Will Cornyn get MAGAed in the 2026 primary?

From The Downballot (scroll to the bottom of the “Senate” section).

Big John Cornyn

Republican Sen. John Cornyn has long been a loud and proud supporter of Donald Trump, but his occasional apostasies have drawn the ire of MAGA purists and could land him a primary challenge in 2026.

Cornyn’s most prominent would-be rival is Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said last year that a campaign against the incumbent was “on the table.” The two engaged in trash talk earlier this year when Paxton knocked Cornyn’s chances of succeeding Mitch McConnell as the GOP’s Senate leader by calling him “anti-Trump” and “anti-gun” and saying he’d be preoccupied with “a highly competitive primary campaign in 2026.”

Cornyn fired back by snarking, “Hard to run from prison, Ken,” a retort that lost its bite a few weeks later when federal prosecutors reached an agreement with Paxton on long-simmering fraud charges that did not include jail time. Cornyn also lost his bid to replace McConnell last month, though Paxton, once praised by Trump as a possible choice for U.S. attorney general, seems to have been passed over for a Cabinet post himself.

Even if Paxton, who’s also up for reelection in two years, decides to stay put, there are others who might give it a go. Tarrant County GOP chair Bo French recently issued a statement attacking Cornyn for expressing some mild hesitation about some of Trump’s nominees, saying he was “not ruling anything out.” (Tarrant is home to Fort Worth and is the third-largest county in Texas.)

Two years ago, Patrick Svitek, then at the Texas Tribune, reported that Rep. Ronny Jackson was considering a bid as well. At the time, Jackson didn’t rule anything out, but he doesn’t appear to have spoken publicly about the race since then.

It’s hard being in a position of having to sympathize with John Cornyn, but here we are. Cornyn’s bad, but he at least occasionally tries to do govern-y things that are intended to benefit society as a whole. Those other three…yeah, no. But that’s the March of 2026 we might have in store for us.

There was a time when I’d have openly cheered for the worst candidate to win in a race like this, on the theory that they’d be easier to beat. I do think Cornyn would be the strongest candidate of the four, but that’s not the same as saying the others would be vulnerable in the general election. I’d like for that to be true, and maybe by then things will have gone sufficiently off the rails to make it plausible, but we’ve all been burned way too many times to put any faith in the proposition. Let’s wait and see if any of them, or any other equally ridiculous but dangerous loonies take concrete steps towards a primary challenge.

Posted in Election 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

RIP, Cruise robotaxis

Didn’t see that coming.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

General Motors said Tuesday it will retreat from the robotaxi business and stop funding its money-losing Cruise autonomous vehicle unit.

Instead, the Detroit automaker will focus on development of partially automated driver-assist systems for personal vehicles like its Super Cruise, which allows drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel.

GM said it would get out of robotaxis “given the considerable time and resources that would be needed to scale the business, along with an increasingly competitive robotaxi market.”

The company said it will combine Cruise’s technical team with its own to work on advanced systems to assist drivers.

[…]

GM’s brushoff of Cruise represents a dramatic about-face from years of full-blown support that left a huge financial dent in the automaker. The company invested $2.4 billion in Cruise only to sustain years of uninterrupted losses, with little in return. Since GM bought a controlling stake in Cruise for $581 million in 2016, the robotaxi service piled up more than $10 billion in operating losses while bringing in less than $500 million in revenue, according to GM shareholder reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The automaker even announced plans for Cruise to generate $1 billion in annual revenue by 2025, but it scaled back spending on the company after one of its autonomous Chevrolet Bolts dragged a San Francisco pedestrian who was hit by another vehicle in 2023.

The California Public Utilities Commission alleged Cruise then covered up details of the crash for more than two weeks.

The embarrassing incident resulted in Cruise’s license to operate its driverless fleet in California being suspended by regulators and triggered a purge of its leadership — in addition to layoffs that jettisoned about a quarter of its workforce.

GM CEO Mary Barra told analysts on a conference call Tuesday the the new unit will focus on personal vehicles and developing systems that can drive by themselves in certain circumstances.

The company has agreements to buy another 7% of Cruise and intends to buy the remaining shares so it owns the whole company.

GM’s statement is here. It was just six months ago that Cruise made its return to Houston, though as far as I can tell they never got past the testing stage. (More recently, Cruise announced a pilot program for wheelchair-accessible vehicles; I have no idea what may happen with that.) Now if you want to ride in a robotaxi in Texas for some reason, you’ll need to go to Austin and sign up for a Waymo account. Let us know if you do. Business Insider, Car and Driver, TechCrunch, The Verge, and Jalopnik have more.

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Trying to improve on ShotSpotter

Meet Wytec, a new type of AI-powered gunshot-detection system.

Wytec International Inc., a builder of 5G wireless networks, is working on artificial intelligence software to deploy on networks of sensors to pinpoint the location of gunshots or other campus problems and immediately notify school district officials.

Founder and CEO William “Bill” Gray launched the company in 2011 to provide in-building cellular networks to schools. But that goal changed after the May 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde.

“Now there’s a big focus on gunshot detection on campuses,” he said. “So we now are more and more focused towards that.”

Since then, the firm has added five provisional patents for its AI software and methods. It expects to roll out a pilot program to test the system at some Texas schools sometime in the next year. Judson, North East and Southside ISDs in San Antonio are among the 46 Texas school districts that have expressed interest in participating, according to Wytec.

[…]

Rather than manufacturing its own sensors and hardware, the company plans to integrate its AI software with other vendors’ equipment. Wytec’s software is compatible with various types of cameras and sensors that monitor motion, temperature, light, sound and pressure.

Sanchez said the system communicates via a private, secured wireless network.

Its centerpiece is Wytec’s LPN-16, a patented, small cellular base station that quickly processes the data coming from the sensors and cameras and provides information about unfolding events to school and security staff via a mobile app.

A company presentation showed the mobile app interface, which displays the event’s location and provides real-time video and communication.

In addition to gunshots, the sensors can detect smoke, fire, drugs and even chemical and biological agents.

One difference between Wytec’s system and others on the market is that it does not immediately call 911. Others, he said, immediately dial 911.

“If you’re very familiar with some of our competitive technologies, they get too many false positives,” Sanchez said.

By putting teachers or administrators in the loop, Wytec says its system can help limit unwarranted lockdowns or first responder callouts.

The company says it’s performed 500,000 lab tests of its software, logging “better than 90 percent accuracy” in identifying gunshots.

The system also will be able to pick up preprogrammed key words that could be used to trigger an alert.

That means that “teachers aren’t the only one with the ability to trigger things. Students can too,” Sanchez said. “If a student sees an incident, they call out, for example, ‘Code Red,’ you’ll be able to detect that on our system.”

There’s an Express News story that was in a print edition of the Chronicle that gets into how Wytec is supposedly better than ShotSpotter, which had been tried in San Antonio and later rejected for generating so many false positives and no true positives. It sounds to me like Wytec is basically requiring a human review on its alerts before the cops get called. That should cut down on the false positives, but it would also increase response times. The addition of a “Code Red” trigger means that there’s room for student shenanigans, too. Let’s just say I’m skeptical and leave it at that.

It also struck me in reading this that we’re preparing to spend a lot of money on better response to school shootings – in the Chron/EN article, the CEO of Wytec talked openly about the millions of dollars in contracts they’re seeking – but nothing was said about trying to prevent any of those shootings from happening in the first place. Yes, I know, the Lege passed a big school security bill in the last session, much of which unfunded and which came with significant logistical challenges. Perhaps that will help keep some shooters who don’t have a connection to the school in question from gaining entry. I’m just saying, by the time there’s gunfire it’s already a very bad situation. Putting my cybersecurity hat on for a minute, detection is important but prevention is preferred where possible. We’re more than a little out of balance on that here.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The HISD Board doesn’t want to hear it

Curious move.

Houston ISD’s board of managers signaled early support Tuesday for limiting the public’s ability to speak freely about any topic during its monthly board meetings.

Board members voted 8-1 to advance a policy proposal that would eliminate a portion of the meetings called “hearing of the community,” when members of the public could address the board about any district-related matter. The policy cannot become official until the board holds a second vote, likely in early 2025.

The vote follows months of friction between HISD’s state-appointed leadership, which took power in June 2023 as part of sanctions against the district, and many members of the public opposed to Superintendent Mike Miles’ overhaul of HISD. Some community members have argued the board hasn’t engaged the community enough, and board members gave themselves a 1 out of 10 rating on community engagement in its annual self-evaluation in November.

HISD Board President Audrey Momanaee said the proposed changes to community involvement at public meetings are meant to make the gatherings more efficient. She argued a board meeting “is not the best way” for meaningful engagement with the public.

[…]

Under Texas’ Open Meetings Act, school boards are required to provide the public an opportunity to speak about items listed on the meeting agenda. However, they don’t legally have to give people the opportunity to address the board about any topic.

HISD has hosted “hearing of the community” for many years, allowing residents to address everything from principal changes to safety concerns to issues with getting special education services. While board members typically can’t respond directly to speakers, the public comments can bring issues to the attention of district administrators.

All of the Houston area’s largest school districts — including Cy-Fair, Katy, Fort Bend, Conroe and Aldine ISDs — offer the public an opportunity to speak about non-agenda items during monthly board meetings, though their public comment periods are often quieter and shorter than HISDs.

HISD’s lengthy and often raucous board meetings have frustrated some board members, prompting the proposal. Tuesday’s meeting lasted eight and a half hours, ending at 1:30 a.m., with public comment stretching for roughly two hours and the board going into closed session for about three hours.

Longtime HISD watcher Margaret Downing was not impressed.

It’s hard to imagine how much more of a misstep the Houston ISD Board of Managers is prepared to make than its proposal floated Tuesday night that would severely curtail what members of the public could address the board about at meetings and would end Zoom calls into the monthly public meeting.

This from a board whose president Audrey Momanaee promised all sorts of increased communication from its nine members with the public after its $4.4 billion bond issue went down in flames in the November elections. Unless, of course, you consider communication a one-way street.

What were they thinking? Whose bright idea is this? Superintendent Mike Miles who often gets shelled at these meetings? Board Vice President Ric Campo who’s made public statements about his dislike of long meetings. Board members Janette Garza Lindner and Michelle Cruz Arnold who’ve pushed for more “decorum” at meetings?

[…]

So, for instance, if members of the public wanted to bring up their continuing concerns about HISD students and rail lines by schools given this week’s death of a 15-year-old attempting to cross the tracks, well that wouldn’t be allowed.

Perhaps unnecessarily (if they do away with it), the revisions to board procedure also call for an end to the stipulation that the Hearing From the Community should begin no later than 7 p.m. Why is that important? Because previous boards had a handy policy of putting public comment last, filling the meeting with all sorts of things first, so by the time the community got a chance to speak, most of them had gone home.

The proposed changes remove the present policy of allowing students to go first in addressing the board, no matter what the subject matter. Instead their turn would be decided by whomever the board president is. Get a board president who really doesn’t want to hear from students, and you have another move that discourages input. Few, on a school night, can stay the course, only getting a chance to speak late into the night.

You have to wonder why these people even wanted to be on the board. Success in business is fine on a resume but in a public position, you have to be willing to hear from people and at least give the appearance of listening to them. Even if it is, at times, tedious as all get out and repetitive.

As anyone who has attended a Houston City Council meeting can attest, if you give the public an open microphone, you will get some unhinged commentary. That’s the price of admission. As both of these stories note, the Tuesday meeting included some bad actors trying to rile people up about library books (you know, from all those libraries HISD schools now have). There are some reasonable limits that can be put on speakers, in terms of time and decorum, but this is going too far. And for a Board that had taken some baby steps in the direction of being more self-aware. This is a bad idea and they should reconsider when they take that final vote next year.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Paxton versus 404Media

Of interest.

Still a crook any way you look

In October, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton subpoenaed 404 Media, demanding that we hand over confidential information about our reporting and an anonymous source to help the state of Texas in a wholly unrelated case it is pursuing against Google. This subpoena undermines the free and independent press. It also highlights the fact that the alarm bells that have been raised about legal attacks on journalists in a second Trump administration are not theoretical; politicians already feel emboldened to use the legal system to target journalists.

Paxton’s subpoena seeks to turn 404 Media into an arm of law enforcement, which is not our role and which we have no interest in doing or becoming. And so Friday, our lawyers vociferously objected to Paxton’s subpoena.

Paxton is seeking 404 Media reporting materials and documents related to an internal Google privacy incident database that 404 Media reported on in June. He has demanded these documents as part of a broader lawsuit against Google that claims the company has violated a Texas biometric privacy law that has nothing to do with 404 Media. Specifically, the subpoena demands the following:

“Any and all documents and communications relied on in the ‘Google Leak Reveals Thousands of Privacy Incidents’ article authored by Joseph Cox.

Any and all documents and communications considered when drafting the [article]

All unpublished drafts of the [article]

A copy of the ‘internal Google database which tracks six years worth of potential privacy and security issues obtained by 404 Media.’”

At the time, we did not publish the full database because it contains the personal information of potentially thousands of Google customers and employees, and cannot be reasonably redacted. The subpoena threatens to hold us in contempt of court if we do not comply with its subpoena.

Friday, our lawyers objected to the subpoena on the grounds that it is “oppressive” and because our confidential reporting is protected under the California Shield Law (404 Media is incorporated as Dark Mode LLC in the state of California). “The information and materials sought by the Subpoena are absolutely protected from compelled disclosure by the California Shield Law,” our attorneys wrote. “Dark Mode further objects to the Subpoena on the grounds that it calls for the disclosure of unpublished information that is independently protected from compelled disclosure under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 2(a) of the California Constitution.”

Simply put: If Ken Paxton wants Google’s privacy incident database, he should get it directly from Google, not from us.

[…]

Paxton’s subpoena highlights the urgency of passing the PRESS Act, a federal shield law that has already passed the House and which has bipartisan support but which Democrats in the Senate have dragged their feet on for inexplicable and indefensible reasons. The PRESS Act would prevent the type of frivolous and inappropriate legal action Paxton is pursuing from the federal government, which is particularly important considering that FBI Director nominee Kash Patel has promised to “come after” journalists “criminally or civilly.” Attacking press freedom doesn’t always mean the government will directly sue journalists and news organizations. It can also, as Paxton has chosen to do here, demand information from them in an attempt to embroil them in wholly unrelated and costly legal proceedings, and to hold them in contempt of court when they choose not to commit professional and ethical suicide.

I was aware of the lawsuit, which may have merit, but my operating assumption is that everything Ken Paxton does is bad unless proven otherwise. For obvious reasons, I would like to see him get denied on this motion. 404Media is a subscriber-based investigative site that focuses on tech, AI, the Internet, that sort of thing, and they do some really fascinating work. Check them out, and read the rest of the post.

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Houston to get a pro volleyball team

Pretty cool.

As far as professional volleyball goes, there isn’t much two-time Olympic medalist Micha Hancock hasn’t done.

Hancock won gold with Team USA at the Tokyo Games and a silver medal at the Paris Games. She played professionally in Italy for the last seven years. Before that, in Poland for two years.

This winter, though, she’s preparing to do something she’s never done before: play a season of professional volleyball in the United States, on a Houston team in a first-of-its-kind league debuting in January.

Whereas most sports leagues launch pro franchises and then develop academy and youth programs, League One Volleyball (abbreviated to LOVB and pronounced “Love”) did the opposite. It started with a network of established youth clubs all over the country, then branched upward to pro teams in six cities: Houston; Austin; Atlanta; Omaha, Neb.; Madison, Wis.; and Salt Lake City.

Until a few years ago, top American volleyball players had to go overseas to play professionally. LOVB Pro is one of three professional indoor volleyball leagues that have launched in the U.S. since 2021, but the only one that started at the grassroots level.

Hancock and U.S. Olympic teammate Jordan Thompson were the first two athletes to commit to LOVB Houston. Hancock said the new league gave her the opportunity not only to come home, but to help grow professional volleyball in what is hopefully a lasting way.

“I think it wasn’t the most important thing for this league to be first. It was like, we want to make sure we have time to do the things how we want to do them,” Hancock said. “In 10 years, I just want there to be one really good option for young women, and young men eventually, to stay home and play if that’s what they choose to do.”

LOVB started in 2020 and now has 58 junior clubs across the country. The six pro franchises each share a practice gym with a local affiliated youth club. LOVB Houston practices at Houston Skyline’s gym and will play home matches at the Fort Bend County Epicenter, with the first home match scheduled Jan. 9 against Austin.

LOVB Pro owns and operates each of its teams, a single-entity model also used by Major League Soccer and the Professional Women’s Hockey League. But LOVB Pro president Rosie Spaulding said she is unaware of a professional sports league anywhere in the world with the same community up structure.

“I think what’s been missing for a long time in the U.S. for volleyball has been the highest level of the game and this sort of North Star and halo effect that a pro league can bring,” Spaulding said. “And in doing it this way, we’re really forging this really strong connection from the very beginning so that kids playing in our clubs can see and actually train in the same gyms as our pro teams and see firsthand.”

[…]

The league will debut just sixth months after the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where Team USA took home the women’s volleyball silver medal.

The timing was intentional, Spaulding said. So was picking Houston as one of the base cities.

Houston Skyline was ranked the No. 1 youth club in the country this year, as the number of girls playing volleyball in Texas and nationwide continued to skyrocket. A record-high 479,125 girls participated in high school volleyball in 2023-24, second only to track and field, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Texas led the way with 52,608 girls volleyball participants.

At the college level, the Texas Longhorns are defending their national championship this month in the NCAA Tournament. In total, nine of the 64 teams in the field are from the Lone Star State, including Texas A&M, Baylor, SMU and Texas State.

When it came time to launch pro teams, Spaulding said LOVB started with a list of 28 cities. Houston easily rose to the top.

“We looked at everything from affinity for volleyball, USA Volleyball membership, where women’s sports where popular, cities that were easy to get to from a transport perspective for logistics, the existing pro teams and leagues that were already in cities — and of course, importantly, our clubs,” Spaulding said. “Houston Skyline continues to be one of the top clubs in the country, and it was a no-brainer for us.”

Rice also has a strong volleyball program, though they fell short of the NCAA tournament this year. I have no idea how big the audience will be for LOVB, but the league appears to be pretty well-capitalized and they have a broadcast deal with ESPN, as does the forthcoming Athletes United Softball League. If this is your jam you should buy a ticket and go see a game – if this is going to work, sufficient support out of the gate is a big deal. You can learn more about the league here and its apparently not-yet-named Houston team here. The schedule runs into the first week of April. I wish them well.

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Texas blog roundup for the week of December 9

The Texas Progressive Alliance is holding space for its weekly roundup right here, where you can see it.

Continue reading

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We’re still talking about “Enron”

I’m still trying to figure out who the joke is supposed to be on.

The newly-revived Enron Corporation revealed its CEO Monday, along with a promise to unveil the “most revolutionary technology” the energy sector has ever seen, according to an announcement posted to its website.

Connor Gaydos, the 28-year-old who helped pen the satirical “Birds Aren’t Real,” a conspiracy theory, in June alongside co-author Peter Mcindoe, will lead the reformed Enron Corporation in its apparent revival. Now the self-proclaimed “world’s leading company,” Enron Corporation announced it will host a power summit in early January during which company leadership will debut an unspecified technology that will transform the energy sector.

“When tomorrow comes, today will vanish into a sea of yesterdays,” the company said in the announcement. “In one month, we will unveil the most revolutionary technology the energy sector has ever seen.”

According to its website, the content of Enron’s website is “protected parody” and intended as performance art. While this could be a simple blurb added to Enron’s privacy policy in a bid to stave off potential litigation, the dramatic, tongue-in-cheek, nature of the videos shared Monday carry a tone of levity that could indicate genuine parody.

The Enron Power Summit is scheduled for Jan. 6. While Enron Corporation has made lofty promises in the days following its return, little in the way of concrete details have been shared with the public. The company did not indicate whether it would be hosting its power summit in-person or virtually, and did not share any details regarding location, time or the nature of the technology it said it plans to debut.

The company also shared a video introducing Gaydos as the CEO of the company. Gaydos previously identified himself as the co-founder of the College Company, which holds the trademark rights to both Birds Aren’t Real and the “Enron E” logo seen on the recent billboard erected in Houston and the advertisements the company purchased in the New York Times and Houston Chronicle print editions.

“So often you find yourself on the front page of a future history book,” Gaydos said in the video. “It’s true. We’ve had poor leadership in the past, but thankfully, the past is prologue, and now we’re turning the page … what we’re doing behind the scenes and what we’re about to release is truly groundbreaking. It’s truly revolutionary.”

See here for the background. It’s clear that we’re firmly in parody territory, though that doesn’t preclude the appearance of another dumb crypto coin at some point (*). I’m sure no one believes, and we are clearly not meant to believe, that “most revolutionary technology the energy sector has ever seen” baloney. What puzzles me is that someone spent probably in excess of $100K running at least a week’s worth of full-page ads for this “new” “Enron” in the Chronicle and the NY Times, plus the billboard. So either this is just someone with enough money to do that getting their jollies or there is a real moneymaking scheme at the heart of all this; if it’s the latter, my congratulations on the success of your rollout, you have definitely earned the eyeballs. I don’t think a web shop selling T-shirts and coffee mugs is likely to succeed in this venture, but if it’s not that then what is it? Again, I come back to the crypto idea. I guess we’ll find out on January 6, which by the way is a terrible date for this. I’m sure we’ll all appreciate some distraction then, but seriously, y’all should have picked literally any other date.

(*) I mean, the Hawk Tuah girl has a memecoin. And the fact that I know about this is the best illustration of brain rot I’ve personally encountered.

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Jay-Z added to Buzbee’s lawsuit against Sean Combs

Wow.

After Houston attorney Tony Buzbee vowed to bring more than 100 lawsuits in multiple states on behalf of alleged sexual assault victims claiming they were sexually abused or exploited by media mogul Sean Combs, a federal lawsuit was refiled Sunday — this time including allegations against New York rapper and businessman Jay-Z, according to a report by NBC News.

In the lawsuit, the anonymous accuser identified only as “Jane Doe” claimed Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, and Combs had raped the 13-year-old girl in 2000, the report reads.

In a statement issued through Roc Nation, Carter’s entertainment company, he called the allegations “heinous in nature.”

“I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one,” Carter said in his written response. “Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case. This lawyer, who I have done a bit of research on, seems to have a pattern of these type of theatrics!”

In November, Buzbee himself was sued in California on suspicion of extorting “high profile” individuals, according to court documents filed in Los Angeles County Court.

The lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. Monday by an unnamed individual identified only as “John Doe,” accused Buzbee and his firm of threatening to publicize “entirely fabricated and malicious allegations of sexual assault — including multiple instances of rape of a minor, both male and female.” The suit claimed Buzbee weaponized purportedly baseless accusations in a bid to extort money from the unidentified plaintiff.

See here for some background. It’s not clear in this story but it is in the original NBC News article, that Jay-Z is the celebrity that sued Buzbee last month, alleging that Buzbee was extorting him over this allegation. All I can say is that they both can’t be right. The actual story about the 13-year-old alleged victim is too horrible for me to contemplate at this time, so I’ll leave this at that. I am certain we will be hearing more. Texas Public Radio, Jezebel, and the DMN have more.

UPDATE: Slate has a good overview of the case and what we know so far.

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621 set to roll out

Our newest area code will soon debut.

Houston’s newest area code, 621, will officially launch on Jan. 23, 2025.

The 621 will be the fifth area code associated with the Houston region, joining the quartet of 281, 346, 713, and 832.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved a fifth area code back in Oct. 2023. The commission had previously said it was set to run out of phone numbers by the end of 2025.

All five area codes will service the same locations. The area includes Houston, Baytown, League City, Missouri City, Pasadena, Pearland, Sugar Land, The Woodlands and other communities. In total, the area codes stretch into 10 counties and include nearly all of Harris County.

The commission believes the new area code will be able to sustain additional phone numbers in the region for the next nine years.

Adding a new area code to the region won’t result in any major changes. Current phone numbers won’t be changed. AT&T also said in a release that what currently constitutes a local call will remain a local call and prices won’t rise.

See here and here for the background. I had totally forgotten about this, since the original news was from more than a year ago, and was first reminded of it via a text message from AT&T (my cellphone provider) that this new area code was coming in January. It probably won’t affect your life unless you get a new cellphone or the like, but there it is anyway. For those of you who may be skeptical about the claim that we’ll be good for the next nine years before needing another area code, I will note that the 346 code debuted in 2014 – it will be ten and a half years between that and the introduction of 621. You can stop worrying about this until 2033 or so.

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A different perspective on turnout

From the December 3 New York Times daily newsletter:

If you’ve been reading post-election coverage, you’ve probably seen one of the big takeaways from the returns so far: In counties across the country, Kamala Harris won many fewer votes than President Biden did four years ago.

With nearly all votes counted, she has about 74 million; Biden received 81 million four years ago. Donald Trump, in contrast, has 77 million votes, up from 74 million four years ago.

The drop-off in the Democratic vote was largest in the big blue cities. In places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Trump gained vote share but didn’t necessarily earn many more votes than he did four years ago. Instead, Democratic tallies plunged.

As such, it’s tempting to conclude that Democrats simply didn’t turn out this year — and that Harris might have won if they had voted in the numbers they did four years ago.

This interpretation would be a mistake.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain.

For one, the story doesn’t apply to the battlegrounds, where turnout was much higher. In all seven battleground states, Trump won more votes than Biden did in 2020.

More important, it is wrong to assume that the voters who stayed home would have backed Harris. Even if they had been dragged to the polls, it might not have meaningfully helped her.

How is that possible? The low turnout among traditionally Democratic-leaning groups — especially nonwhite voters — was a reflection of lower support for Harris: Millions of Democrats soured on their party and stayed home, reluctantly backed Harris or even made the leap to Trump.

During the campaign, The New York Times and Siena College polled many of these voters. After the election, we analyzed election records to see who did and didn’t vote. The results suggest that higher turnout wouldn’t have been an enormous help to Harris.

That may be surprising. It’s not usually how people think about turnout. Typically, turnout and party-switching are imagined as independent. After all, millions of voters are all but sure to vote for one party, and the only question is whether they’ll vote. In lower-turnout midterms and special elections, turnout can be the whole ballgame.

But in a presidential election, turnout and persuasion often go hand in hand. The voters who may or may not show up are different from the rest of the electorate. They’re less ideological. They’re less likely to be partisans, even if they’re registered with a party. They’re less likely to have deep views on the issues. They don’t get their news from traditional media.

Throughout the race, polls found that Trump’s strength was concentrated among these voters. Many were registered Democrats or Biden voters four years ago. But they weren’t acting like Democrats in 2024. They were more concerned by pocketbook issues than democracy or abortion rights. If they decided to vote, many said they would back Trump.

It will be many months until the story is clear nationwide, but the data we have so far suggests that the decline in Democratic turnout doesn’t explain Harris’s loss.

Clark County, Nev., which contains Las Vegas, is an example. There, 64.8 percent of registered Democrats turned out, down from 67.7 percent in 2020; turnout among registered Republicans stayed roughly the same.

But this lower Democratic turnout would explain only about one-third of the decline in Democratic support in Clark County, even if one assumed that all Democrats were Harris voters. The remaining two-thirds of the shift toward Trump was because voters flipped his way.

Even that back-of-the-envelope calculation probably overestimates the role of turnout. Our polling data suggests that many of these nonvoting Democrats were no lock for Harris. In Times/Siena data for Clark County, Harris led registered Democrats who voted in 2024, 88 percent to 8 percent. But she had a much narrower lead, 71 percent to 23 percent, among the registered Democrats who stayed home.

There’s no equivalent pattern of a drop in support for Trump among Republicans who stayed home. Indeed, many high-turnout Republicans are highly engaged, college-educated “Never Trump” voters who have helped Democrats in special and midterm elections.

In Las Vegas and elsewhere, our data suggests that most voters who turned out in 2020 but stayed home in 2024 voted for Biden in 2020 — but about half of them, and maybe even a slight majority, appear to have backed Trump this year. Regardless, there’s no reason to believe that they would have backed Harris by a wide margin, let alone the kind of margin that would have made a difference in the election.

This is in contrast to my thesis about the 100K missing voters that made Harris County so much closer; there were missing voters like that all over the country. Nate’s point is that per the polling data he has, had they bothered to show up, they wouldn’t have been that much of a boon for Dems anyway. Perhaps so, I don’t have any data to counter that, but it still fits my contention that we need to talk to these folks and hear what they have to say. If nothing else, that’s the starting point to try to win them back. ProPublica has talked to some Latino voters who did show up and voted for Trump, and it’s bracing but necessary to hear.

I’m working through the precinct data now, and will talk about that next week. There’s definitely reason for concern, but plenty of reason to keep fighting and moving forward. It’s not like there’s a better option than that anyway. I wanted to present this to keep me honest and hopefully on the right track.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Metro to help fund HPD traffic enforcement

A modest revision to an originally large plan.

Metro Police Department will spend almost $50 million of its budget to partially fund the city’s traffic enforcement and street light operations in 2025, but that extra funding won’t have much impact on the transportation agency.

In the first major move since Ban Tien left the Houston Police Department for the transportation police, the city will pull $25.4 million from Metro to fund the police department’s traffic enforcement division and another $21.8 million for traffic and street lights, according to Meredith Johnson, a spokeswoman for Metro.

“This is around $50 million in additional revenue that won’t have to come from the general fund,” said Melissa Dubowski, the city of Houston’s finance director, of the additional funding from Metro. “There’s more to come, but this is definitely a big first step in the things we’ve been working on.”

The combined costs will take around 3.5% of Metro’s total revenues, according to budget documents. The funds are coming from a source of revenue inside Metro that the city hadn’t previously used.

Johnson said Metro dedicates around 25% of sales tax revenues – which amount to around $217 million – to fund interlocal agreements with partner entities. The funds can be used for street improvements, mobility projects and other services.

Dubowski said the intention is for this plan for funding traffic enforcement to become a recurring source for the city.

See here for some background. This was scaled down quite a bit from the original idea of folding Metro’s police department into HPD, which in retrospect is not that surprising. I had to read this story a couple of times to be clear on what is being proposed, and having done that I don’t see anything obviously weird. This is a reasonable use of the funding source in question, it’s not taking anything away from the non-Houston parts of Metro, and while this kind of off-book accounting is an invitation to future shenanigans, it’s also how we roll in this state.

I guess the main question I have at this point is whether this is intended as a way to let HPD shift some funds to other departments and thus beef them up, or is it intended to make traffic enforcement bigger and more impactful? Mayor Whitmire’s non-linear view of Vision Zero suggests the latter, but as it’s not clear in the story I’ll wait and see. If six months from now everyone is complaining about the number of speed traps out there, I guess we’ll know.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Classic Era Committee adds Dave Parker and Dick Allen to the MLB Hall of Fame

Congratulations to them.

Sluggers Dick Allen and Dave Parker earned election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday in voting from the Classic Baseball Era Committee. The announcement was made from the Winter Meetings in Dallas.

Needing at least 12 votes of the 16 committee members (75% required), Allen received 13 votes and Parker 14.

The pair were part of an eight-player ballot, which focused on candidates who contributed to the game prior to 1980, including Negro Leagues and pre-Negro Leagues stars. Others on the ballot were Ken Boyer, John Donaldson, Steve Garvey, Vic Harris, Tommy John and Luis Tiant.

Allen and Parker will be a part of the Class of 2025, joining any potential inductees from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America Hall of Fame ballot, which will be announced on Jan. 21, live on MLB Network. The Induction Ceremony will take place on July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Allen played 15 years (1963-77) in Major League Baseball, mostly with the Phillies and White Sox, made seven All-Star appearances and won the American League Most Valuable Player Award in ’72. Allen’s FanGraphs OPS+ (156) is the highest in Phillies history, ahead of Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt, matching Willie Mays and Frank Thomas and tied for 14th among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances.

[…]

Allen will share the Hall of Fame honor with the man known as “The Cobra.” Parker was an intimidating force when he wielded a 37-ounce bat during the 1970s and ’80s for six Major League teams, including the Pirates, Reds and Athletics. Besides winning two batting titles, an NL MVP Award, three NL Gold Glove Awards and three NL Silver Slugger Awards, Parker played 19 years in the big leagues, hitting .290 with 339 home runs and 1,493 RBIs. He was the Designated Hitter of the Year in 1989 and ’90.

Dick Allen’s induction was long overdue, and I’m just sad it happened after his passing in 2020. I’m happy for Dave Parker, who was a very bright star for a relatively short time, but I’ll be honest, I would have voted for Luis Tiant and the two Negro League/pre-Negro Leagur stars, John Donaldson and Vic Harris, over him. But at least Parker is still with us to bask in the glory of being inducted, which as Jay Jaffe says is a worthwhile consideration. Congrats to the Allen and Parker families, and we’ll see what happens in January when the writers’ votes are counted.

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Interview with Sandie Haverlah of the Texas Consumer Association

You might have noticed that CenterPoint has been in the news a lot lately. There’s the various audits of its performance during Beryl and the derecho, proposed legislation to make it refund the money it spent (and charged to customers) for its unused generators, a consumer complaint about those same generators, a rate case review that is still working its way through the system, and more. Wouldn’t you like to have someone who knows all this stuff way better than you explain it to you, so you can follow along more easily? Well, I did, and so I reached out to Sandie Haverlah of the Texas Consumer Association to see if she’d let me ask her a bunch of questions about it all, and she graciously agreed. Here’s our conversation, which helped me get a better grasp on all these moving pieces. I hope it does the same for you.

We’re in kind of a weird place for political news right now, unless you’re really into the unwanted Trump sequel. If there’s a story I’ve been following for which you think an interview with someone who Really Knows This Stuff would be welcome, let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

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Gina Ortiz Jones joins the crowded field for San Antonio Mayor

Noted for the record.

Gina Ortiz Jones

Former U.S. Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones, who has long been rumored as a potential 2025 mayoral contender, launched a campaign website this week.

Jones served as Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force under the Biden Administration, and twice ran for Congress as a Democrat in Texas 23rd Congressional District — back when the district was considered a top battleground on the House map.

Most recently, she’s been focused on a political action committee that sought to unseat three Texas Supreme Court justices who helped pave the way for the state’s abortion restrictions.

That effort garnered some attention from national Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), but all three Republican judges were reelected in November.

Jones would be joining a field of more than a dozen potential candidates, including three sitting council members.

Candidates can’t formally file to run in the May 3 municipal election until Jan. 16, but many have filed treasurer’s reports to allow them to start raising money.

The Find Out PAC didn’t succeed but I appreciated the effort, which frankly was more than quite a few incumbents did. That it didn’t work this times doesn’t mean it would never work. There’s no reason not to keep at it.

I don’t have a dog in this fight but Ortiz Jones is a familiar name and there’s not much else of interest on the election calendar for 2025 – no city of Houston elections, and sadly Dallas doesn’t get to correct its Mayoral error until 2027. If they want to take another shot at a recall petition, I’ll be up for that. Mostly what I want out of SA’s Mayoral race is for them to avoid this kind of screwup. I hope that’s an achievable goal. The Current has more.

(Yes, there might be another effort to pass an HISD bond, possibly in May. I will of course watch for that. There’s also the whiny sore loser judicial election contest do-over, also in May, if an appellate court doesn’t step in. That would be genuinely substantive, if it does happen.)

Posted in Election 2025 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Look for driverless cars to get fast-tracked

Something to keep an eye on.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team plans to create a federal framework for fully self-driving vehicles, Bloomberg reported citing sources.

Should new regulations permit vehicles without human controls, it could provide a significant benefit to Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and a major donor to President-elect Trump, who has emerged as a key figure in his inner circle.

Current federal rules pose challenges for deploying vehicles without human controls, which Tesla aims to address.

The Trump team is seeking policy leaders to develop regulations for self-driving vehicles, the report said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) can issue rules to facilitate autonomous vehicle operations, but Congress must pass legislation for mass adoption of self-driving cars.

A bipartisan legislative measure is in early discussions to create federal rules around autonomous vehicles, people familiar with the development told Bloomberg.

[…]

Efforts to legislate autonomous vehicle regulations is a challenge. The NHTSA currently allows the deployment of 2,500 self-driving vehicles per year under an exemption. Legislative attempts to increase this number to 100,000 have repeatedly failed.

A bill passed the House during Trump’s first term but stalled in the Senate. An attempt to merge it with other legislation during the Biden administration also faltered.

The Bloomberg News story this is based on is here but it’s subscriber only. It was in the business section of the Chron’s print edition recently, which is what made me look for it.

As with all things Trump and Musk, there are complicating factors.

The Trump team has not commented on its plans. But on the campaign trail, Trump said self-driving cars are a “little concerning to me,” and pledged to “stop [autonomous cars] from operating on American roads.” His comments were a little disjointed, however, and may have been referencing self-driving cars from China rather than US-made autonomous vehicles.

Has Elon Musk, now a key advisor to the president-elect, eased Trump’s concerns? Musk has bet Tesla’s future on the company’s ability to “solve self-driving.” In October, he debuted two robotaxi prototypes and reiterated during a recent earnings call that “the future is autonomous.”

“It should be blindingly obvious” that that’s the direction Tesla is taking, Musk added.

However, Tesla has not yet gained legal clearance to operate its robotaxis in the US, falling behind Waymo and others that are testing in several states. At the Cybercab launch, Musk suggested Tesla could get clearance to operate driverless systems in California and Texas in 2025 and start production in 2026 or 2027.

Individual states have their own testing and safety standards for self-driving cars, which is why we often hear of self-driving car software operating in specific cities and states (usually CaliforniaNevada, and Texas). If testing goes well, they move to the next state, and so on.

On the federal level, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) sets the rules for testing and safety. In 2021, it issued a Standing General Order that requires companies with Level 2 self-driving systems and above to report crashes to the agency. It is currently investigating four crashes involving self-driving Teslas and whether system design was a factor.

“Vehicle safety promises to be one of automation’s biggest benefits,” the NHTSA says. “While these systems are not available to consumers today, the advantages of this developing technology could be far-reaching.”

Most of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is nonsense and garbage, little of which he likely remembers he said, so don’t read too much into any random burblings he made on the trail. Also, never believe any claim by Elon Musk about when he’ll deliver a fully functional autonomous vehicle. Beyond that, it is safe to assume that as long as Musk hasn’t completely worn out his welcome, he will do anything and everything he can to benefit himself and his businesses, so assume that any actions taken by NHTSA or the Department of Transportation in the direction of more autonomous vehicles were at least noted by him. Texas as noted is already pretty open to these things, so in the short term at least there may not be that much effect here.

Anyway, see here, here, and here for a bit of background. I will note that driverless trucks are out there as well, and we mustn’t forget about flying taxis, some of which are also intended to be autonomous, as well. And on and on. Like it or not, ready or not, we’re probably going to be much farther down this road in four years’ time than we are right now.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Weekend link dump for December 8

“It’s not like we were designing it to reflect reality, but we happen to be making a show about violent authoritarians who present as celebrities. Then suddenly, the world changed to reflect the show, not just in the States – all over the world. Suddenly we found ourselves making one of the most current shows on television.”

“The Dogs of Chernobyl Are Experiencing Rapid Evolution“.

How to talk to kids in a way that actually engages them.

What not to eat at a buffet.

RIP, Marshall Brickman, Oscar-winning screenwriter who co-wrote a lot of Woody Allen’s movies.

RIP, Rico Carty, longtime outfielder and 1970 batting champion for the Atlanta Braves.

What happened to Marc Andreessen?”

“Although poverty and ruralness have been with us forever, food deserts arrived only around the late 1980s. Prior to that, small towns and poor neighborhoods could generally count on having a grocery store, perhaps even several. (The term food desert was coined in 1995 by a task force studying what was then a relatively new phenomenon.)”

““I swear to God he said, ‘Hi Laraine.’ Not ‘Hi,’ but ‘Hi, Laraine.’ And I was like Lou Costello seeing Frankenstein. Here he was, with Yoko Ono, walking through 30 Rock. I have no idea why they were there. They just walked past me, and John said hello to me. That gave me some idea of the reach of the show.””

“C.S. Lewis and the Sex/Gender Distinction”.

“The world’s biggest climate case begins at The Hague in the Netherlands today. Oral arguments will be heard by the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, which will consider what obligations United Nations member states have under international law to protect the planet from greenhouse gas emissions for future generations.”

“Ilona Maher, the world’s most-followed rugby player on social media, has joined Premiership Women’s Rugby club Bristol Bears on a three-month contract.”

“It’s hard to transform baseball into the black-and-white, extensively defined scenarios where return and variance are easy to measure. My point is merely this: Teams and players are applying this lesson every day. If you’re looking for a broad story of baseball in the 21st century, it’s a relentless pursuit of increased expected returns.”

“Corporate social media is designed to keep you on corporate social media. Their algorithms are not your friend. One good way to liberate yourself from their force-feeding is to get an RSS reader. This is an ancient tool of the free internet — a way of subscribing to the stuff you want to read rather than relying on the agenda set by corporate algorithms.” I use Feedly for this and love it. It’s $45 a year for their Feedly Pro, which I’m happy to pay so they keep it updated and working and don’t go Google Reader on me.

“I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need.”

“The First Corruption Scandal of Trump’s Second Term Is Already Here”. It involves the crypto bro who bought that multi-million dollar banana art piece a couple of weeks ago. More here about that.

“It doesn’t actually matter anymore if you are a party girl or a non–party girl, if you want to be a mother or not—in Trump’s second presidency, all women are disposable.”

“Trump propagandist finally admits election conspiracy movie is a fraud”.

“Why Phishers Love New TLDs Like .shop, .top and .xyz”.

“Beyond navigating the immediate tariff issue, standing up to Trump and containing his most destructive impulses would serve Canada’s long-term interests, not to mention those of America and the rest of the world. Trudeau is already in a huge political hole at home. Why not forcefully defend Canada from Trump’s bullying to resurrect his own reputation? Bowing to Trump is only giving his opponents more fodder.”

“A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled on Friday that an upcoming ban on TikTok can proceed unless parent company ByteDance divests from Chinese government ownership.”

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Dan Patrick wants to ban all THC products

No hemp for you!

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that lawmakers in the state Senate would move to ban all forms of consumable tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, in Texas.

Patrick, who presides over the Senate and largely controls the flow of legislation in the chamber, said the THC ban would be designated as Senate Bill 3 — a low bill number that signals it is among his top priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

The Republican-controlled Legislature was widely expected to take aim at Texas’ booming hemp market, which has proliferated with thousands of cannabis dispensaries since lawmakers authorized the sale of consumable hemp in 2019.

That law, passed one year after hemp was legalized nationwide, was intended to boost Texas agriculture by permitting the commercialization of hemp containing trace amounts of non-intoxicating delta-9 THC. But Patrick contends the law has been abused by retailers using loopholes to market products with unsafe levels of THC, including to minors.

“Dangerously, retailers exploited the agriculture law to sell life-threatening, unregulated forms of THC to the public and made them easily accessible,” Patrick said in a statement announcing the measure late Wednesday. “Since 2023, thousands of stores selling hazardous THC products have popped up in communities across the state, and many sell products, including beverages, that have three to four times the THC content which might be found in marijuana purchased from a drug dealer.”

Texas has not legalized marijuana in any form for broad use.

Critics of the current hemp market point to a lack of testing requirements, age restrictions, and regulation, arguing that the proliferation of products — ranging from gummies and beverages to vapes and flower buds — has posed health risks and disrupted access for medical cannabis patients. Consumable hemp products are required by law to contain no more than 0.3% THC — the intoxicating part of the cannabis plant that comes in forms known as delta-8, delta-9 and THCA — but Patrick asserts that some items sold in Texas far exceed this limit.

Seems to me it should be possible to deal with the issues cited above without a blanket ban, but what do I know. I’m not a cannabis user, just a guy who thinks marijuana should be decriminalized, which is a thing that will never happen as long as Dan Patrick is in power. I think this will generate a significant fight, since all those retailers are not going to want to be put out of business. I also always expect the Senate to do what Dan Patrick wants, but perhaps the House will be less inclined. CultureMap and the Chron have more.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Reviving Texas’ uranium mines

Wow.

In the old ranchlands of South Texas, dormant uranium mines are coming back online. A collection of new ones hope to start production soon, extracting radioactive fuel from the region’s shallow aquifers. Many more may follow.

These mines are the leading edge of what government and industry leaders in Texas hope will be a nuclear renaissance, as America’s latent nuclear sector begins to stir again.

Texas is currently developing a host of high-tech industries that require enormous amounts of electricity, from crypto-currency mines and artificial intelligence to hydrogen production and seawater desalination. Now, powerful interests in the state are pushing to power it with next-generation nuclear reactors.

“We can make Texas the nuclear capital of the world,” said Reed Clay, president of the Texas Nuclear Association, former chief operating officer for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and former senior counsel to the Texas Office of Attorney General. “There’s a huge opportunity.”

Clay owns a lobbying firm with heavyweight clients that include SpaceX, Dow Chemical and the Texas Blockchain Council, among many others. He launched the Texas Nuclear Association in 2022 and formed the Texas Nuclear Caucus during the 2023 state legislative session to advance bills supportive of the nuclear industry.

The efforts come amid a national resurgence of interest in nuclear power, which can provide large amounts of energy without the carbon emissions that warm the planet. And it can do so with reliable consistency that wind and solar power generation lack. But it carries a small risk of catastrophic failure and requires uranium from mines that can threaten rural aquifers.

In South Texas, groundwater management officials have fought for almost 15 years against a planned uranium mine. Administrative law judges have ruled in their favor twice, finding potential for groundwater contamination. But in both cases those judges were overruled by the state’s main environmental regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Now local leaders fear mining at the site appears poised to begin soon as momentum gathers behind America’s nuclear resurgence.

In October, Google announced the purchase of six small nuclear reactors to power its data centers by 2035. Amazon did the same shortly thereafter, and Microsoft has said it will pay to restart the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania to power its facilities. Last month, President Joe Biden announced a goal to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. American companies are racing to license and manufacture new models of nuclear reactors.

“It’s kind of an unprecedented time in nuclear,” said James Walker, a nuclear physicist and co-founder of New York-based NANO Nuclear Energy Inc., a startup developing small-scale “microreactors” for commercial deployment around 2031.

[…]

The Goliad mine is the smallest of five sites in South Texas held by UEC, which is based in Corpus Christi. Another company, enCore Energy, started uranium production at two South Texas sites in 2023 and 2024, and hopes to bring four more online by 2027.

Uranium mining goes back decades in South Texas, but lately it’s been dormant. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, a cluster of open pit mines harvested shallow uranium deposits at the surface. Many of those sites left a legacy of aquifer pollution.

TCEQ records show active cases of groundwater contaminated with uranium, radium, arsenic and other pollutants from defunct uranium mines and tailing impoundment sites in Live Oak County at ExxonMobil’s Ray Point site, and in Karnes County at Conoco-Phillips Co.’s Conquista Project and at Rio Grande Resources’ Panna Maria Uranium Recovery Facility.

All known shallow deposits of uranium in Texas have been mined. The deeper deposits aren’t accessed by traditional surface mining, but rather a process called in-situ mining, in which solvents are pumped underground into uranium-bearing aquifer formations. Adjacent wells suck back up the resulting slurry, from which uranium dust will be extracted.

Industry describes in-situ mining as safer and more environmentally friendly than surface mining. But some South Texas water managers and landowners are concerned.

”We’re talking about mining at the same elevation as people get their groundwater,” said Terrell Graham, a board member of the Goliad County Groundwater Conservation District, which has been fighting a proposed uranium mine for almost 15 years. “There isn’t another source of water for these residents.”

There’s more, so read the rest. I had no idea that we had uranium mines, and no idea that the war in Ukraine provides a catalyst for reopening them. I have said before that I generally support the expansion of nuclear energy as a further means towards decarbonization, and I stand by that, though as this article shows there are plenty of concerns to deal with. It seems likely to me that the Lege will help clear any obstacles to uranium mining or nuclear plant construction. The Biden administration had already created incentives for more nukes, and that’s one initiative of theirs I figure will not be messed with. Lots to keep an eye on going forward.

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Where to go to hail a flying taxi

To the vertiport, of course.

Wisk Aero, an Advanced Air Mobility company and Boeing subsidiary aiming to bring self-flying air taxis to Southeast Texas by the end of the decade, has designed its potential initial routes for its service.

A preliminary map of proposed routes, provided exclusively to the Houston Chronicle, features six vertiport locations in the Houston area and nine routes.

“Texas has definitely a big role to play in Advanced Air Mobility,” said Emilien Marchand, Wisk’s director of ecosystem partnerships.

[…]

An average flight time will be 15 minutes, Marchand said. Wisk aims for its prices to be comparable per mile to an Uber Black.

Marchand said one of the potential options for a downtown Houston location for the vertiport is the George R. Brown Convention Center. Multiple factors make the conversion center an enticing place for a landing pad, including its location on the east side of downtown and it being a close walking distance to other major entertainment venues in the area.

Nothing is finalized, however, and Marchand noted that Wisk will not choose the location for the downtown Houston hub.

“The FAA has a big say in this,” Marchand said. “But then when you’re on the ground level, and when you think about permitting of infrastructure, the city and the various management districts are going to be a final say.”

Marchand said Houston is a priority market for Wisk for a few reasons, including the decentralization locations of businesses across the region and the history of aerospace innovation in the city.

But Wisk also believes their product can have a greater impact in Houston than other areas where public transportation is far more robust.

“It’s not like in New York, where you have a really well distributed subway system where you could go from one end of the city to the next,” Marchand said. “We don’t see it as a solution for everything; it’s part of the solution. It’s going to be a complementary mode of transport for city planners and regional transportation planners to have in their quiver.”

See here, here, here, and here for some background. It was always clear that this was a niche service, which the Wisk spokesperson implicitly acknowledges, but seeing this map really makes me wonder who it’s for. I mean, I’ve lived in Houston since 1988, and I’ve only ever needed to travel between IAH and Hobby once. I was driving my roomie Matt to the airport, and as we entered IAH, we had this conversation:

Me: Okay, so what terminal are you going to?
Matt: Well, I’m flying Southwest, so…
Me: Don’t they fly from Hobby?
Matt: Oh, shit.

Fortunately, we had left the house early enough to get him to Hobby on time. All I’m saying is, there are people who need to make this kind of trip. I don’t know who they are – I’m sure Wisk does, but I don’t – and I have no idea how many of them there are. I would love to know more about them.

The downtown and Energy Corridor vertiports (new vocabulary word alert!) intrigue me more. Geographically they make sense, but as I’ve discussed before, if you want to take one of these nifty flying taxis you have to get yourself to where they are first. That adds time and possibly expense to your trip, which would seem to upset the case for Wisking it in the first place. Why not just take that Uber Black straight to the airport, instead of Ubering or driving yourself to the vertiport first (and paying for parking in the latter instance)? Again, I’m sure Wisk knows who their target audience is. I’m just saying I’d like to know who they are as well, because it’s not something I can intuit.

Anyway. I remain fascinated by this subject and will keep an eye on it. Now that you know where you could hail (okay, probably reserve ahead of time) one of these, would you do it?

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Phelan withdraws his Speaker bid

Palace intrigue time.

Dade Phelan

House Speaker Dade Phelan on Friday announced he is dropping his bid for another term leading the lower chamber, ending a bruising, monthslong intraparty push to remove him from power.

Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, had previously insisted he had enough votes to thwart a challenge from the right led by state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield, a former ally.

“Out of deep respect for this institution and its members, and after careful consideration and private consultation with colleagues, I have made the difficult decision to withdraw from the race for Speaker of the Texas House,” he said in a statement. “By stepping aside, I believe we create the best opportunity for our members to rally around a new candidate who will uphold the principles that make our House one of the most exceptional, deliberative legislative bodies in the country—a place where honor, integrity, and the right of every member to vote their district takes utmost precedent.”

Phelan abandoned the race one day before a scheduled meeting where Republicans are set to pick their nominee for the gavel.

Phelan’s withdrawal sets up a renewed scramble for control of the House. State Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican and top ally of Phelan, has filed paperwork to run for speaker, according to two sources familiar with the matter. His path to the gavel rests on courting the chamber’s 62 Democrats and roughly 40 unpledged Republicans — and reports of his candidacy were already drawing swift pushback from Cook’s camp and grassroots GOP activists, who are set on selecting a speaker without relying on votes from Democrats.

Phelan was looking to the bloc of Democrats and uncommitted Republicans to secure a third term as speaker. But he never produced a list of supporters, while Cook gained fresh momentum this week by picking up two new backers, bringing him within striking distance of the votes needed to lock up the GOP caucus’ endorsement this weekend.

Under the caucus rules, whoever gets 60% or more of the votes at Saturday’s meeting will secure the group’s endorsement and receive support from all 88 Republican members when the vote goes to the full House in January — enough to win the gavel. Heading into this week, Cook had touted 47 supporters, including two unnamed backers. He picked up support from state Reps. David Spiller of Jacksboro and Trent Ashby of Lufkin this week, putting him four votes shy of the 60% threshold.

The one thing that has been consistently true of the Legislature since I started paying closer attention to it 20+ years ago is that Speaker’s races are always determined before the session begins. One way or the other, there’s just one survivor who gets all the votes, save for the occasional protest or abstention from someone who doesn’t mind sitting in the corner for the next 20 weeks.

This year may be different, of course. Those of us who have based our political expectations on the tides of history have had plenty of opportunities to make fools of ourselves lately. At least there would be some cheap entertainment if the first day of session includes a nasty fight over who gets to wield the gavel; it would cast a pall over all the smiling-family photos that normally mark Opening Day, if nothing else. That the lesser-evil candidate from a Democratic perspective might be Dustin Burrows is nauseating, enough so that some Dems won’t stand for it, but this is the world we live in. This session is going to make the last one look like a Montessori classroom. Enjoy the small amounts of schadenfreude you get while you can. Reform Austin, the Chron, and Lone Star Left have more.

UPDATE: From Saturday night:

In a stunning turn of events, state Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock announced Saturday evening that he had the necessary votes to become the next speaker of the Texas House.

“The speaker’s race is over,” he said in a news conference that lasted less than two minutes. “I have secured enough to be speaker of the House for the next session.”

Burrows released a list of 76 supporters — 38 Republicans and 38 Democrats. However, at least one member told the Tribune they should not be on the list, debasing Burrows’ claim to have the necessary votes to be elected speaker.

That came just minutes after Rep. David Cook of Mansfield, Burrows’ main rival for the speaker’s gavel, had been declared the endorsed candidate by the House GOP Caucus by a vote of 48-14 after a contingent of Burrows’ supporters dramatically left the meeting after the two rivals had stalemated in the first two rounds.

All 88 GOP caucus members are tied by the group’s rules to vote for the endorsed candidate, which would help Cook surpass the 76-vote threshold in January to be elected speaker. But Burrows made his announcement surrounded by dozens of fellow Republican supporters indicating that those lawmakers were willing to go against the rules to back Burrows.

It’s all basically “Hard Knocks” but with no one to root for.

Posted in That's our Lege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The homeowners’ insurance is too damn high

Texas isn’t such a cheap place to live when you factor in insurance costs.

When Maryann McGregor retired in 2020, she and her husband considered downsizing and selling their four-bedroom home in Clear Lake to their adult son. The couple had lived there for nearly four decades, and the house was paid off.

Then their home insurance bills started to skyrocket. Two carriers stopped providing coverage, and Allstate, which had been charging them $3,300 in 2020, is no longer writing new policies in their zip code. Now they’re paying $8,000 for a policy from a little-known start-up. Their wind and hail deductible has jumped to $28,400 — twice what they paid to replace the roof last year.

McGregor worries about burdening her son with the new costs.

“It would be a huge impact on him to have that big insurance bill on top of the tax bills,” she said. “The insurance is more than the taxes now.”

Homeowners like McGregor are struggling in every corner of Texas to keep their homes insured, paying more for less coverage as climate change wreaks havoc on providers.

Home insurance in the state is now among the most expensive in the country, trailing only Florida and Louisiana, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of U.S. Census survey data. Insurance carriers from Allstate and State Farm to smaller start-ups have responded to the rising frequency and intensity of storms not by pulling out of local markets en masse, as has happened in more regulated states like California, but by jacking up premiums and dropping homeowners in risky areas.

The Texas Department of Insurance recorded a 21% jump in statewide rates last year, the biggest annual spike in at least a decade. In the last five years, rates in Texas have risen faster than anywhere else in the country, based on data tracked by S&P Global.

The Houston metropolitan area has the highest average premiums in the state, according to the Chronicle’s analysis, with communities closest to the coast paying nearly three times the national average for home insurance.

But it’s not just a coastal crisis. Homeowners in Amarillo and Lubbock have seen their premiums surge from one year to the next as wind storms and wildfires rip across the panhandle and West Texas. Rates have soared in Central and North Texas too as softball-sized hail has shredded roofs and tornadoes have destroyed neighborhoods.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, home insurance last year ranked among the top 20 priciest in the country, topping every metropolitan area in California and many across the East Coast and Florida.

“We don’t have a healthy home insurance market anywhere in the state,” state Sen. Tan Parker of Flower Mound told lawmakers recently, noting that he was dropped by his provider earlier this year, and is now paying more than three times as much for coverage.

In response, real estate agents say potential homebuyers are backing out of contracts because they can’t afford to add insurance premiums. Sellers are dropping list prices, citing the cost of insurance as the reason.

And homeowners who have paid off their mortgages or inherited their homes are increasingly choosing to opt out of coverage altogether: One in six Texas homeowners, or about 1.1 million households, didn’t pay for insurance last year, according to the Chronicle’s analysis of Census data.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” said Luis Leal, the owner of My Insurance Group, an independent agency in San Antonio that manages policies for 6,500 homeowners. “I got into the insurance space right at the turn of the 2008 mortgage crisis. And even that didn’t cause as much turmoil as the last 4 or 5 years.”

There’s a lot more, so read the rest. Short term fixes might include things like more state control over rate increases, subsidies to help people who can’t afford current rates, moving people out of the highest risk areas, and so on. The longer term fix, which gets a lot of play in the rest of the story, is working to mitigate the effects of climate change. Which, given that the Republican Party is opposed to the idea of climate change, will be a heavy lift. One way or another, this is not sustainable.

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HISD may do more school name changes

Fine by me.

Much has changed in Houston ISD in the 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in schools illegal. The district went through a years-long process to desegregate its campuses and, in recent decades, has been led by several Black and Hispanic superintendents.

Yet for three HISD facilities, the shadow of the district’s segregated past looms heavy thanks to an explicit reminder: their names.

Two HISD campuses, Petersen Elementary School and Scarborough High School, and one athletic facility, Delmar Sports Complex, are named for former district leaders who fought to keep the district racially segregated following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

Now, district officials are taking early steps toward potentially renaming the three facilities, along with five other schools whose namesakes are linked to enslavement, Native American genocide and other historical injustices.

The campuses are: Eliot, Petersen and Roberts elementary schools; Welch Middle School; Lamar and Scarborough high schools; and The Rice School/La Escuela Rice.

In response to questions from the Houston Landing in late November, HISD Superintendent Mike Miles has invited principals at the seven schools to convene committees of community members to consider new names.

In late November, HISD sent email messages to families at each of the seven campuses explaining “questions are being raised about the historical figure that is your campus’ namesake.” The letter was signed by Miles, each school’s principal and the division superintendent overseeing each campus.

“While these historical figures played an important role in our state, our city and our district, in some cases, they represent a painful and challenging part of our history,” the HISD leaders wrote. “Houston is currently one of the most diverse and resilient cities in the nation and you may no longer feel like these are the right representations of who we are now or who we strive to be.”

The letter said families would have the opportunity to drive the renaming process, and a final choice “rests with your community.” Under HISD policy, if a committee is formed and reaches a “consensus” on a name change, Miles could bring the proposal to HISD’s state-appointed board, which must vote to approve any changes.

The preliminary steps come several years after a national debate over removing statutes, facility names and other iconography that bore the likeness of historical figures linked to slavery. Proponents of such changes generally argue new names allow communities to turn the page on ugly aspects of history, while opponents contend the processes divide communities and can be a waste of time.

[…]

Dozens of HISD buildings bear the names of former school board members, superintendents and other community leaders — though some carry complicated legacies.

Two of those board members, James Delmar and Henry Petersen, held prominent professional roles in the community and served for a combined 30 years on the HISD board.

When the court struck down “separate but equal” in 1954, Delmar and Petersen joined the faction of HISD’s board deadset against full-scale integration of the district. Delmar railed against the Civil Rights Movement during board meetings, while Petersen said forcing integration through the courts amounted to “educational dictatorship” that destroyed the “amicable relationships” between the races.

When pro-integration trustees took power on the board, the duo frequently boycotted votes and skipped board meetings. Then, when desegregation opponents won multiple elections to take back control of the board, Petersen celebrated the win of a candidate who said she would rather go to jail than integrate HISD.

Also in the late 1950s, George Cameron Scarborough, the namesake of Scarborough High, briefly held the roles of HISD deputy superintendent and acting superintendent. (HISD’s Scarborough Elementary School is named after Scarborough’s brother, Walter.)

During that time, Scarborough was a member of the Texas Citizens Council, a group created to fight desegregation. Scarborough also proposed a plan that included requiring Black teachers to stand behind a one-way mirror and observe as white teachers led lessons for Black students. The proposal, nicknamed the “Peeping Tom” plan, became the target of ridicule and disgust, with a leading Black-owned newspaper at the time calling it “a wholescale insult.”

HISD began renaming several schools that had been named for various Confederate generals and other historic figures nine years ago. There was definitely some loud whining from certain quarters, and a bit of handwringing from folks who agreed with the broader idea but thought this guy wasn’t as bad as that guy. And then the schools got renamed and I bet most of us have forgotten which ones they were, because their new names are what we’re all used to now. I fully expect that to be the case this time as well, if any or all of these changes go through.

Part of the reason why I’m glad HISD is doing this is because I for one had no idea about who any of these people were, and I’m willing to bet that would be true for 99% or more of the Houston population. I’ve lived here since 1988, I’ve driven past Delmar Stadium a million times, I’ve attended a couple of games there and dropped off and picked up my daughters there any number of times. I’d never given a moment’s thought to its namesake. I knew it had to be named after someone, but that was as far as it went. And now that I do know, my reaction is screw that guy. The list of people who are more deserving of that honor is a mile long. Pick someone from that list and get it done. Same for the rest of them.

(The Welch in question is former Houston Mayor Louie “shoot the queers” Welch, and the Rice is William Marsh Rice, who already has a whole university named after him. You’re welcome to split hairs over whose sins are the greater ones, I’ll sit that out. No one is entitled to have a building named after them. Louie Welch and William Marsh Rice and the rest of them will be just fine no matter what happens.)

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The SCOTUS gender affirming care ban case is about much more than that

It’s about equal protection under the law.

In a striking echo of how they dispensed with abortion rights, many right-wing justices Wednesday advocated for a “leave it to the states” approach on trans health care, rhetorical cover for a legal logic that could open the door to nationwide bans and a potential blow to the Equal Protection Clause more broadly.

The case, U.S. v. Skrmetti, hinges on Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors. It blocks those children from medical treatments — including hormones and puberty blockers — that it keeps available for minors seeking that treatment for other reasons.

The Biden Department of Justices argues, and the liberal justices hammered Wednesday, that such a law is a clear facial sex classification: The availability of the medication is predicated on whether the minor seeking it is trans or not. A law that discriminates by sex that way triggers intermediate scrutiny, a higher bar of legal review. The DOJ wants the Court to find that this law does trigger that higher threshold — contra what the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found — and send it back down for reappraisal under that standard.

Tennessee counters that its law is not sex-based discrimination, since neither boys nor girls can get the treatment for the purpose of transitioning (though, as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, similar reasoning was applied to interracial marriage bans, where Black people couldn’t marry white people and vice versa).

The right-wing justices said very little by way of arguing that the law does not discriminate on the basis of sex, which, if found to be the case, would only open it to a rational basis standard — a much lower bar that would make it nearly impossible to challenge anti-trans legislation, and even other sex-based discrimination.

They were virtually mum on that central question of the case — whether this law needs to be examined with a rational basis lens or an intermediate scrutiny one — and were more eager to move on to questions that are downstream of that initial determination, including the evidence about whether gender-affirming care is beneficial or not.

Jackson noted the oddity of the approach.

“I’m suddenly quite worried about the ‘role of court’ questions and the constitutional allocation of authority concerns because I understood that it was bedrock in the Equal Protection framework that there was a constitutional issue in any situation in which a legislature is drawing lines on the basis of a suspect class, that it’s a constitutional question that is being raised when that is happening as a threshold matter,” she said. “And then you may get into, why is it happening? What is the justification?”

“This kind of idea, that the way we look at it is not, first, ‘are you drawing these classifications’ and then, ‘state, give us your evidence so we can make sure there’s a proper fit,’ if instead we’re just doing what the state is encouraging here in Loving — ‘there are lots of good reasons for this policy and who are we as the Court to say otherwise?’ — I’m worried that we’re undermining the bedrock of some of our Equal Protection cases,” she added.

See here for the previous update. Other federal courts have struck down similar bans, but the Sixth Circuit was the outlier, and so here we are. I’m going to point you to a bunch of other coverage and analysis, but the one thing I read that really made me want to break things was this.

It’s hard to deny that Tennessee’s law treats people differently based on sex. For one, the Tennessee law explicitly states that its purpose is to “encourage minors to appreciate their sex” and prohibit treatments that might “encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.” As Justice Elena Kagan put it on Wednesday, “sounds to me like we want boys to be boys and we want girls to be girls.”

But at oral argument on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts kept trying to dodge that constitutional analysis by describing the medical science around gender-affirming care as “evolving” and “technical.” “Here, it seems to me that the medical issues are much more heavily involved” than in other sex discrimination cases the court has ruled on, Roberts said. “Doesn’t that make a stronger case for us to leave those determinations to the legislative bodies rather than try to determine them for ourselves?”

Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly made similar points about stepping back. “The Constitution doesn’t take sides on how to resolve that medical and policy debate,” he said. “Why isn’t it best to leave it to the democratic process?”

But the premise that the court was being asked to make a scientific determination was simply untrue. Again, the question before the court was whether Tennessee relied on sex to ban gender-affirming care. That’s because while the Constitution may not take a position on a certain medical treatment, it does take a position on whether a treatment can be denied on the basis of sex. As Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for the United States government, put it to Roberts, “It would be a pretty remarkable thing for the Court to say that just because we’re in the space of medical regulation, you are not going to apply the traditional standards that ordinarily are applied when there’s a sex classification.” It would also be a classic Roberts move: reaching a radical conclusion while claiming the mantle of restraint.

So Roberts theorized the justices have a constitutional duty to defer to the legislature. “It’s not really so much a question of qualifications,” Roberts said, even though he had repeatedly suggested that it was. “It’s more questions of constitutional allegation of authority. We might think that we can do just as good a job with respect to the evidence here as Tennessee or anybody else, but my understanding is that the Constitution leaves that question to the people’s representatives rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor.”

This notion of the humble court flies in contrast with the Roberts’ Court’s usual pattern of deciding cases in a manner that augments its own authority. Time and again, the justices have let neither mootness nor irreparably weak standing theories stop them from ruling when they want to decide a hot button issue. The justices have invented the so-called “major questions doctrine” to shoot down agency programs they deem too big or expensive to enact without clear congressional authorization, leaving the nine justices to decide whether an action survives—not the elected branches. Roberts has authored several of these opinions.

And last term, the court threw out Chevron deference, the judiciary’s decades-long practice of deferring to reasonable agency interpretations of statutes when the law is unclear. The opinion, by Roberts, was a judicial power grab: rather than defer to the expertise of agency policy-makers and scientists, judges should take it upon themselves to second guess all manner of US regulations. As Kagan wrote in her dissent: “In recent years, this Court has…substituted its own judgment on workplace health for that of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; its own judgment on climate change for that of the Environmental Protection Agency; and its own judgment on student loans for that of the Department of Education. But evidently that was, for this Court, all too piecemeal.”

Despite this track record of amassing power, on Wednesday, Roberts shifted directions to urge deference. Conservatives on the court rarely grant such deference to the federal government—at least under a Democratic president—but often reserve it for states seeking a constitutionally dubious outcome. This may reflect an ideological dislike for over-regulating states. But it also demonstrates an aversion to enforcing the Constitution’s bedrock civil rights protections.

A good example are the court’s decisions granting states almost entirely free rein to gerrymander legislative and congressional maps. In 2017, the court was served an opportunity to place constitutional limits on extreme partisan gerrymandering. But during oral argument, Roberts spurned it, calling the proposed method of determining when voting boundaries are unconstitutional “sociological gobbledygook,” and, in writing for the court, Roberts declined to decide the issue on a technicality. In a subsequent 2019 case heard after the roster of justices had shifted, Roberts had the votes for the outcome he wanted and authored an opinion holding that partisan gerrymandering was a political issue that could not be litigated in federal court. The federal judiciary was, conveniently for Republicans in the case, bowing out. (It’s worth noting that it appears that next year’s GOP majority in the House of Representatives will be a result of the court’s gerrymandering permission slip.) In 2023, the court made it much harder to fight gerrymandering that uses race to sort voters. Writing for the conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito created a new standard for racial gerrymandering cases, now requiring that courts act with the “presumption that the legislature acted in good faith.” Under such a presumption, courts are instructed that the word of the legislators outweighs their deeds.

On Wednesday, that same kind of instruction appeared likely to carry the day in when it comes to gender-affirming care bans. Rather than assess whether legislators use sex to unconstitutionally limit access to the drug and whether doing so is justified, the justices could simply defer to the good judgment of the legislators.

The Supreme Court just really sucks right now, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Fixing that better damn well be high on the priority list the next time that opportunity presents itself.

Two more points to note before I close. You may think that this is just about trans kids, and you may be uncomfortable with the idea of gender affirming care for them. But banning such care for minors directly affects trans adults too. And up next on the legislative agenda is targeting trans adults. If we’re not equal under the law, then we can start to delineate just how much less equal some of us are. Who’s comfortable with that? Law Dork, Slate, Slate again, and The 19th have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

I do not expect any aspect of the rural health care problem to be addressed by the Lege

Sorry, I just don’t see it happening.

Twenty five years ago, the Texas Legislature passed a sweeping set of reforms to resuscitate the state’s collapsing rural health care system.

Now, health care providers, advocates and local leaders are proposing similarly aggressive action to pull the rural maternity care system back from the brink. The Rural Texas Maternal Health Rescue Plan is a package of proposals they’re hoping lawmakers will champion in this upcoming session.

Almost half of all Texas counties offer no maternity care services, and more than a quarter of rural mothers live more than 30 minutes away from the nearest provider. Living in a “maternity care desert” contributes to delayed prenatal care, increased pregnancy complications and worse delivery outcomes. Women living in rural areas are more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes, and infant mortality is also higher.

But despite these sobering statistics, more rural hospitals are closing their labor and delivery units, leaving patients to travel long distances or deliver in under-equipped emergency rooms. Most of those that do still deliver babies lose money in the process, due to low Medicaid payments and too few deliveries to break even on round-the-clock staffing.

“We’re reaching a tipping point where people are frequently more than an hour from routine prenatal care, and more than an hour from a delivering hospital when their water breaks,” said John Henderson, president of the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. “There’s no way we’re going to get the kind of quality or outcomes we want as a state when that’s the reality.”

The Texas A&M Rural and Community Health Institute convened more than 40 groups, representing rural hospitals, health care providers, medical schools, advocacy groups and nonprofits, to create this rescue plan. They’ve identified steps the Legislature could take this session, including increasing Medicaid payment rates, incentivizing health care providers to work in rural areas and improving overall women’s health care access.

“I don’t think anyone thinks that we’re going to be able to restore services at the 20 or 30 rural hospitals that closed or suspended their OB programs,” Henderson said. “But if we don’t do something, we’ll see more go the same way.”

Last session, the first since the overturn of Roe v. Wade and Texas’ near-total abortion ban, lawmakers extended postpartum Medicaid to a full year and waived sales tax on diapers and menstrual products. Ahead of this session, House Speaker Dade Phelan listed improving access to rural prenatal and obstetrics care as one of his interim priorities.

The proposals they have in mind are all perfectly reasonable, probably not controversial, and relatively inexpensive. There’s only a passing reference to expanding Medicaid in the story because we all know that’s not going anywhere. I’m not saying that any of this is impossible, or even particularly difficult, if the Lege wanted to do it. What I am saying is that these trends have been in place for years, and much like expanded gambling there’s always talk about Doing Something, which is then followed by no action. It’s not that any of this can’t be done, it’s that the Lege and its Republican majority and leadership aren’t interested. Their record is clear. I don’t expect that to change.

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Dispatches from Dallas, December 6 edition

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, we have another grab bag thanks to the long holiday weekend. This update includes: news from the upcoming Lege session; the word on the problems with voting in DeSoto during the November election; various federal initiatives from the incoming administration and how they’ll affect North Texas; school district news; North Texas’ ties to some big-time terrible people on Xitter; the latest on those Arlington nuns; some good news in Dallas in 2024; and more.

This week’s post was brought to you by the Apple Classicaltronics music playlist, which Austin composer Graham Reynolds recommended in a recent newsletter.

It’s been something of a short news week, so let’s dive right into the news:

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Texas does not want to know what the post-Dobbs maternal mortality rate is

Not at this time, and not if it can help it.

Texas officials will not investigate pregnancy-related deaths for 2022 and 2023, skipping over the years immediately following the state’s controversial abortion ban, which critics say has led to more dangerous and sometimes fatal pregnancies.

The state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, which announced the decision this fall after years of trying to catch up on its count, said it was jumping ahead to provide “more contemporary” data for state lawmakers.

Dr. Carla Ortique, who chairs the committee, said the Texas Department of State Health Services will still release some mortality data from 2022 and 2023, even though the committee is not providing in-depth analysis of causes and trends. Reached for comment this week, Ortique said the committee had been planning to skip forward since earlier this year.

The move comes after the committee delayed the release of its last major review, in 2022, which showed a higher rate of life-threatening hemorrhaging among Black women during childbirth in Texas through 2020. Critics at the time accused Gov. Greg Abbott, who appoints the committee members, of pushing it off until after his reelection bid.

The committee now says its 2024 review, which would be the first glimpse into impacts from the period after the fall of Roe v. Wade, will be ready sometime in 2026, the same year Abbott could run for a record-setting fourth term.

The decision, first reported by The Washington Post, has caused an uproar among some Democrats and women’s health advocates. Nakeenya Wilson, a former member of the committee whose position was eliminated by the state Legislature last year, said that while ideally the committee would be up-to-date, compared to other states, it’s not “uncommon or unusual” for it to be a year or two behind.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, Texas moved to ban nearly all abortions except those that endanger the life of the mother. At least two pregnant Texans have died since then, which experts said could have been avoided had they had access to abortion care, according to reporting from ProPublicaAnother Texas woman died under similar circumstances in 2021, just after Texas had implemented an earlier version of its ban that prohibited abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy, according to ProPublica.

Advocates have expected the abortion bans to increase maternal deaths as more women will carry pregnancies to term. Black women die at higher rates during childbirth than white women and other groups in Texas and nationally.

Wilson, who is Black and experienced life-threatening complications during childbirth, said she hopes the committee’s decision wasn’t politically motivated. Whatever the cause, she said, the effect is still that it “manipulates” the numbers to policymakers’ benefit.

“Data tells a story, and we’re silencing the data,” Wilson said, adding that state leaders who support the abortion ban have claimed publicly that it’s saving lives and helping families. “Anything in the data that could counter that narrative doesn’t serve them.”

See here for the previous report, released in 2022, and here for my most recent post on the topic, which discussed how tracking this data post-SB8 was going to be a challenge. I wish I had something good to say here. None of this is surprising. They have the power to do this, so they will. That’s about all there is to it.

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Buc-ee’s versus Duckees

Our most litigious roadside attraction is at it again.

The beloved Texas Buc-ee’s Beaver is making its way into Chiefs Kingdom, but recent court filings show it’s trying to own the convenience store lane. This week, the beaver took a legal swing at a rival duck mascot for a rival Kansas City company, Duckees.

Buc-ee’s argues that the duck-centric competitor is infringing on the beaver’s copyright and trademark rights, using a logo with similar features. Both company logos center around a smiling animal – a beaver and a duck – with a yellow circle with a black border behind it.

“On information and belief, Duckees is using the DUCKEES’ Word Trademark and DUCKEES’ logo with full knowledge of Buc-ee’s rights, and in bad faith and with willful, malicious and deliberate intent to trade on Buc-ee’s substantial recognition, reputation, and goodwill,” the claims against Duckees reads.

Essentially, Buc-ee’s has a trademark to sell everything you could imagine finding at one of its locations using its branding. The company filed the trademarks to sell things like branded clothing, cups and food at retail convenience stores back in 2011. However, there’s an argument to be made on behalf of Duckees which operates as a drive-thru liquor store and food stop.

Buc-ee’s, though, says it’s a clear attempt to piggyback on the company’s longstanding reputation and fame. It’s also not just the logo. Buc-ee’s lawyers argue the name itself, Duckees, is too similar to Texas-based brand’s name and will confuse buyers in the marketplace.

In the end, Buc-ee’s is asking the Western District Court of Missouri to rule in their favor, preventing Duckees from using their name or their logo. Plus, they want Duckees to be required to destroy all merchandise, including products, packaging, ads and signs, which display the current name and logo.

The story notes that this lawsuit comes on the heels of Buc-ee’s arrival in the midwest – it’s been going national for about five years now – and that while their destination for Missouri is Kansas City, the target of their lawsuit is in a smaller town over 200 miles away. Buc-ee’s has a long history of filing trademark lawsuits, with considerable success. I don’t know how I feel about this case, but I wouldn’t bet against the beaver.

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I guess we have to talk about fluoride again

deep sigh

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, is taking a swing at fluoride in drinking water.

In a post earlier this month, Kennedy said the Trump administration will advocate for the removal of fluoride from all U.S​. water systems.

Fluoride is a sometimes naturally occurring mineral that promotes tooth enamel health. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends a level of 0.7 milligrams per liter of fluoride in drinking water to prevent tooth decay.

The mineral was first added to drinking water in the U.S. in 1945, at the recommendation of several scientists who concluded fluoridated water resulted in fewer cavities and less severe tooth decay, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Grand Rapids, Michigan became the first U.S. city to implement water fluoridation in 1945. Less than a year later, the city of Marshall in East Texas became the first city in the state, and one of just three in the U.S., to implement community water fluoridation.

Now, 72% of Texans drink adjusted or naturally occurring fluoride in their water, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

You can read on for more about fluoride and its effects and the bullshit that lying frauds like RFKJr spout about it. I originally clicked on the link because of the headline that said that a Texas city was a pioneer in fluoridation. If you had given me 20 guesses I would not have gotten the right answer. Maybe in 50 guesses, I dunno. Kudos to the city of Marshall regardless. I was also interested in this because the link between fluoride and utter crackpottery is deep and abiding, and it fascinates me for reasons I’d rather not examine too closely. I don’t have a bigger point to make, I just wanted to note this for the record. Now remember to brush twice a day and maybe make an appointment to get some booster shots.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 2

The Texas Progressive Alliance is now willing to listen to Christmas music as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading

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The I-45 project is officially underway

Brace yourselves.

Houston drivers are facing more than a dozen years of work on freeways in and around the central business district — at a cost that could come close to or exceed $6 billion.

All that work, however, will not significantly affect commutes for months or even years. Once it does, construction could lead many to rethink their usual routes.

[…]

The freeway work around downtown is broken into eight segments, many that will overlap, leading to successive potential bottlenecks. Because the larger I-45 has three main segments, all of the projects downtown comprise Segment 3. The downtown projects are broken alphabetically and numerically into smaller projects, each a separate job that TxDOT will award to a construction company.

Notable changes include:

1. Straighten Interstate 69 and widen from eight to 10 or 12 lanes in each direction.

2. Straighten and add two express lanes in each direction for traffic not headed toward downtown.

3. Replace the Pierce Elevated with downtown connectors and shift Interstate 45 to east side of central business district.

4. Add new local street between Commerce Street and Leeland Street to increase options from central business district to EaDo.

5. The Pierce Elevated would no longer serve a transportation function and could be removed/repurposed.

6. Structural cap built atop I-69 depressed section from Lamar Street to Commerce Street east of the George R. Brown Convention Center (developed by entity other than Texas Department of Transportation).

7. Structural cap built atop I-69 depressed section from Wheeler Transit Center to Fannin Street (developed by entity other than TxDOT).

8. Structural cap built atop I-69 depressed section from Main Street to Caroline Street (developed by entity other than TxDOT).

9. Structural cap built over I-69 depressed section from Almeda Road to Cleburne Street (developed by entity other than TxDOT).

10. Cross street reconfiguration for arch bridges at Elgin, Tuam and McGowen Streets.

All of the work along I-45, which could last into the 2040s before the portion near Beltway 8 is completed, is expected to cost around $13 billion, though increases in cost to the project have been common as general construction prices jumped during the COVID pandemic and costs of materials increased because of inflation. Less than a decade ago, officials announced the project at an estimated cost of $7 billion.

Always bet the over on the price tag estimates. I mean, as recently as September it was described as an $11.2 billion-plus rebuild. Plus another two billion dallors or so, apparently. At this rate it’ll be more than the national debt by 2040.

The effect of this multi-decade construction project on drivers has not yet been felt, but its effect on businesses and restaurants and real estate in general in the area has been. I expect there will be a lot more before it’s all said and done.

But that effect on drivers is coming. And when it does, if we were clever and forward-thinking enough, we could have taken advantage of it to maybe get a few people to try something different.

Commuters are creatures of habit—until, suddenly, they aren’t.

That is the conclusion of researchers, working at a number of institutions and across a variety of studies, who have examined when and why people reconfigure their journeys to regular destinations like offices and schools. Typically, travelers stick with whatever mode and route they are used to. But once in a while, an unusual event like a new job or a closed highway upends the status quo. Such disruptions can become inflection points, compelling commuters to alter travel habits that are otherwise entrenched.

Ordinarily, few people even contemplate adjusting their daily trips, regardless of other options. A 2016 study of the United Kingdom, where alternatives to driving are more plentiful than in the United States, found that only 1 in 10 car commuters shifts to another mode annually. But under certain circumstances, such changes become far more likely. The behavioral science of commuting holds powerful lessons for policymakers, civic leaders, and environmentalists hoping to convince drivers to instead use modes like public transit and biking that can ease gridlock, improve air quality, and mitigate climate change.

Switching from an SUV to using a new, direct, and protected bike lane might seem like a no-brainer—why not leave the hulking gas guzzler in the garage, if you can?—but it can take effort. “You might be going to work and not realize there’s a better option available,” said Ben Clark, an associate professor for transport planning at the University of the West of England, and an author on that 2016 study. In a sense, this narrow-mindedness is rational due to the myriad decisions people already juggle. “We haven’t got the mental space to be recalculating transportation options,” Clark said, shrugging.

[…]
For transportation, personally disruptive events present brief windows to influence future travel behavior. A 2016 study found that new UCLA students were less likely to drive and more likely to use public transportation if they received information about car-free options before arriving on campus. Other research has found that free transit passes are more effective than discounts at inducing mode shift. Based on those findings, one could imagine climate-conscious public officials offering a “welcome package” of transit and bikeshare passes to those who have recently moved into a new home. Employers looking to show a commitment to sustainability (and to keeping their parking lot uncrowded) could offer the same to new hires.

Moments of discontinuity can also be triggered by external forces. In 2014, a monthlong strike in the London Underground scrambled many commutes, forcing passengers to find new routes to get to work. Researchers found that many straphangers ultimately preferred their “detour” to their traditional route, sticking with it even after the strike ended and normal service was restored. In effect, the strike prompted them to discover a better way to travel that had already been available to them. When it comes to cars, that finding suggests that a shock like a road closure might be enough to finally force people to take action and change how they commute.

In other words, if we’d had a plan in place to give the drivers who will be affected by this disruption full information about other options available to them, many of them would be open to trying them. I doubt there’s the time to do that now even if there were the will. But at least it could have been done.

Anyway. The story lays out the current timeline of the construction, with plenty of graphics to help you picture where it will be. Read ’em and be prepared to find an alternate route.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

On landfills and methane

To the extent that we can, we should capture methane gas from landfills and use it for energy.

Around 20 miles north of downtown Houston, seated between Interstate 69 and the Sam Houston Tollway, acres of pipeline weave through piles of trash at the Atascocita Landfill. The garbage, which has been rotting for years, creates a gas that rises through the mounds of old banana peels and dinner leftovers. At the top, the gas is collected and cleaned – eventually pumped out to CenterPoint Energy’s main gas lines.

There are more than 500 landfill-to-energy projects currently operating in the United States across 2,600 total landfills. Texas has 29 working and another 44 under consideration, according to the state Environmental Project Agency. These include the Atascocita and McCarty in Harris County as of September 2024.

This is because landfills produce some of the highest amounts of methane gas in the world. Methane – colorless, odorless and flammable –  is a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, a process which is accelerating global warming. However, methane can also give us energy.

Methane naturally occurs when organic matter, such as plants and animals, decays over time. In a landfill, trash piles on top of trash over and over until the old bread and discarded cheese at the bottom are suffocated of oxygen. Then minuscule bacteria munch on the trash, producing methane gas.

Because of this, organic municipal solid waste landfills, like Atascocita or McCarty, are the third largest source of methane emissions in the United States. In 2022, these types of landfills released an estimated 100.9 million metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, representing 14.4 percent of total U.S. methane emissions.

The United States is the second largest emitter of methane in the world, behind China, and Texas is the largest emitter in the country.

Atascocita, McCarty and the Baytown Landfill make up for 78 percent of the total methane emissions in Harris County, according to a 2024 report.  Houston is in the top 10 cities with the highest urban methane emissions along with Dallas.

However, methane is also the main ingredient in natural gas, according to Dan Cohan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. Natural gas used to power or heat homes is found in the environment by drilling oil wells or fracking.  The gas that comes straight from already decaying waste products can supplement these natural sources as renewable energy, said Cohan.

“There’s a lot of benefit to capturing methane and using it as fuel rather than letting it leak straight into the environment,” Cohan said. “However many landfills and trash we have, we should be capturing as much of the resulting methane as possible from them.”

Landfill companies can collect this methane and move it through a series of pipelines to a renewable energy facility on site. There, the gas is either burned in engines to produce electricity or cleaned for natural gas distribution.

[…]

Despite these benefits, methane conversion is not the solution. Landfills still leak methane gas into the environment every day. Satellite data shows that the Fort Bend Regional Landfill, Blue Ridge Landfill and McCarty Road Landfill in the greater Houston area have some of the highest rates of methane emissions in Texas.

Fort Bend Regional Landfill emitted 1.5 million metric tons of C02e in the year 2022. This is the same emissions as about 336,777 passenger cars driving for a year, according to the EPA.

Texas emitted 31 million metric tons of C02e in 2022, or 7 million cars driven in a year.

CO2e means Carbon Dioxide equivalent. This is a metric used to compare the impact of different greenhouse gases on the climate. In other words, the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that would have the same global warming potential as one metric ton of another greenhouse gas.

‘’Waste is a major environmental issue in the United States and in Harris County. Houston generates about 4.2 million tons of solid waste a year, with that number expected to increase to 5.4 million tons by 2040. At the same time, some of the biggest landfills have less than 20 years before they reach capacity.

“It’s not as simple as we get energy from trash so that’s it,” said Cohan. “There’s a lot of energy that goes into growing your food, trucking it to the grocery store, tracking your trash. This is a matter of capturing the methane that is being produced anyway.”

With the amounts of natural gas we consume daily. cleaner methods of producing energy, such as landfill gas, remain a fraction of the total energy used in the U.S., said Cohan. The real solution: be mindful of what is thrown out and what you can recycle or compost instead.

Properly disposing of your pumpkins is a small but vital place to start. Landfills are as noted not the worst offender on this list – zombie oil wells, anyone? – but there’s a clear and generally beneficial remediation available. I’ll point you here and here for some more information. The best answer is to reduce waste and recycle more, so we need less landfill space. And ideally, the end case is for existing landfills to be closed and repurposed as parks or other public spaces. Freshkills Park on Staten Island (which also does methane capture) is the best case scenario. That’s a long term goal and will take a lot of effort and planning. For now, let’s at least try to mitigate the environmental damage and get some electricity out of it.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Taco Cabana renaissance

I’m interested in this story for two reasons.

Taco Cabana is expanding its signature pink restaurants into nearby states, with redesigned stores and blue agave tequila in every margarita, but San Antonio will remain home to its headquarters and its test kitchen.

The iconic 46-year-old chain was born in San Antonio and will stay here, said Ulyses Camacho, the company’s president and chief operating officer.

“We’re part of the culture,” he said. This will come as little surprise to many, but the San Antonio market, which includes about 38 locations, also holds the distinction of buying the most margaritas.

[…]

In the earliest days of the pandemic, Gov. Gregg Abbott signed a waiver allowing the bar and restaurant industry to sell alcoholic drinks to go. The change was so welcome by businesses and customers that the state legislature made the change permanent in May 2021.

Being able to buy alcohol in the drive-thru “changed things completely,” Camacho said.

Many other pandemic-era customer habits have also become permanent, he said, leading to design changes for Taco Cabana’s future restaurants. Today, customers are still ordering more online — 30% of sales come through apps, he said — and spending less time inside dining rooms.

San Antonio is home to the first example of the new design, unveiled in the fall of 2022 at 2403 Babcock Road. Because that store was previously another restaurant and not built from the ground up, it doesn’t have all the features of the new design, but it does boast a bold, updated color scheme, new exterior design elements and a return of the “beloved” salsa bar.

The first completely redesigned store opened in Spring earlier this year. Along with the new exterior, it has two drive-thrus and a smaller dining room. The patio remains — “we’re known for our patios,” Camacho said, so it was redesigned instead of being cut. “We may close the dining room at 10 p.m., but we’ll keep the drive-thru open until midnight, for the delivery drivers.”

Sales at the newly designed location “has been exceeding by far what we expected,” he said.

Taco Cabana continues to lean heavily into its margaritas, which Camacho believes will be a differentiator among the many other Tex-Mex and Mexican inspired fast casual restaurants that are also attempting to grow nationally.

In July 2020 the company launched its first “MargaritaPalooza” — 12 flavors, $2 a piece, “all day every day.” In 2022, it announced that its Texas locations would become “margarita headquarters,” with 12 permanent flavors and a rotating seasonal 13th flavor.

My first reason for liking this story is that as a Trinity alum, Taco Cabana holds a place in my heart. The original location, a few blocks from the campus, is basically holy ground. I always stop by for some breakfast tacos while I’m in town. Sure, there are plenty of options for this fare, but none has the emotional appeal.

I’m also interested in how Taco Cabana adjusted its business model during the pandemic, as did so many other restaurants. Booze to go was an idea that worked (*) and I’m glad it has helped them. I personally am not much of a to-go person – I’d much rather dine in, I think the food loses something on the journey home. My wife and kids are fine with it, but it’s never my first choice. I do eat outside much more often now – as long as the outside dining area has shade, I can handle summer temperatures. I’m not surprised that a place like TC’s is slimming down its footprint to accommodate a more to-go-oriented clientele – the original location, where I visit, is a tiny space that was always geared more towards takeout. I don’t know how these trends will continue, but it’s good to see when a longtime favorite is successfully navigating them. I wish Taco Cabana continued good health.

(*) As a child of the 80s who remembers well the war on drunk driving, it’s a little strange to see this particular relaxing of laws that were meant to combat DUI. I get it, I supported it then because of pandemic considerations and I think it’s fine to maintain, but there was a reason why we didn’t allow booze to go. I think we should remember what that was, even if we’ve decided to change our minds about it.

Posted in Food, glorious food | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Something calling itself “Enron” claims to be back

Oh my God.

Out of all the possible things to revive from the early 2000s, the return of boot-cut jeans was welcomed by many of my fellow Gen Xers, but no one — no one — was asking for this.

Enron is back.

Well, maybe.

It’s not entirely clear what exactly the company is planning, but an account labeled as “Enron” posted a one-minute video on Monday with a breezy montage of diverse people ending with an announcement that raised eyebrows across the internet.

It should perhaps be noted that Enron collapsed in a multibillion-dollar bankruptcy in late 2001 due to a massive fraud scheme that wiped out stockholders’ investments and employees’ pensions, led to the dissolution of its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, and resulted in multiple criminal convictions, including both the CEO at the time and his predecessor — several years before Twitter, now rebranded as X, launched in the summer of 2006. So this account, and its posts, all were created long after the original company was no longer in existence.

The @Enron account indicates it was launched in May 2024, links to enron.com, and declares itself to be the “World’s Leading Company™” — leading in what is not clear, although the website declares it is an “energy company” that is “proud” to be “center[ed] on exploring, expanding, and implementing bold new energy ideas to light a brighter path.” Enron.com was the domain previously used by the company; archived versions of the site dating back to 1998 can be viewed at the Internet Archive.

“The world is changing faster than ever. Can you feel it?” the video posted by @Enron begins. “Growth. Transformation. Rebirth.”

[…]

The website teases “something very special” to be unveiled in eight days (that’s one more day than the cursed videotape in the 2002 horror thriller The Ring took to kill its victims, but I digress).

Indeed, there is an enron.com again, which I admit I visited yesterday out of sheer morbid curiosity. And here’s that Enron account on Twitter; the thread announcing its presence is the bulk of this story, with the rest being reactions to it and speculation about what it might mean. So far, the leading theory is that there’s a crypto scam underneath it all. I guess we’ll find out next week. As the story notes at the end, there’s a full-page ad in the print section of the Monday Houston Chronicle – I took a picture of it that you can see here – so if nothing else there’s a few bucks behind this effort, whatever it turns out to be. It could be a parody – read the story all the way through to see the evidence for that – but honestly a new Enron shitcoin would be the perfect form of rebirth for that cursed company. We live in very strange times.

UPDATE: The Chron adds on.

Enron Corporation denied the Chronicle’s request for an interview, but documents filed with the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office indicate the College Company, an Arkansas-based LLC that described itself on LinkedIn as “a multi-facet parent company which creates and operates clothing brands in the United States,” currently holds the rights to the multi-colored “E Enron” trademark seen on the billboard and Monday news release.

According to trademark documents, in June the company granted the rights to the “E Enron” trademark to the Enron Corporation for $1. An individual named Charles Gaydos, who identified as the owner of the College Company and the CEO of Enron Corporation, signed on behalf of both entities. The College Company did not respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment.

The College Company also owns several trademarks related to a popular gag-conspiracy theory called Birds Aren’t Real. The gag became popular among Gen Z users on social media around 2020, and claimed birds are not animals but government-controlled drones sent to spy on U.S. citizens.

Trademark documents indicate the College Company owns the rights to the Birds Aren’t Real brand for use on stickers, apparel and “promoting public awareness.”

Although the company’s messaging appears to allude to a return to the energy sector, the exact nature of Enron’s new business remains unclear. The company’s Monday news release and website are loaded with vague promises including “solving the energy crisis,” but little has been made public regarding the operational nuts and bolts.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lists an array of products and mediums in which Enron Corporation may use it’s recently-acquired trademark. In addition to T-shirts, blankets and sunglasses, trademark documents also indicate the company plans to use the “E Enron” logo for “crypto currency services, namely, crypto currency exchange services.”

Certainly doesn’t contradict any of the first reporting I saw. Make of that what you will.

Posted in Enronarama | Tagged , , | 1 Comment