleged ideal of “small government”, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I don’t think this bill will get any more traction this session, but you never know. If it does, I bet we see a big spike in the number of divorce filings between the day it passes and the day it goes into effect. I mean hey, if you were headed that direction anyway, may as well get there before the price goes up, right?
This happened right before Christmas, so I’m just catching up to it now.
The day after California regulators shut down Uber’s self-driving car program in San Francisco, Uber on Thursday packed up its autonomous vehicles and hauled them to Arizona, vowing to resume testing there.
The move was a quick rebound by Uber after its pilot program in San Francisco fell apart after just one week. Instead of giving in to California regulators and applying for a $150 permit to test its self-driving cars on public roads, Uber on Thursday once again signaled it doesn’t need to play by its home state’s rules.
“Our cars departed for Arizona this morning by truck,” an Uber spokeswoman wrote in an emailed statement Thursday. “We’ll be expanding our self-driving pilot there in the next few weeks, and we’re excited to have the support of Governor Ducey.”
The company released photos showing its silver Volvo SUVs loaded onto the back of a semi truck owned by Otto — the autonomous trucking startup that Uber acquired in August.
[…]
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Thursday welcomed the self-driving Ubers to his state, where they will not need a special permit to drive on public roads, and positioned California’s neighbor as a welcoming alternative for Uber and other disruptive innovators.
“While California puts the brakes on innovation and change with more bureaucracy and more regulation, Arizona is paving the way for new technology and new businesses,” he wrote in a statement. “California may not want you, but we do.”
Ducey last year signed an executive order supporting the testing and operation of self-driving cars and establishing a Self-Driving Vehicle Oversight Committee to advise officials on how to advance the progress of autonomous vehicles.
Self-driving cars are treated the same as any other vehicle in Arizona, Arizona Department of Transportation spokesman Timothy Tait wrote in an emailed statement.
“We hope this cooperation and common-sense approach, combined with this state’s favorable climate, encourage even more companies to test autonomous vehicles in Arizona,” he wrote.
See here for the background. Arizona’s permissive approach is certainly one way to do this, though one wonders what their response will be if Uber decides that even their rules are too restrictive and so it will just ignore them as they had done in California. It should also be noted that there are some twenty (!) other companies testing driverless cars in California now, following the rules Uber refused to comply with. One presumes Uber will eventually want their cars to operate in CA, so either they’ll have to suck it up or get the US Congress to pass a law requiring all states to allow them to operate as they see fit, much like they want the Lege to do to cities in Texas. I wonder if Ken Paxton will file a lawsuit over the egregious federal interference with states’ rights if that happens. The Fiscal Times, Engadget, the Guardian, and the Washington Post have more.
Year One was busy, but a lot of what was done this year depends on what happens next year.
Mayor Sylvester Turner
Tasked last year with distinguishing himself from a crowded field of mayoral candidates, Sylvester Turner styled himself as a progressive with expansive policy goals.
He pledged to boost wages, improve educational opportunities and implement a new road repair job training program, stressing that Houston’s future depends on pairing such initiatives with core services improvements.
“I am bullish on Houston,” Turner would repeat, radiating optimism in the face of a tight budget and looming pension crisis.
A year into office, however, the mayor has set aside much of that to-do list in favor of an ambitious but moderate “back to basics” approach.
Pension reform – a topic he shied away from on the campaign circuit – now is the linchpin in Turner’s two-year plan, and he is loath to discuss much else.
That focus has paid off in the form of a reform package that he says will eliminate the underfunding of Houston’s three retirement systems in 30 years and limit the city’s exposure to market downturns.
Crucially, the plan has received buy-in from the fire, police and municipal pension boards, as well as praise from experts.
“When you look at where we were on Jan. 1, 2016, on pensions and look at where we are today,” Turner said recently, “there is no question that we have come a long, long way from where we started.”
The deal now must earn approval from the Texas Legislature, which controls Houston’s pension systems.
[…]
If Turner is successful, however, he intends to spend his political capital – earned, principally, from pension reform and closing this year’s $160 million budget gap – on campaigning to lift Houston’s limit on property tax collections.
The voter-approved revenue cap was instituted in 2004 and limits the increase in the city’s annual property tax collections to the combined rates of inflation and population growth, or 4.5 percent, whichever is lower.
Turner is not shy about pitching projects he would take on, absent the revenue cap, such as expanding the Houston Police Department by 540 officers by 2020. This plan may take on even more urgency, as HPD has seen a sharp spike in the number of officers filing papers indicating they plan to retire in the first half of 2017.
“We need more police officers. We need more equipment. We need more EMS units. We need more training,” Turner said in September, after a southwest Houston shooting wounded nine. “You can’t keep lowering the property tax rate because of this revenue cap and expect the city to be fully equipped with all of the assets that are needed.”
I’m pretty sure there’s more than one person on Team Turner who is grinding their teeth at the “back to basics” usage, since that was very much not Turner’s campaign slogan. Be that as it may, the general formulation is correct. Turner spent a lot of time this year working on a pension deal, and what he does next is tied to his success at getting the necessary legislation passed to implement that deal. And if he is successful, then the rest of 2017 will largely be focused on amending the revenue cap. If he can get both of those things done, then the sky is the limit and anything he wants to do is on the table. If not, it isn’t fatal, but it does leave him stuck. How much time can he spend on other things if he still needs to work on getting these things done? I’m sure he’d rather not have to find out.
How likely is Turner to get the pension legislation through? I have no idea, but if there’s anyone in a position to do it, it’s Turner. This is one of those times when experience really matters. No guarantees, because the Lege doesn’t work that way, but if anyone knows how to navigate these waters, it’s Turner. I should note that the pension bills aren’t the only thing on the city’s legislative wish list for 2017. Most of the specific items are pretty narrow and wonky, but the overriding principles laid out in the first few pages will keep the lobbying team busy, primarily I fear on defense. But if you want to know what the city does and doesn’t want from Austin next year, there’s your reference guide.
One more thing:
[Bill] King, last year’s mayoral runner-up, said he is considering challenging Turner, depending on his health and how pension reform plays out.
“If he ends up not solving the pension problem – which he promised he would do – then I think somebody needs to step in and save the city from going bankrupt,” King said.
King, who would like to see Houston switch from defined benefit to defined contribution plans similar to 401(k)s, has gotten under the skin of Turner and his staff by sending regular email blasts criticizing the city, including on inauguration day, and holding occasional press conferences.
“The campaign is over, and the total focus should be on meeting the needs of all Houstonians in their moment of crisis,” the mayor tweeted in April, after King criticized the city’s flood response.
I get those emails, too. You can probably guess what my level of interest in them is. King is certainly able to be the next Ben Hall if he wants to – he’s got the money for it, and apparently the lack of anything better to do. The question is, what has Turner done so far to lose anyone’s support? Based on how things have gone so far, I’d say not much. But hey, keep hope alive.
Merry secular Christmas, y’all.
A lawsuit is moving forward against Gov. Greg Abbott over his order to remove a satirical nativity scene from the Texas Capitol last year.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Wisconsin-based group behind the exhibit, raised valid questions about free speech rights when it sued Abbott earlier this year. Abbott had asked the state Preservation Board to get rid of the exhibit, which advocated for the separation of church and state.
The preservation board had initially approved the display, which featured a cardboard cutout of the nation’s founding fathers and the Statue of Liberty looking down at the Bill of Rights in a manger. Abbott, writing to the preservation board once the exhibit had gone up, denounced it as a “juvenile parody” intended to offend Christians.
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks wrote Tuesday that the lawsuit should proceed because Abbott’s order may have been based on the fact he simply disagreed with the viewpoint the exhibit was expressing. Groups are allowed to display exhibits in certain parts of the Capitol as long as they have a “public purpose,” according to state rules.
Abbott’s office said Wednesday it was pleased Sparks did not require the state to put the exhibit back on display. “Governor Abbott remains confident that the Constitution does not require Texas to display this intentionally disrespectful exhibit,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in a statement.
See here and here for the background. I agree with the ruling, I support the FFRF’s lawsuit and I expect them to prevail, but I’ve come to the conclusion that Abbott doesn’t really care about the outcome of the case. He’s already gotten what he wanted out of this, which was to send a message to his supporters that he was there for them, giving the finger to those godless liberals who sneer at them all the time. Win or lose in court, he gets to polish his bona fides – hell, from that perspective, he’ll be even happier to lose, as that feeds the siege mentality. It’s of a piece with him ridiculous Twitter fight with non-Trump elector Chris Suprun. I suspect we’re going to see a lot more of this stuff over the next four years. The Dallas Observer has more.
Cool.
More than six centuries after the Black Death wiped out more than a third of the population of Europe, a University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston team has shown that in experiments with rodents, their three vaccines effectively protected against the infection that causes the disease. Just as important, they did not cause side effects.
“If this research is borne out, a vaccine like this could negate future epidemics and pandemics,” said Ashok Chopra, a UTMB professor of microbiology and immunology and the study’s principal investigator. “Given the increasing threat, the optimal strategy for protecting people is through vaccination.”
The plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, can be cured with antibiotics if drugs are started soon after infection. Without prompt treatment – initial symptoms can resemble the flu – it is nearly always fatal.
In an online paper last month in the journal NPJ Vaccines, Chopra’s team reported on the vaccines’ use against pneumonic plague, the most virulent type of the disease and the one that spreads through airborne transmission. Chopra said they also work against bubonic plague, the type most associated with the 14th century pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people.
A copy of the study is here. The good news is that the plague is relatively rare – only a few thousand cases worldwide per year – but it’s very nasty and fatal if untreated in time. It’s also the case that a resistant strain of this bacteria can be weaponized, so yeah, an effective vaccine would be nice. Keep up the good work, y’all.
This is a concern, but I don’t think it’s a big one.
A dozen of the Houston Police Department’s top commanders were among 123 officers who filed paperwork this week indicating they plan to retire in the first half of next year, senior City Hall and HPD sources said, a sign that a rumored exodus driven by unease about possible pension reforms may be underway.
As of last month, the department’s retirements for 2016 were on pace with the attrition rates seen in recent years. However, the number of officers now expected to leave by July 1 – the earliest a new pension structure would take effect, if Mayor Sylvester Turner can get the proposal passed at the Legislature – far outstrips the typical volume of about 50, HPD spokesman John Cannon said.
Officers can retire at any time, but Wednesday was the deadline for those who wish to enter a program called “phasedown” in which employees effectively retire but retain some benefits of employment while using up accumulated vacation days and other paid time off.
The uptick in retirement filings comes as city officials and law enforcement experts acknowledge the police department already is understaffed. HPD has fewer officers on the street today than it had to police a much smaller city 15 years ago, and a recent operational study recommended ramping up hiring to improve the rates at which crimes are solved.
City leaders long have been concerned that huge numbers of first responders are eligible to retire, as many were encouraged to stay on the job by the pension benefit increases Turner now is working to roll back. About 37 percent of police officers and 25 percent of firefighters are eligible to begin drawing a pension.
The mayor cast the number of retirement filings as a positive, saying it was lower than some had predicted.
“Considering there are 1,900 officers eligible to retire, I view this as a positive response to the pension reform,” Turner said. “These numbers are in line with what we normally see. They are definitely far lower than the hundreds of retirements some had speculated we would have. Instead, we have hundreds who are staying. I want to thank them for their commitment and vote of confidence in the pension reforms.”
[…]
Many senior HPD chiefs face a fairly obvious decision to retire because of a provision that essentially drops the salaries on which their pension payments would be calculated to that of captain. The effect is similar for some lower-ranking officers, as well.
“Folks have to make decisions based on their personal financial consequences if they were to stay, and I understand that,” Acevedo said. “I’m confident that regardless of the numbers, our men and women are up to the challenge and are committed to doing whatever it takes to keep Houston safe, which is as simple as starting an overtime program where all hands will be on deck, working patrol or whatever other function needs to be worked.”
Acevedo also was unphased by the prospect of losing as many as 13 of HPD’s top 17 commanders, the number sources said filed retirement papers Wednesday, in part because he intends to flatten the command structure.
“You hate to see a lot of good people leave, but the sky’s not going to fall,” he said. “With the retirement of good people, it creates opportunities for other good people who are full of energy, ready to lead and probably will bring a new, fresh creativity to their position. We’ll get through it.”
I agree completely with Chief Acevedo. HPD and the city will be fine. The hiring of the new chief, who is planning to make changes in the command structure, would likely have spurred a few departures even in the absence of the pension change. There will likely be some bumps in the road, but this is just the circle of life. We will indeed get through it.
Still cheaper to renovate than the real thing
Harris County commissioners on Tuesday chose Kirksey Architecture to design a project to retrofit the Astrodome by raising its floor and installing parking spaces underneath.
Commissioners designated the Houston-based firm as their top pick to conduct the architecture and engineering on the $105 million renovation of the Dome, a sweeping project that could secure the stadium’s future by using it for event or commercial space.
County Judge and vocal proponent Ed Emmett said Kirksey’s selection was “one more step toward re-purposing the Dome.”
“This is doing the engineering, moving the whole process forward,” Emmett said.
The architecture and engineering – the first phase of the overall renovation project – is expected to cost around $10.5 million and take roughly a year. Kirksey Architecture still has to be awarded the final contract, which will finalize the cost of the first phase. County officials said that vote could come in January.
Kirksey Architecture has designed many commercial, residential and public properties around Houston, including the YMCA building downtown and the 26-story luxury Belfiore Condominiums in Uptown.
The firm has also done work for Harris County, including the restoration of the historic Sylvan Beach Building in La Porte that was damaged by Hurricane Ike.
See here for some background. A lot of people are skeptical of this project. It seems reasonable to me, but you do have to wonder why it took so long to get to it. Easy to say in retrospect, I suppose. I look forward to seeing what the official designs eventually look like.
May your days be merry and bright, and may all your linkdumps be full of good reading.
“Silliman’s piece revisits the stark contrast — or flagrant hypocrisy — between the ardent concern for politicians’ personal ethics that prominent white evangelicals expressed during the Lewinsky Era vs. the utter lack of such concern during the Trump campaign. The sheer up-is-downism displayed by prominent evangelical partisan hacks like James Dobson or Jerry Falwell Jr. is impressive. But Silliman also looks past such spotlight-hogging hypocrites to ponder the survey data that shows a similar change happening throughout white evangelicalism.”
The Incompatible Food Triad is the Fermat Hypothesis of our time.
“Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.”
Five things Donald Trump promised he’d do, but hasn’t done yet. Don’t hold your breath for most if not all of them.
RIP, Zsa Zsa Gabor, prototypical “famous for being famous” person.
David Frum on the consequences of Donald Trump’s narcissism.
“No matter what her title is, Ivanka’s essential role remains the same: to integrate a very specific vision of exceptionalist white womanhood into the Trump brand and presidency. By presenting a very specific type of exceptional success, she is the Trump presidency’s built-in excuse for failing the rest of us.”
The Harlem Deer Saga, and why it shouldn’t have been a saga.
“Given this effort, it essentially would be irrational for children not to believe. In believing in Santa Claus, children, in fact, exercise their scientific thinking skills.”
Do you drop your kids off at school? If so, I hope your experience is less insane than this.
“Rogue One, or, the Disneyfication of Star Wars is Complete (and This is a Good Thing)”.
“So if you’re an engineer forced by Imperial stormtroopers to build a death machine, then you have the chance — the opportunity and the obligation — to do whatever you can to undermine that machinery. You might, for example, convince them that the Death Star’s main reactor required a thermal exhaust port that would leave the entire machine vulnerable to destruction.”
This is what kleptocracy looks like.
“Since the 1960s, it has been widely understood among historians that far from being a collective failure of diplomacy or the result of entangling alliances, World War I was engineered deliberately by Germany.”
“The pattern in North Carolina is clear: When Republicans win, they suppress the Democratic vote to solidify power in future elections. And when they lose, they rig the rules to prevent their opponents from being able to fairly exercise and maintain power. This is what happens in a dictatorship, not a democracy. And it’s a preview of what’s to come in Trump’s America.”
RIP, Lou Harris, influential pollster and political consultant who helped elect JFK.
Jaime Martin, high-tech art detective.
Here’s a Christmas light show synchronized with AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”.
Tip your waitstaff. Seriously.
Some “Santa slasher” movies to make your days a bit more merry and bright.
The “swamp” will remain undrained, in case you still thought that was a thing.
Every year on Christmas Day, I link to my favorite Christmas story, which stars Mel Torme. It is often shamelessly ripped off a lot, which is a Bad Thing that one Should Not Do. So click over and read it, and may your heart grow three sizes today. Merry Christmas to you and yours from me and mine.
This is a little complicated.
A major decision standing in the way of a proposed high-speed rail project connecting Houston to Dallas has been scheduled for trial.
District Judge Joseph “Tad” Halbach denied Texas Central Railroad summary judgment in a land survey case in Harris County Dec. 16, sending the case to full trial scheduled for July 3, 2017.
Texas Central is in the process of surveying land to determine the best route for the proposed rail. As a result of Halbach’s ruling, the company will not be able to survey on the defendant’s property until after the trial.
Texas Central officials said, although they were disappointed in the court’s decision to send the case to a full trial, they believe their arguments will be successful in the end.
“Contrary to what opponents are saying, [Halbach] did not issue any opinion on the company’s operations or its rights under state law,” the statement said. “The decision does not set any kind of precedent, and we will show in a full trial that state law, established for more than a century, clearly gives railroad companies the right to conduct land surveys without interference. This is needed to determine the most advantageous high-speed train route.”
Texans Against High-Speed Rail—a group opposing the project—is contesting the idea that Texas Central is an official railroad company under state law and therefore does not have eminent domain authority; in other words, Texas Central does not have the authority to force private landowners to sell their land. TAHSR released a statement celebrating Halbach’s decision.
See here for some background. The point is that the denial of summary judgment is not in any way a ruling on the merits of the case, it’s just saying there has to actually be a trial to sort that out. Of course Texas Central would have liked to prevail on summary judgment – every plaintiff wants to win without having to go through the full process. They didn’t get that, so a trial it will be. Note that while Judge Halbach made the summary judgment ruling, he will not be the judge at trial, as he was among the judges swept out in November. Shouldn’t make any difference, I just wanted to note that in case anyone gets confused when they see another judge’s name associated with this next year. The Star-Telegram, BisNow, the Chron, and the Press have more.
Score one for the California DMV.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars off San Francisco’s streets Wednesday after the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles revoked their registrations, effectively ending the company’s controversial pilot program after just one week.
The move marked a dramatic end to Uber’s standoff with state regulators over the San Francisco-based company’s insistence that it did not need a permit to test its self-driving cars, even though the state said it did and other companies testing such cars have complied. It’s not clear when or under what conditions self-driving Ubers might return to California’s roads.
“We’re now looking at where we can redeploy these cars,” an Uber spokeswoman wrote in an emailed statement, “but remain 100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules.”The DMV’s crackdown was a setback for Uber in what many viewed as the ride-hailing giant’s attempt to re-write California’s autonomous vehicle rules. The $68 billion company caught state officials by surprise when it launched its fleet of self-driving vehicles on San Francisco roads last week. After being forced to bow to state regulators, Uber said Wednesday that it has no plans to apply for a permit, but is “open to having the conversation.”
By revoking the registrations for all 16 of Uber’s self-driving cars in California, the DMV made good on a previous threat to shut down the company’s unauthorized pilot program. The company has been running a similar pilot program in Pittsburgh since fall without major incident.
“Uber is welcome to test its autonomous technology in California like everybody else, through the issuance of a testing permit that can take less than 72 hours to issue after a completed application is submitted,” a DMV spokesman wrote in an emailed statement. “The department stands ready to assist Uber in obtaining a permit as expeditiously as possible.”
DMV Director Jean Shiomoto also sent a letter to Uber, promising that the department fully supports the autonomous technologies.
“We are committed to assisting Uber in their efforts to innovate and advance this ground-breaking technology,” the director wrote. Though the state’s letter indicated that Uber had expressed interest in applying for a permit, the company was non-committal late Wednesday.
[…]
Uber’s decision to take its cars off the streets came as growing numbers of people expressed concerns over the vehicles’ safety.
Brian Wiedenmeir, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, said he saw self-driving Ubers make multiple illegal and unsafe “right-hook” turns across bicycle lanes during a test ride before the program’s launch last week.
“Those vehicles are not yet ready for our streets,” Wiedenmeir wrote in a post on the coalition’s website.
See here for the background. The Guardian goes into more detail about the safety concerns.
Concerns are mounting about how the cars behave in dense urban environments, particularly in San Francisco, where there are an estimated 82,000 bike trips each day across more than 200 miles of cycling lanes.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has released a warning about Uber’s carsbased on staff members’ first-hand experiences in the vehicles. When the car was in “self-driving” mode, the coalition’s executive director, who tested the car two days before the launch, observed it twice making an “unsafe right-hook-style turn through a bike lane”.
That means the car crossed the bike path at the last minute in a manner that posed a direct threat to cyclists. The maneuver also appears to violate state law, which mandates that a right-turning car merge into the bike lane before making the turn to avoid a crash with a cyclist who is continuing forward.
“It’s one of the biggest causes of collisions,” said coalition spokesman Chris Cassidy, noting that the group warned Uber of the problem. Company officials told the coalition that Uber was working on the issue but failed to mention that the self-driving program would begin two days later without permits, he said.
“The fact that they know there’s a dangerous flaw in the technology and persisted in a surprise launch,” he said, “shows a reckless disregard for the safety of people in our streets.”
Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler told the Guardian in an email that “engineers are continuing to work on the problem”, and said that the company has instructed drivers to take control when approaching right turns on a street with a bike lane. She did not respond to questions about how the cars, Volvo XC90s, detect cyclists and what kind of training and testing the firm conducted before implementation.
Linda Bailey, executive director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which has raised formal objections to partially automated vehicles, said research raises serious alarms about the ability of drivers to properly intervene in semi-autonomous cars.
“It’s very clear that people are not good at paying attention,” she said, adding, “We’re waiting for enough people to die for something to happen. It’s not a great way to make policy.”
Local advocates noted that the Uber cars have been caught doing four out of the top five causes of collisions or injuries in the city – running red lights, going through stop signs, unsafe turns and failing to yield to pedestrians.
“These behaviors we’re seeing,” said Nicole Ferrara, executive director of advocacy group Walk San Francisco, “are some of the most dangerous behaviors in San Francisco that lead to traffic deaths and severe injuries.”
The technology just isn’t quite there yet. Relying on human backup for these self-driving vehicles is a bad idea that won’t work outside of a controlled environment because people in a driverless car aren’t going to be paying attention to the operation of that car, just like passengers in regular cars today don’t. On top of that, Uber did its usual disregard the rules and barrel ahead on their own thing, and this time the government agency they attempted to bypass stood firm. I have no doubt that this technology is coming – the Pittsburgh experiment is still going on, with no major incidents – but that doesn’t mean it will or should happen on Uber’s schedule. The fact that regulators need to catch up is a feature here, not a bug. Wired and the NYT have more.
Once again, by sheer coincidence, this list has a meaningful intersection with the calendar:
1. I’ve Seen All Good People – Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs
2. The Coventry Carol – Mediaeval Baebes (Katharine Blake, Melpomeni Kermanidou, Sophie Ramsay, Clare Edmondson, Josephine Ravenheart, Anna Tam)
3. Never Be – Meg Mac
4. Lips Are Moving – Meghan Trainor
5. Brave And Crazy – Melissa Etheridge
6. If Love Was A Train – Michelle Shocked
7. All The Same Mistakes – Mieka Pauley
8. Wrecking Ball – Miley Cyrus
9. Baltimore – MILKSHAKE (Lisa Matthews)
10. Come to Jesus – Mindy Smith
I speak of The Coventry Carol, and I bring you a version of it by Pentatonix:
There are of course more traditionalist versions of this, but I’ll leave them for you to discover. I’ll have a couple of things to post over the next few days, but it will be pretty light. Have a happy weekend and a very merry Christmas.
In a sweeping 78-page opinion issued late last week, a federal judge has denied Harris County’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit that accuses it of operating an unconstitutional bail system.
District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal dismissed the sheriff and county judges from the lawsuit in their personal, but not official, capacities; and the five county bail hearing officers remain sued in their personal capacities, but not official capacities.
[…]
While the county had tried to argue county officials were immune from this suit under various policymaking grounds, Judge Rosenthal rejected the argument outright.
“Multiple and overlapping authorities may contribute to a policy of denying freedom from pretrial detention to those accused in misdemeanor cases solely because they are too poor to pay a bail bond,” Rosenthal wrote. “Or [authorities may contribute to] a policy of releasing wealthier misdemeanor defendants while detaining the indigent for days without a hearing on their inability to pay or eligibility for release on nonfinancial conditions. But the existence of multiple and overlapping authorities cannot, on its own, shield officers or official bodies from liability.”
[…]
In explaining why the plaintiffs have reason to bring the suit, Rosenthal wrote that the lawsuit had raised important questions about why the government would have any legitimate interest in detaining people charged with low-level crimes, who are not a threat to public safety and could otherwise be released. Quoting a Supreme Court case, Rosenthal wrote: “Liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.” That exception, she went on, would include people charged with violent crimes who would threaten public safety.
See here for previous coverage, and here for a copy of Judge Rosenthal’s ruling. Courthouse News adds some details.
Asserting civil rights and equal protection claims, [lead plaintiff Maranda Lynn] ODonnell’s original complaint named only five magistrate judges as defendants. She added the county’s 16 misdemeanor court judges as defendants in an amended version. State judges, called district judges in Texas, handle the county’s felony cases.
In an attempt to head off the lawsuit, the 16 judges changed the “County Rules of Court” on Aug. 12 to state that no-fee bonds are “favored” for 12 misdemeanor charges, including public intoxication, prostitution and possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Harris County also recently hired two more magistrate hearing officers and revamped its pretrial-services form to collect more financial data about misdemeanor defendants earlier in the post-arrest process.
But ODonnell claims in court filings that the judges’ customs are too ingrained, and that even after the August policy change they continued to force magistrates to set predetermined bond amounts for people arrested on those 12 charges.
In refusing to dismiss, Rosenthal said there are unresolved disputes of fact, including whether ODonnell and one of her co-plaintiffs have standing.
The county argued that ODonnell lacks standing because she posted bond a few days after she was arrested and filed the lawsuit, and that it had the right to detain her because she has outstanding warrants in Harris and Galveston Counties for failing to appear for misdemeanor court hearings.
However, Rosenthal wrote: “Even taking the defendants’ factual allegations on these points as true, Ms. ODonnell would have standing to bring her claim. Ms. ODonnell alleges that no judicial officer timely considered her inability to pay or her eligibility for release despite her criminal history, and that this outcome is typical for misdemeanor defendants in Harris County. The defendants’ allegations do not resolve Ms. ODonnell’s claims.”
Co-plaintiff Loetha McGruder was arrested in May, charged with giving a false name to a police officer, a misdemeanor. A magistrate set her bond at the preset $5,000. She couldn’t pay it. Four days later a state district judge reduced her bail to a personal bond and she was released.
The county argued in dismissal motions that McGruder “is the prime example of the system functioning as it should,” because she was released the first business day after her probable cause hearing.
But Rosenthal found McGruder has standing to bring due process and equal protection claims because she was detained over a weekend, though the county acknowledges her poverty made her eligible for an immediate personal bond.
[…]
Attorneys for both sides said they are working to settle the case.
Harris County assistant attorney Robert Soard said Rosenthal is aware the county has teamed up with Luminosity, a nonprofit St. Petersburg, Fla. criminal justice consulting firm, to develop a “public safety assessment” and “decision making framework” to guide decisions on whether to release misdemeanor defendants on personal bonds without pretrial services having to interview them.
The system is expected to launch in March 2017.
“We would like the case to resolve quickly for the benefit of the people being arrested on misdemeanors in Harris County, to decrease the number of people staying in jail,” plaintiffs’ attorney Rebecca Bernhardt with the Texas Fair Defense Project said.
I’m very glad to hear that settlement talks are happening, as that’s what I have wanted all along. As we know, Sheriff-elect Ed Gonzalez has filed an affidavit in support of the plaintiffs, which ought to help move that along. A class certification hearing has been set for Feb. 21, 2017. We’ll see how it goes from there.
This just keeps getting weirder.
Devon Anderson
“It appears to have been an under-the-table deal with Devon Anderson,” said Tyler Flood, the president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyer’s Association. “I already have clients calling me saying they want the ‘Tony Buzbee deal.'”
Flood and other defense lawyers have questioned the treatment Buzbee received from Anderson and the judge presiding over the case.
[…]
A request to the district attorney’s office for a copy of the pretrial diversion contract, which outlines conditions and consequences of failing to meet those conditions, was sent to the office’s general counsel, who said lawyers for Buzbee have objected to its release. Such contracts generally are publicly available. The office of general counsel said Buzbee’s lawyers have informed it that they will seek an order from the Texas Attorney General’s Office forcing the district attorney to withhold the contract.
[…]
Another reason this case and its resolution is unusual is that the judge presiding over it is the only jurist in Harris County who does not allow pretrial diversions for DWI cases. County Court-at-Law Judge Bill Harmon is opposed to any DWI pretrial diversion program and often cites Harris County’s record number of drunken-driving fatalities as the reason.
When a DWI case eligible for the pretrial diversion program lands in his court, it is often transferred to a different court. That did not happen in Buzbee’s case.
Earlier this week, Harmon acknowledged that he signed the dismissal forms and said he had not approved any diversion for DWI suspects. He said he would continue to refuse to participate in the program.
It’s those inconsistencies that bother Flood and other members of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association.
“Our target is not Tony Buzbee. That’s not what HCCLA is about. He hired good lawyers and got a good result,” Flood said. “Our problem is the appearance of impropriety between the district attorney and the judge.”
The deal Buzbee was able to obtain from Anderson was extraordinary, Flood said.
“He’s the only person in the whole county who is not excluded from filing for an expunction immediately after his case is dismissed on a DWI on a pretrial intervention.”
See here for the background. It’s weird enough that any of this happened, but it’s possible to imagine that there’s nothing untoward about any of it, it was just maybe handled in a clumsy fashion. But for Buzbee’s attorney to then file to keep the normally-public pretrial diversion contract under wraps, I mean that’s like putting up a giant blinking neon sign saying “THERE IS SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS HERE THAT WE DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE”. Under no circumstances should that file be withheld from public scrutiny. Let’s make the facts known, and then we can see if there’s something that requires a response.
I have no idea what to make of this.
Houston’s heralded bus system redesign – garnering kudos from local riders and transit supporters around the country – is running into the reality that nothing can boost transit when fewer people are riding to work.
When the Metropolitan Transit Authority revamped its bus system in August 2015, officials said it would boost ridership by 20 percent in two years. However, transit use in Houston has been declining.
In November, fewer people boarded Metro buses, hopped on trains and commuted to work via the park-and-ride system. When all types of transit except service for the elderly and handicapped are considered, Metro handled 13,625 fewer trips daily, a 4.6% decline last month, according to figures released last week. Commuter bus ridership has plunged by more than 10 percent each of the last two months.
Now likely unable to reach their predicted ridership growth, which would have been unprecedented in the history of Houston mass transit, Metro officials concede more refinement is needed to gain riders on buses and trains.
They blame the declining ridership on fewer oil and gas industry jobs in the area and the transition of many jobs away from downtown Houston. Though the job cuts have been evident in the region’s economic outlook for months, the switch to the new bus system last year might have hidden the negative effect of fewer daily commuters.
“What I think we are seeing is the unemployment rate has had a real effect on ridership and it is just now exhibiting in our numbers,” Arthur Smiley, Metro’s chief financial officer, said.
I say I don’t know what to make of this partly because I can’t tell what the numbers actually are. They’re presented in bits and pieces throughout the story, and it’s not always clear to me when the stated declines are in comparison to the previous month, or to last year at the same time. I realize that I’m more number-oriented than most people, but please give me a table or chart with all of the relevant data. Context is everything.
As for the reasons for the decline, the recent slowdown in the local economy, specifically with energy sector jobs, is one possible factor. Others, not mentioned in the story, may include continued low gas prices and possibly a side effect of Uber’s penetration into the market. No one felt confident putting forth a firm idea, and with much of the decline coming on park-and-ride routes and high-volume local routes that didn’t really change in the system redesign, I’d say more study is needed. It was just four months ago that we were celebrating a big increase in the first year of the new local bus system map, so I’d say it’s a little early to panic. Maybe ridership fluctuates for reasons that aren’t always clear. Let’s do some work to figure this out, and then see what if anything we can do about it.
I’m not sure yet what to make of this.
Kim Ogg
Incoming Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg accused three prosecutors Tuesday of trying to sabotage criminal cases by telling victims their cases were in jeopardy, and called for an investigation into what she said was “political retribution” for being fired.
The allegations came days after Ogg notified nearly 40 prosecutors that she would not keep them on when she takes office in January.
The preemptive firings and the Tuesday’s accusations illustrate the amount of bad blood between Ogg and current District Attorney Devon Anderson and her loyalists in the office following a bitter election campaign in which the Ogg questioned the integrity and ethics of the office under the incumbent.
“It appears that some of these individuals are sabotaging their own cases,” Ogg said at a press conference in front of Houston’s criminal courthouse Tuesday. “It’s the use of victims as pawns by disgruntled employees that shows, not just a profound disrespect for other people, but a lack of professionalism that won’t go unaddressed.”
The three prosecutors denied any wrongdoing and blasted Ogg for publicizing their names without investigating the claims.
“I have always tried to be ethical and have never been a win-at-all-costs prosecutor,” said Gretchen Flader, one of the three. “I have done what I thought was right and just every day. I am saddened and sickened by all that has happened.”
See here for some background. An earlier version of the story, before any of the prosecutors Ogg named had responded, sounded a lot worse and included a quote from County Judge Ed Emmett basically telling them to cut it out. The initial Houston Press story was in a similar vein. Read that and compare it to the Wednesday version, which sports the headline “Ogg Will Investigate Fired Prosecutors Without Asking for Their Side of Story”, and it will give you pause.
So it’s a little hard to say right now if Ogg was legitimately putting a stop to bad behavior, or overreacting to something that wasn’t a big deal. It seems to me that if it really is the latter, that this was a standard procedure, then there had to have been a failure of communications somewhere. Maybe Anderson’s office didn’t adequately brief Ogg on what they were doing to transition cases, maybe the prosecutors didn’t explain the process to the victims in a way they fully understood, maybe Ogg misinterpreted what she was told by the victims who did call her. I don’t have enough information to say. If this was bad behavior on the prosecutors’ part, I’m not sure why Ogg wouldn’t talk to them before taking any other action beyond telling them to stop and for all communications to be preserved. Whatever this turns out to be, I hope Ogg handles it carefully going forward. Mark Bennett and Marc Campos have more.
He served well, and did a lot in his short time in office.
Gene Locke
Gene Locke, who was appointed Harris County commissioner nearly a year ago after the death of longtime Commissioner El Franco Lee, was praised for his effectiveness during a meeting Tuesday at which he cast his final vote.
The former city attorney and mayoral candidate received a standing ovation from his colleagues at his last commissioners court meeting.
“This is a public service job, and it’s been an honor for me to have the mantle of commissioner and do community service,” Locke said. “It makes me feel that there is a side of government that Americans don’t see and don’t talk about.”
Other members of the commissioners court heralded Locke’s initiatives on repairing streets, installing safe sidewalks for schoolchildren, and removing debris during his almost 11 months in office. His final day in office is Dec. 31.
Locke, a Democrat, also emphasized collaboration with the city of Houston, much of which falls in his precinct.
That, I think, was the key to Locke’s tenure, and a driver (I hope) of Rodney Ellis’. I’ve long felt as a resident of Houston and Precinct 1 that my Harris County tax dollars have gone overwhelmingly to building infrastructure and encouraging development in the outer reaches of the county, at the expense of maintenance and investment everywhere else. I don’t expect the county to supplant the city on things like roads and drainage, but I do expect them to be a part of it. We are still part of Harris County, after all. Commissioner Locke addressed that in a way that I hope will serve as a model going forward. Thank you for your service, and all the best with whatever comes next.
The title to this post is a bit of an overbid, but this is still a good thing.
President Obama on Monday signed into law a bill that could help expedite the long process of constructing a hurricane protection system for the Texas coast, including the particularly vulnerable Houston region.
The “Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation,” or WIIN, Act contains a major provision of another bill U.S. Sen. John Cornyn filed in April — the month after The Texas Tribune and ProPublica published an interactive report exploring the dire impacts of a monster storm hitting the nation’s fourth-largest city and its massive petrochemical complex. Scientists are still fine-tuning plans to protect against such an event, which they say could kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people and cripple the economy and environment.
Most agree on the need to build a project known as the “coastal spine,” a massive floodgate and barrier system, but there is no official consensus plan. (State lawmakers have asked scientists to settle on a plan to protect the coast, but they’re still in disagreement.) The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will have the final say on what plan to pursue and is conducting its own study of the issue, has estimated that construction on any such system for Texas couldn’t begin until 2024 at the earliest.
The bill Cornyn filed in April, called the “Corps’ Obligation to Assist in Safeguarding Texas,” or COAST, Act, was designed to hurry things along by requiring the Corps to take local studies on the issue into account (one by a six-county coalition, in particular) and by eliminating the need for Congress to authorize construction of whatever project the Corps ends up recommending.
The bipartisan WIIN Act includes only the former provision requiring the Corps to account for local studies, meaning Congress still will have to sign off on any plan. (The COAST Act passed the Senate in September but never passed the House.)
See here for some background. We’re still a long way from something being built, as we lack such minor details as consensus on what to build and a funding mechanism for it. But this is a step forward, so credit to Sen. Cornyn for shepherding the bill through and to President Obama for signing it. The Current and Space City Weather have more.
More than a year after the initial threat was made. Clearly, you can’t rush these things.
Right there with them
After more than a year of delays, Texas is officially kicking Planned Parenthood out of the state’s Medicaid program.
In a move that could affect thousands of low-income women, state health officials on Tuesday delivered a final legal notice to defund the organization from the Medicaid program through which it provides family planning and women’s health services to the poor. Planned Parenthood had previously received $3.1 million in Medicaid funding, but those dollars will be nixed in 30 days, according to the notice which was obtained by The Texas Tribune.
That cut-off day will only be delayed if the organization appeals the state’s decision in the next 15 days by requesting an administrative hearing with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. But Planned Parenthood officials say they will instead turn to the courts to block the cuts.
“Planned Parenthood continues to serve Medicaid patients and will seek a preliminary injunction in an ongoing lawsuit filed in November 2015, following the state’s original threats to take action against Planned Parenthood’s patients,” said Yvonne Gutierrez, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, the organization’s political arm.
[…]
In the final notice, Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Stuart Bowen said the undercover videos — which depicted Planned Parenthood officials discussing the use of fetal tissue for research — showed “that Planned Parenthood violated state and federal law.”
Bowen claimed in the letter that the videos revealed Planned Parenthood has a history of “deviating from accepted standards” to procure tissue samples for researchers and a “willingness to charge more than the costs incurred for procuring fetal tissue,” among other violations.
“Your misconduct is directly related to whether you are qualified to provide medical services in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner,” Bowen wrote in the letter. “Your actions violate generally accepted medical standards, as reflected in state and federal law, and are Medicaid program violations that justify termination.”
Planned Parenthood has vehemently denied those claims, and it has criticized the videos the state is pointing to as evidence as being heavily edited to imply malfeasance. Its health centers in Texas have also said they do not currently donate fetal tissue for research. Their Houston affiliate did participate in a 2010 research study with the University of Texas Medical Branch.
State health officials initially alleged they also had “reliable information indicating a pattern of illegal billing practices” by the organization. But Tuesday’s letter made no mention of billing fraud.
The “videos” in question are the ones made by the fraudsters in Houston, who wound up being indicted themselves before those charges were dropped in an oddly-timed fashion. The fact that the state is still citing these fraudulent videos and still making the same wild claims they have never even tried to back up tells you everything you need to know about the strength of their case. There’s already been a lawsuit filed over this, and now that the state has sent a final letter it will move forward, which among other things means the state will have to produce whatever evidence it has. Good luck with that. I should note also that multiple other states have tried this in the recent past, and all of them have lost in court. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way. The Austin Chronicle has more.
Devon Anderson
Outgoing Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson personally has dismissed the drunken-driving case against prominent Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee.
Buzbee, who was arrested on March 31, had his case dismissed Dec. 9, after completing “pretrial intervention” a type of informal probation that, if successfully completed, means a case will be tossed. It is common among first offenders, especially shoplifters or other nonviolent crimes.
On Monday, Anderson stood by her decision and issued a brief statement: “Based on the circumstances of the case, this was the right thing to do. He qualified for pretrial intervention and completed all of the requirements typically mandated for a first offender DWI defendant,” she said. “He did not contribute to my campaign in 2016 cycle.”
The dismissal raised eyebrows around the courthouse for several reasons.
First, the elected district attorney signed off on the case personally, which is exceedingly rare, especially misdemeanors.
Second, the DWI pretrial intervention program, which lets people walk away from their first offense without a conviction, generally lasts a year. Buzbee went from arrest to completion in just over 8 months.
Also, the judge presiding over the case is the only jurist in Harris County who does not allow pretrial diversions for DWI cases. The DWI pretrial diversion program, formerly known as DIVERT, has firmly drawn guidelines – the terms of which generally are spelled out in a contract that a judge signs off before it begins. There is no such contract in Buzbee’s file.
Generally, when a DWI case that is eligible for the pretrial diversion program falls in County Court at Law Judge Bill Harmon’s court, it is transferred to a different court. That did not happen in Buzbee’s case.
[…]
Buzbee said it was “silly” to link political connections to a dismissal by the elected district attorney 21 days before she leaves office.
“I give money to most of the politicians in Houston and the state of Texas. To try to connect one thing to the other is silly.”
Courthouse observers said Buzbee’s statement makes the dismissal look like a gift from Anderson as she prepares to leave the office.
“Based on what (Buzbee) said, this is definitely not a diversion. If it’s not, then it is nothing but a political favor,” said JoAnne Musick, past-president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyer’s Association. “Unless (Anderson) just completely lied on a court document, because it appears, on the dismissal, that he completed a diversion – that he participated in some sort of program in lieu of prosecution.”
Buzbee claimed that the case was dismissed for lack of evidence, but that’s not what the form indicates. Maybe there’s nothing to any of this – I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know how these things work – but if so, it would be nice to hear that from someone who isn’t Devon Anderson or Tony Buzbee. Maybe there are more people who got a similar “early dismissal” of their nominally year-long diversion program. Maybe Devon Anderson had a specific reason for intervening on this one case. Maybe the dismissal form was filled out incorrectly and it really was a lack of evidence. Maybe there’s something else we don’t know about. Because if not, on the surface this sure looks like special treatment for a big shot. The Press has more.
(There’s now a bigger controversy breaking out at the DA’s office. I didn’t have a chance to get to it yesterday, but I’ll have something to say about it tomorrow.)
In the end, Donald Trump got thirty-six of Texas’ 38 electoral votes.
All but two of Texas’ 38 electors voted Monday to officially put Donald Trump in the White House, with one elector casting a ballot for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and another casting a ballot for a fellow Texan, former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.
The votes from Texas were the ones that clinched the presidency of the United States for Trump, pushing the real estate mogul past the 270-vote threshold, according to Politico.
Elector Chris Suprun of Dallas had previously announced he would not support Trump. Another elector, Art Sisneros of Dayton, resigned as an elector, also in protest of Trump.
As electors voted, protesters’ chants picked up outside and could be heard from in the House chamber. They appeared to be saying specific electors’ names, followed by, “Save our democracy!”
The vote was unusually closely watched but largely expected: Both Suprun and Sisneros had shared their plans weeks in advance of the meeting. Suprun, however, did not announce until hours before the vote that he would instead vote for Kasich.
It was not immediately known who voted for Paul, the longtime congressman from Lake Jackson and three-time presidential hopeful. The process is secret ballot, meaning electors’ votes are not public unless they choose to disclose them.
According to the Statesman, the other maverick was a fellow named Bill Greene. As far as I know, he has not said why he did what he did. Art Sisneros was replaced as expected, as were three others who were apparently ineligible to serve.
I didn’t expect anything more exciting to happen, mostly because there was no one else out there joining Chris Suprun in his little exercise of conscience. I admit I harbored a teeny bit of hope that the Electoral College would Do Something about this, but I never really expected that. While I believe that the original intent of the founders was precisely for the Electoral College to prevent a man like Donald Trump from winning this election and that any legislative attempts to coerce them into voting a particular way are thus inherently unconstitutional, I agree that referring to such an intervention as being in any way “democratic” was misguided. The Electoral College is what it is, and we either accept that or we amend the Constitution to get rid of it. The extreme divergence between the popular vote and the electoral vote in this race is as strong an argument as one could want to make a change, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
