August, 2016:

Independent candidate lawsuit update

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There’s already been a lawsuit filed by a wannabe independent candidate for President seeking to get on the ballot in Texas, but not by that guy you might have heard of.

Will not be on the ballot

It’s still up in the air whether Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who declared his presidential candidacy this month, will make it on the ballot here.

The deadline to file to run as an independent in Texas, and turn in petitions signed by nearly 80,000 voters who didn’t vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary elections was in May. The deadline to file to run as a write-in candidate was earlier this month.

McMullin, of Salt Lake City — who has gotten his name on ballots in a handful of states including Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota and Utah — has indicated he may sue to get on the Texas ballot.

His political strategists have suggested that a legal challenge might find success in Texas, since the deadline to file as an independent this year fell before Democrats and Republicans knew who their general election candidate would be.

McMullin campaign staffers didn’t respond to requests for information about whether a court challenge in Texas is moving forward.

Texas election officials say they have not received a lawsuit from McMullin. But they did send him a letter letting him know he was not certified as a write-in candidate.

“Our office did not receive the required 38 presidential elector candidate forms from active voters,” according to the letter written by Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas secretary of state’s office. “Please be advised that your name will not be on the ballot.”

McMullin’s staff is still sending out emails to potential supporters saying, “It’s never too late to stand for what is right.”

Another lawsuit to get a presidential candidate on the Texas ballot is proceeding for now.

Souraya Faas of Florida sued Texas and Secretary of State Carlos Cascos in May claiming that state restrictions “on independent presidential candidacy and ballot access violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.”

“Souraya Faas seeks the presidency of the United States and to give the voters a choice to vote for her as an independent candidate in Texas,” the lawsuit states. “Since she announced her candidacy, the presidential campaigns within the major political parties have devolved into unprecedented rancor.

“The front-runners for the major party nominations are viewed as unpopular and undesirable by a not insignificant number of party partisans and independent voters.”

Now Faas is asking the court to declare unconstitutional parts of the Texas election code that “deny equal protection for independent presidential candidates.”

“Texas’ statutory scheme imposes a greater burden on the rights of voters and independent candidates than other states,” her lawsuit states.

The case could be thrown out soon if Faas doesn’t submit documents showing why the case shouldn’t be dismissed, according to court records filed in the Southern District of Texas Houston Division.

See here for more on Evan McMullin and his talk about suing to get on the ballot in Texas. I hesitate to be more definitive than that, as we are near the statutory deadline for printing overseas ballots and he still hasn’t done anything more than make vague statements about maybe doing something. As for Souraya Faas, she’s apparently been in the race for awhile. Here’s some information on her lawsuit, which was filed back in May. Why she would be successful where Ralph Nader wasn’t is unclear to me, and that’s before we contemplate her apparent lack of submitting documents for her case. My guess is that in another week or two we’ll not hear anything from or about either of these two again.

What do we want of a Fire Department study?

Aug 31st, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Whatever it is, this wasn’t it.

A much-anticipated analysis of fire department operations essentially was dead on arrival Friday after it failed to identify cost savings and called for a multitude of investments, including three new fire stations.

Mayor Sylvester Turner promised to conduct another review of the $500 million department to supplement the $297,000 study, which came in roughly $1.7 million under budget.

“You get what you pay for,” Turner said. “I view this report as a starting point for what we need to learn more about. There will certainly be a second, more critical review by my own administration.”

The city solicited bids for the report two years ago amid concerns about resource allocation and a staffing shortage that increased overtime costs.

The 178-page report by Facets Consulting praised the Houston Fire Department’s “high degree of dedication” and took aim at budget cuts made after the 2008 recession It also criticized Houston’s voter-approved cap on property tax collections.

[…]

City Council’s public safety and homeland security committee is slated to take up the report Wednesday, and Turner said he expects the group to prepare an analysis by March.

Obviously, Mayor Turner is looking for a report that outlines ways that the city can save money on the fire department. Any deal involving pensions (for all three funds) is going to involve the city paying more in some places, so it needs to find savings elsewhere. This report outlined a bunch of ways in which the city could do more and do better, and I have no doubt many of those recommendations have a lot of merit. What they don’t have is a way to pay for them. Maybe someday later, but not now. That’s just how it is these days.

Rideshare companies in Austin are complying with its fingerprint requirements

Aug 31st, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Well, what do you know?

All eight of the ride-hailing companies operating in Austin met a city requirement to have at least half of the rides they provided in July come from drivers who passed fingerprint-based background checks, according to a city memo released this week.

Achieving that Aug. 1 benchmark — the first major regulatory milestone since the Proposition 1 election in May — shows how quickly the smaller competitors built their networks of drivers, even with the fingerprinting checks and other requirements that prompted Uber and Lyft to leave Austin.

Taken as a group, the smaller companies provided more than 350,000 trips in July, almost 11,300 a day, during what would normally be a slack period because enrollment is light at area colleges during the summer.

[…]

The city since January has received 3,771 fingerprint-based, criminal background reports on potential ride-hailing service drivers, according to the memo from Austin Transportation Department Director Robert Spillar to the Austin City Council.

All of those, including those whose checks occurred earlier in the year, were vetted against a list of disqualifying criminal offenses set out in a June 2016 ordinance, Austin Transportation Department spokeswoman Cheyenne Krause said. Of those applicants, 86 were rejected for failing their background checks.

The companies, most of which still have some drivers working for them who haven’t been fingerprinted, reported having 8,985 drivers. However, the memo says, individual drivers might be counted two times or more in that total because many of them work for more than one of the eight companies: Fare, Fasten, GetMe, InstaRyde, RideAustin, Tride, Wingz and Z-Trip.

The companies, by city ordinance, had to by Aug. 1 have at least 50 percent of their rides for the preceding month provided by a city rules-compliant driver, either as a percentage of hours driven or miles driven. According to the memo, using information supplied by the companies, Wingz and Z-Trip were at 100 percent. RideAustin was next, at 89 percent, followed in order by InstaRyde (86 percent), Tride (73 percent), Fare (69 percent), Fasten (58 percent) and GetMe (55 percent).

It gets harder from here – by next February, 99% of hours driven or miles driven must be provided by compliant drivers. I suspect the city may wind up being a bit lenient on that, if the companies lag and it makes sense for them to do so, but we’ll see. Point is, the companies that are in Austin post-Prop 1 have cleared the first hurdle. Was that so hard? You tell me.

Endorsement watch: Stay the course

Aug 31st, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

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Harris County Democrats have one incumbent up for re-election: County Attorney Vince Ryan. The Chron gives their approval for another term.

Vince Ryan

[Ryan] said that he actively pursues pollution enforcement lawsuits against big companies – such as Volkswagen after it lied about emissions tests, or the corporations responsible for the San Jacinto waste pits. But in a state where legislators and regulators routinely erect barriers to citizens seeking justice from the industries that poison our water and pollute our air, Ryan’s headlines over matters of public concern look more like necessary leadership than disregard for cooperation.

That’s not to say Ryan hasn’t been an important team player with other law enforcement agencies across the county. He’s harnessed the power of the county attorney’s office to go after dangerous gangs, sex traffickers and Kush merchants. He also helped the county cut through the Gordian Knot of same-sex marriage by quickly and clearly instructing judges to follow the U.S. Supreme Court after it held bans to be unconstitutionally discriminatory, yet refrained from hounding individual county employees who preferred to pass onto their coworkers the historic duty of marrying same-sex couples.

Running for his third term, the former District C councilman and longtime assistant under former County Attorney Mike Driscoll brings a steady and experienced hand to an important position that has a vast spectrum of responsibilities, including advising county officials, preparing contracts, defending the county from lawsuits and protecting communities through civil action. He’s served the county well, and voters should keep him in office.

Other than some judges, Vince Ryan is the only Democrat elected countywide in 2008 to remain in office. Loren Jackson, who won a special election to fill the remaining term of District Clerk, lost in the 2010 sweep. HCDE At Large trustees Jim Henley, who resigned in 2014, and Debra Kerner, who lost in 2014, and Adrian Garcia, who stepped down as Sheriff to run for Mayor in 2015, followed. I feel pretty good about the Dems’ chances of adding to that roster this year, but it starts with Vince Ryan.

Precinct analysis: HISD Trustee district VII in a Presidential year

Aug 30th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

As you know, we have a special election for HISD Trustee in district VII on the ballot this November. There’s one Democratic candidate in that race and three Republicans. These races are normally held in odd-numbered years, in which turnout is considerably lower than in Presidential years. Overall turnout in Harris County in 2013 was 13.23%, with turnout in the HISD VII race at 21.86%; this was the highest level among the three contested Trustee races that year. In 2012, turnout in Harris County was 61.99%. There are going to be a lot more people at the polls for this Trustee race than there usually are, is what I’m saying. What effect might that have on the special election?

Well, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats do better in higher-turnout environments. There’s a lot of empirical evidence for this, but just because something is true in the aggregate doesn’t mean it’s true in all specific subsets. Here’s what the numbers look like in HISD VII in 2013 and in 2012:


Pcnct  Moore   Sung   Moore%   Sung%   Romney    Obama  Romney%   Obama%
========================================================================
54        79    222   26.25%  73.75%      531      444   54.46%   45.54%
70       271    375   41.95%  58.05%    1,487      825   64.32%   35.68%
129      473    373   55.91%  44.09%    2,369    1,279   64.94%   35.06%
135      377    205   64.78%  35.22%    1,366      657   67.52%   32.48%
139      199    317   38.57%  61.43%    1,027      965   51.56%   48.44%
177      102    134   43.22%  56.78%      628      398   61.21%   38.79%
178      198    177   52.80%  47.20%      878      375   70.07%   29.93%
204      261    537   32.71%  67.29%    1,411      939   60.04%   39.96%
217      480    226   67.99%  32.01%    1,388      633   68.68%   31.32%
227      377    118   76.16%  23.84%    1,089      289   79.03%   20.97%
233      298    351   45.92%  54.08%    1,496    1,310   53.31%   46.69%
234      629    280   69.20%  30.80%    2,327      606   79.34%   20.66%
269      398    125   76.10%  23.90%    1,278      282   81.92%   18.08%
272       77    132   36.84%  63.16%      404      660   37.97%   62.03%
282      112    186   37.58%  62.42%      765      481   61.40%   38.60%
303      541    165   76.63%  23.37%    2,052      404   83.55%   16.45%
312      247    246   50.10%  49.90%    1,286      982   56.70%   43.30%
421       11     19   36.67%  63.33%       45      169   21.03%   78.97%
431       38     40   48.72%  51.28%      309      867   26.28%   73.72%
432       35     55   38.89%  61.11%      158      402   28.21%   71.79%
434      176    128   57.89%  42.11%      657      319   67.32%   32.68%
435      303    304   49.92%  50.08%    1,515      716   67.91%   32.09%
436	 257    215   54.45%  45.55%    1,232      762   61.79%   38.21%
491      144    123   53.93%  46.07%      680      438   60.82%   39.18%
567       78    109   41.71%  58.29%      280      748   27.24%   72.76%
569      184    219   45.66%  54.34%    1,192      910   56.71%   43.29%
570       38     90   29.69%  70.31%      414      484   46.10%   53.90%
684        7      4   63.64%  36.36%       58       38   60.42%   39.58%
809        1      2   33.33%  66.67%       10       17   37.04%   62.96%
839       36     37   49.32%  50.68%      113      464   19.58%   80.42%
902      165    246   40.15%  59.85%      869      576   60.14%   39.86%
								
Total  6,621  5,773   53.42%  46.58%   29,314   18,439   61.39%   38.61%

Harvin Moore

Did that upend your view of this race? It upended mine. Before I get into what this may mean for the candidates, let’s try to answer the question why Republican turnout improved so much more in the Presidential year – or if you want to look at it more chronologically, why it deteriorated more in the off year. Here are a few thoughts about that.

It’s important to keep in mind that odd year elections are different from even year elections, in that there generally isn’t much in the odd years for Republicans in Houston. Bill King last year was the first serious Republican candidate for Mayor since 2003, and he wasn’t running on the kind of culture-war issues that tend to boost Republican turnout in even years. There wasn’t much to draw Republican voters to the polls in 2013, at least in these precincts, so their turnout lagged more compared to 2012 than Democrats’ turnout did.

Along those lines, Anne Sung ran a campaign that strongly identified her as a Democrat and a progressive, which may have helped her draw some people out, or at least ensure that some of the people who had come out anyway continued down the ballot to vote for her. Harvin Moore is a Republican, but he doesn’t have a Republican brand, if you will. You wouldn’t know he was a Republican unless you paid close attention. The difference in branding may have affected some voters in a way that benefited Sung.

Of course, it’s not always about partisan labels. Moore was a strong supporter of former Superintendent Terry Grier; in fact, Moore was the trustee who proposed extending Grier’s contract more than a year before it was to expire. Sung was a critic of Grier’s, and identified herself as such in the campaign. It may be that the closeness of the race was more a reflection of that dynamic than anything else.

Anyway. The point I’m making here is that the higher turnout we’ll see in this race does not necessarily accrue to Anne Sung’s benefit, which is not what I had originally thought. Before I looked at the numbers, I would have said that her best bet to win would have been to achieve a majority in November and avoid a runoff, where turnout would be miniscule. Think Chris Bell in the special election for SD17 in 2008 as a parallel, or what I had thought would be a parallel. In reality, given what we saw in these numbers, I’d say Sung’s job is just to make it to the runoff, then try to drum up enough turnout among friendly voters in that race to win. Conversely, each of the three Rs should want to be the other person alongside Sung in that runoff, and reap the advantage of the district’s natural Republican lean. An R-versus-Sung runoff is preferable to them than an R-versus-R runoff, which will be more about persuasion than turnout.

What’s that definition of insanity again?

Aug 30th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

How many times are we going to find ourselves in this same situation before we finally accept that we need to do something different?

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office has cut funding for law enforcement operations to cover exploding overtime costs at the department’s understaffed jail, a move critics say could harm public safety while failing to address departmentwide staffing issues.

Since March, the department has transferred nearly $8 million to jail operations from other areas in the department largely to cover overtime pay for jailers, which has risen 500 percent in the last two years, county records show.

Sheriff Ron Hickman acknowledges the fiscal strain but said state laws have tied his hands.

“When we steal money from some place in the budget like patrol, we can’t buy cars anymore, or new tires, we have to put that money to pay for the inmates,” he said at a recent town hall meeting in Clear Lake. “I have to (care for inmates). I’m statutorily required. Getting to your house the same day a burglary happens is not a legal requirement. So guess who suffers when we don’t have the funds? Y’all do.”

Monthly overtime costs have risen from $261,472 in mid-March 2014 to nearly $1.4 million by mid-June this year, records show. Overtime costs in May 2015, when Hickman was appointed sheriff, were $328,357.

The budget transfers come as county commissioners have rejected requests from Hickman to bulk up staffing with 376 new positions and after he changed employment policies to prohibit the hiring of jailers younger than 21 in hopes of developing a more mature workforce.

In an interview with the Chronicle, Hickman blamed the spike in overtime to an increased jail population, state requirements on staffing, aging facilities and trouble retaining jailers who can earn better pay with fewer hours elsewhere.

[…]

The Harris County Deputies’ Organization has grown so concerned about staffing and retention issues that the organization has begun filing records requests seeking the department’s manpower plan.

“We’re at a critical shortage when we have a high population of prisoners and we’re forcing people to work overtime and people are fatigued,” [David Cuevas, president of the Harris County Deputies’ Organization,] said.

Emphasis mine. You know what could solve these problems without shifting money around or taking deputies off of patrol or any of those other things mentioned in the story? Having fewer people in jail. In Sheriff Hickman’s defense, there’s not much he can do policy-wise to affect the jail population. He does, however, have the capability, and frankly the obligation, to call on the District Attorney and the criminal court judges to use the power they have to alleviate this problem, which after all is almost entirely of their making. I’d have more sympathy for him if he did that. We know what the problem is, and we know what the solutions are. We just refuse to do them.

HPD wants control of crime scene forensics for officer-involved shootings

Aug 30th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

No.

Houston’s acting Police Chief Martha Montalvo, with the support of the powerful Houston Police Officers Union, has made a behind-closed-doors bid to take back control over the troubled Crime Scene Unit from the city’s independent forensic science lab.

The Crime Scene Unit is small but critical – its technicians gather and photograph evidence from all homicides, including incidents in which police officers use deadly force against civilians.

Montalvo’s move comes in the wake of a highly critical audit by three outside experts who concluded in July that crime scene investigators need increased independence from the Houston Police Department – not less – to objectively gather evidence in shootings involving HPD officers.

The audit focused on eight recent officer-involved shootings in 2016 and concluded that crime scene analysts had in some cases been influenced in their evidence collection decisions by statements made by other officers at the shooting scene. The audit found that analysts had failed to properly collect evidence, including bullets, photos and samples, and needed more training. The unit is currently made up of a mix of sworn officers, who are members of the police union, and civilian lab employees overseen by a civilian director.

Montalvo proposed taking back control over the unit at a private meeting earlier this summer with Nicole Casarez, a prominent criminal defense attorney who heads the advisory board of the independent crime lab, the Houston Forensic Science Center. Ray Hunt, the police union president, attended the meeting and fully supported the change. It’s on hold while lab operations undergo larger efficiency review ordered by Mayor Sylvester Turner, according to statements city officials have provided to lab board members.

“We have been in ongoing discussions with the Houston Forensic Science Center on HPD possibly taking back the Crime Scene Unit personnel, many of who are HPD officers who collect evidence,” Montalvo said Friday. “We’ve discussed some concerns on our end to help improve time efficiency on some crime scenes. It is important to note we continue to meet regularly, share dialogue on the matter and continue to have a good, positive working relationship among our agencies.”

The unit was split off from HPD two years ago when the department’s crime lab became independent – a change that at the time had the full support of former HPD Chief Charles McClelland as a way to build up public confidence in the quality of that lab, which had been involved in multiple scandals related to huge backlogs, untested rape kits and poor forensics.

McClelland, in an interview, said he did not think returning the unit to HPD was a good idea. “I don’t think it would build confidence in the public’s mind – absolutely not,” he said. “To solve the issue is to have extremely well-trained evidence technicians that are independent of HPD. … It doesn’t take an HPD officer to be an evidence technician – I think we can all agree on that.”

Casarez and other crime lab officials have said in interviews that returning the unit to HPD would likely hamper efforts to win its accreditation – and could undermine public confidence in the independence of the new lab itself, particularly in light of the recent audit.

McClelland and Casarez are correct, Montalvo and Hunt are wrong. Forensic investigations and evidence collections in general should be done by techs who are independent of law enforcement, so that no one has any reason to doubt their objectivity. This is doubly true for cases where police officers are being investigated, for the same reason why body cameras and recorded investigations benefit the police as much as they benefit the public. I hope Mayor Turner stands firm on this. Grits has more.

Field set for HISD special election

Aug 29th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Four candidates have filed, so no one else got in since my last post.

Harvin Moore

Four candidates have applied to run in a special election to be a trustee for the Houston Independent School District. The filing deadline was Aug. 25.

The District VII seat is open because Trustee Harvin Moore is resigning a year before his term ends.

[…]

The candidates include John Luman, a lawyer and lobbyist. He’s leading a fight to stop a proposed affordable-housing project in west Houston. Ann Sung is a former HISD teacher who now works for an organization that helps low-income students go to college. Victoria Bryant is a pharmacist who started her own home health care company. The final candidate is Danielle Paulus.

See here for the background. I’ve told you what I know about Anne Sung and Victoria Bryant, so here’s what I (and Google) can tell you about the other two. The story mentions Luman’s leadership in the movement to stop the Fountainview affordable housing project – see here for a bit of background on that story, which I confess I have not followed beyond the headlines. Luman’s name also comes up in some unflattering stories. His co-counsel at Bracewell and Giuliani, in an intellectual property lawsuit, was found to have lied to the judge in the case about some facts that came up during the trial. The case, brought by their client, was dismissed with prejudice. Lisa Falkenberg wrote about this when it happened in August of 2014; the O’Connor’s Annotations blog highlighted the key aspects of how it all went down. It was Luman’s co-counsel who was accused of lying, but in the end both of them left the firm shortly afterwards. I have to believe that this will come up in the campaign, though perhaps not until a runoff.

As for Danielle Paulus, other than being Eric Dick’s wife, there’s not much I can find. Here’s her Facebook page, which reminds me that I’m told Eric Dick did not care for my tone in that previous posting. I’m sure I’ll do better from here on out. This also reminds me that Eric Dick is a candidate for the Harris County Department of Education this November, as the member from Precinct 4. He’s the Republican candidate in a Republican district – this is Jack Cagle’s precinct, which is the most Republican precinct in the county. Which is to say, Eric Dick is finally going to get himself elected to something this fall, where he will join with incumbent HCDE Trustee Michael Wolfe to do the sort of things you’d expect those two characters to do. Isn’t that great? Those are six-year terms, too. I do not expect Danielle Paulus to join her husband in becoming an elected official, but Lord knows stranger things have happened. Anyway, the drawing for ballot order is today. There aren’t a whole lot of interesting local races this year, so I figure this one will get some attention as we go along.

Paxton encourages schools to discriminate against transgender students

Aug 29th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the ACLU of Texas:

[Friday], the ACLU of Texas issued a letter to Texas school districts outlining their ongoing legal responsibility to provide transgender students access to educational opportunities and school facilities on the same basis as all other students. Yesterday, the State of Texas issued its own “guidance” letter to Texas schools regarding thefederal government’s May 13 guidance.

The following may be attributed to Rebecca L. Robertson, legal and policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas:

“We value Texas educators, whose top priority is the academic success of their students and we think those educators deserve better legal advice than they got from Attorney General Ken Paxton. To be clear, public schools are not party to the lawsuit filed by the State of Texas in federal court in Wichita Falls and they aren’t subject to the preliminary injunction that prevents the Obama administration from acting on its Guidance regarding Title IX. School districts in Texas that already have inclusive policies to protect their transgender students are free to enforce them. School districts considering such policies are free to adopt them. School districts that do not have appropriate policies under Title IX risk being sued by transgender students who experience discrimination.”

A copy of the ACLU of Texas letter on Transgender Student Guidance is available here.

Here’s a Chron story about this. Remember how Paxton has said he was willing to meet with a transgender child’s family, to, I don’t know, tell the kid that it’s nothing personal, he just wants to make sure no one is forced to treat that kid like a fellow human being? I still don’t believe he will really do this, but if he does, I hope it’s the most awkward and uncomfortable experience he ever has.

Black women face much higher risk of pregnancy-related death in Texas

Aug 29th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

6 comments

Any time you’re being compared to a third world country, it’s not a good thing.

Black women bear the greatest risk for pregnancy-related death in Texas by far, according to a much-awaited new report, commissioned because the state rate resembles that of many Third World countries.

The report, which follows the publication of a national study that found Texas’ maternal mortality rate has doubled since 2011, ranked heart conditions, overdose by legal or illegal drugs and high blood pressure of pregnancy as the leading causes of such deaths.

“This confirms what we feared – that many of these deaths could be prevented,” said state Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, the House author of the 2013 bill that created a Department of State Health Services maternal mortality task force and charged it with producing biennial reports and recommendations. “It’s a travesty that this is happening.”

[…]

Marian MacDorman, the University of Maryland-based lead author of the Obstetrics & Gynecology study said she applauds the Texas team for “looking into the deaths in greater detail.”

“Although the Texas Department of Health study uses different methods and data sources from mine, I think we both agree that maternal mortality is a serious problem in Texas,” said MacDorman. “I especially appreciate their policy recommendations for how to reduce it.”

The Texas report found most of the state’s maternal deaths – 60 percent – occurred between 42 days and a year after delivery. MacDorman’s study identified 262 Texas deaths in the same two-year period based only on those who died within 42 days.

Walle said he is hopeful the report makes an impression on the 2017 Legislature.

“I’m not naïve to the fact we haven’t expanded Medicaid, but something needs to be done to increase access to pregnant women,” said Walle. “We can’t keeping letting federal dollars go to other states while these women are dying.”

See here for more about the previous study that showed an overall rise in maternal deaths in Texas. The story lists a number of things that could be done to help this situation, all of which involve expanding access to health care, most of which could be accomplished by expanding Medicaid. Since we know that won’t happen under the current leadership, none of whom has been quoted in a story I’ve seen so far, the question is what if anything they would propose to do about it. My guess is it would involve tort reform and high-deductible health plans, because we know those fix everything. Pro Publica has more.

Next B-Cycle expansion announced

Aug 29th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the inbox:

Houston’s bike share system, Houston B-cycle, will more than triple in size over the next two years, adding 71 stations with 568 bikes. The expansion will be paid for with federal grant dollars.

“The expansion of the B-cycle system will bring bike sharing into new neighborhoods and to new users,” said Mayor Turner. “As I’ve said, we need a paradigm shift in transportation away from single-occupancy motor vehicles. Making cycling more accessible by building a strong bike sharing system is a critical component of that change.”

The City’s Planning and Development Department sponsored an application for a grant from the Federal Highway Administration. The grant will reimburse the City for $3.5 million of the cost of expanding the system. Houston Bike Share, a local nonprofit that administers Houston B-cycle, will provide the remaining $880,000.

Currently, the system has 31 stations with 225 bikes. The expansion will bring the total to 102 stations and 793 bikes. The grant will also pay for two new transportation vehicles.

Houston B-cycle is a membership-driven bike share system. Memberships are available by day, week or year. All members have unlimited access to the bikes for up to 60 minutes per trip. There is a charge of $2 for every additional half hour.

The expansion brings bike sharing into the Texas Medical Center with 14 stations and 107 bikes. The new stations will also serve Houston’s students, with 21 new stations and 248 bikes at the University of Houston Main Campus, Texas Southern University, UH-Downtown and Rice University.

Since January 1, cyclists have made 73,577 trips and traveled 508,044 miles. Houston Bike Share CEO Carter Stern estimates Houstonians are on track to exceed 100,000 trips by the end of 2016.

“We could not be more grateful for the Mayor and City Council’s unflagging support of the Houston B-Cycle program and our efforts to expand the program,” Stern said. “The expansion approved today will allow us to build on the immense success that B-Cycle has had in just 4 short years and bring this affordable, healthy, sustainable mobility option to more Houstonians than ever before.”

Sounds good to me. There isn’t an updated system map yet, but this does a lot to expand B-Cycle outside the borders of downtown/Midtown, in areas that are dense and proximate to light rail lines. You know how I feel about using the bike network to extend transit reach, and B-Cycle is a great fit for the rail stations because trains are often too crowded to bring a bike onto them. I can’t wait to see what the new map looks like. The Press has more.

Weekend link dump for August 28

Aug 28th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Here are those pictures of cats sitting on glass tables that you didn’t know you needed.

The Iron Nun. We are not worthy.

“[F]alse confessions happen. They happen all the time. Brendan [Dassey] is not an anomaly.”

Behold Rossia pacifica, an adorable purple googly-eyed not-really-an-octopus.

“Ibtihaj Muhammad’s message of inclusion—her embrace of an America that embraces her—presents to Muslims here and around the world the exact opposite image of our country to Donald Trump’s.”

“I’d argue the real dividing line is optimism. Consider this: Two-thirds of Hillary Clinton’s supporters think the next generation will be in better shape than we are today, or least the same, according to Pew Research. The reverse is true for Trump’s camp. Sixty-eight percent of his supporters think the next generation will be worse off. What’s more, the vast majority of Trump voters say life is worse today for people like them than it was 50 years ago. Only two percent —two!— think life is better now and that their children will also see improvement.”

Alamo archeologists find more than 1,700 artifacts in 4 weeks.

“The trouble is that most password strength meters don’t actually measure password strength at all.”

On Trump, Russia, and “McCarthyism”, of which this has nothing to do.

The Hugo Awards are doing just fine, thanks.

From the You Can Even Eat The Dishes department, 21st Century update.

“Truth in Advertising Inc. has lodged accusations against the Kardashian/Jenner family for consistently skirting federal labeling requirements in connection with paid-for social media posts.”

Who doesn’t want to smell like fried chicken at the beach?

RIP, Steven Hill, actor best known for playing DA Adam Schiff on the original Law & Order.

Former Olympic gold medal gymnast Kerri Strug now works for the US Justice Department administering grants for juvenile justice programs.

“As a former IRS commissioner and practicing tax lawyer, I understand it may be inconvenient for Trump to release his tax returns but we all know — and the IRS has confirmed — that nothing prevents any of us from releasing our tax returns any time we want.”

RIP, Lou Pearlman, boy band architect and Ponzi schemer.

“Three men caught in Brooklyn with $1M worth of stolen barbecued eels“. Well, we all have cravings sometimes.

“Like it or not, this election is a plebiscite on the most divisive, polarizing and disrupting figure in American politics in decades. And neutrality is not an option.”

“The nut fact that the AP uses to lead its coverage is wrong, and Braun and Sullivan’s reporting reveals absolutely no unethical conduct. In fact, they found so little unethical conduct that an enormous amount of space is taken up by a detailed recounting of the time Clinton tried to help a former Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s also the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

RIP, Marvin Kaplan, versatile actor who was the last surviving cast member with a significant role from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Johnny Canadian Football? Probably not.

How is the state going to do its voter ID education outreach?

Aug 28th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

You don’t need to know.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Texas will spend $2.5 million to spread the word about changes to the state’s voter ID law before the November election, but will not release details of how that money will be spent.

More than half of that taxpayer money will be spent on advertising, but officials will not say which markets they intend to target with television and radio spots.

As part of that outreach effort, the state will send “digital toolkits” to an estimated 1,800 organizations across Texas to engage local communities on voter education. The state will not identify those organizations or communities.

The outreach effort was mandated by a judge in Corpus Christi earlier this month after Texas’ voter ID law was found by a federal appeals court to discriminate against minorities. The court ordered the state to water down the law by expanding the types of identification voters can present at polls to cast ballots in time for the November election. The state also agreed to spend $2.5 million to educate voters and election officials across Texas about the changes.

The state hired public relations giant Burson-Marsteller to design its outreach effort, but asked the court to keep details of its plan under seal, preventing public scrutiny of such things as which regions to target with ads and which groups should receive education materials.

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which asked the court to keep the information under seal, has said in court filings that those documents include “proprietary” or “confidential” information produced by Burson-Marsteller. Paxton’s legal team cited a 1978 case involving for President Richard Nixon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that media outlets could not have access to tapes from a Watergate obstruction trial.

Among the documents sealed at the attorney general’s request are a chart listing local markets and dates Burson-Marsteller has recommended for purchasing advertisements to educate the public about the changes to the voter photo ID requirements. Another document names the 1,800 groups recommended to help spread the state’s voter messaging at the local level, a list compiled by the public relations firm.

The state has provided, in a court filing, a broad outline of how it plans to spend the $2.5 million, but so far has refused to release any details.

[…]

Texas’ open records law long has allowed the state to shield details about dealings with corporations on the basis that trade secrets or confidential corporate information could be disclosed.

In this case, Bill Cobb, an Austin lawyer who handles open records issues for corporations, said it is possible that some of Burson-Marsteller’s “secret sauce” could be at risk of being exposed if other PR firms competing for a state contract on voter education could benefit.

“Everyone agrees that open government is a good thing,” Cobb said. “but everyone agrees if Coke has to give its recipe to the government that its competitors aren’t allowed to get it.”

Cobb noted that a recent ruling from the Texas Supreme Court in a case involving Boeing has made it easier for the state and corporations to keep information secret.

“Companies have to make a business decision – could this information harm my future business prospects” said Cobb, a former deputy attorney general under Greg Abbott. “But now corporations don’t have to prove it’s a trade secret, just that a competitor could gain an advantage from acquiring the information.”

See here and here for some background. I’m sorry, but the stated rationale for keeping this all under wraps is a huge pile of baloney. How exactly are “a chart listing local markets and dates … for purchasing advertisements” or a list of “groups recommended to help spread the state’s voter messaging at the local level” proprietary information that could give an advantage to Burson-Marstellar’s competitors if they became known? This isn’t a product rollout for a new consumer toy or business innovation. It’s a public service project. It’s also a political campaign, and it should be held to the same standards of disclosure that any other campaign would be held to for things like advertising expenditures. Otherwise, we’re just taking Ken Paxton’s word for it that he and his office are doing everything they are supposed to be doing to comply with this ruling that by the way they still intend to appeal because they know they’re the ones in the right. What could possibly go wrong with that? Judge Ramos needs to amend her order to require some spilling of the beans.

Paxton says he will meet with transgender child’s family

Aug 28th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

3 comments

It’s a start, I guess.

Best mugshot ever

Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged to meet with the Denton family of a transgender boy, even as his office continues its legal fight against federal school bathroom guidelines that the family supports.

Paxton was asked Monday by KXAS-TV (NBC5) if he would take up the Briggle family — including 8-year-old son, MG — on the offer of dinner. The Republican, who hails from McKinney, said he would be “happy to do that.”

Paxton spokesman Marc Rylander on Tuesday said his office is “already planning to reach out to this family.”

“He is absolutely willing,” he said. “I assure you he wouldn’t have gone on television and said he was going to meet with them if he wasn’t going to do that.”

[…]

Amber Briggle has said that her son deserves to be more than a pawn in a “pissing match” between the state and federal government. And the Briggles, who attended a court hearing this month over the school guidelines, have extended multiple offers to Paxton to meet.

But it wasn’t until the KXAS-TV interview that the attorney general gave an affirmative answer.

It’s unclear when and where a meeting between Paxton and the Briggles would take place. But Amber Briggle took to Twitter on Tuesday to celebrate the apparent success, writing to Paxton that she “can’t wait for you to #meetmychild.”

Don’t give him too much credit just yet. For one thing, he hasn’t actually done or committed to doing anything just yet – “planning to reach out to this family” is the equivalent of “I’ll have my people call your people”, and it’s not like Ken Paxton is renowned for his honesty. And if he does follow through, one dinner with one family hardly balances out his litigious onslaught against the rights and dignity of transgender people. Frankly, I don’t expect anything to come out of this no matter how hospitable the Briggle family is or whatever scripted nice things he may have to say to the press after dessert. I don’t believe an un-compassionate, non-empathetic person like Ken Paxton has it in him to change. I’d love to be wrong, and I’ll be delighted to admit it if I am, but I ain’t gonna hold my breath in anticipation. All that said, he has at least agreed in principle to meet with this one transgender child, which puts him a step above the craven coward Dan Patrick. For what it’s worth. Texas Standard has more.

We won’t have Robert Morrow to kick around any longer

Aug 28th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Valar morghulis, y’all.

Robert Morrow

The brief, zany tenure of Travis County GOP Chairman Robert Morrow came to an end Friday, as party officials made clear the conspiracy theorist abandoned his post by running for president and he accepted their conclusion without question.

Inside a nondescript office park in Austin, party officials convened reporters to lay out their case, saying Morrow’s application to be a write-in candidate for the White House, filed last week, “resulted in an immediate vacancy” at the top of the county party. Waiting in the lobby afterward was Morrow, wearing his trademark jester’s hat and carrying the “Trump is a Child Rapist” sign that had got him booted from a rally for the Republican presidential nominee Tuesday in Austin.

“I’m in complete agreement with them because I’m running for president,” Morrow said of party officials’ conclusion. “It’s clear: You can’t be the president of the United States of America, or even run for president, and be the chairman of a political party, and I’m fine with that.”

It marked a relatively noncontroversial finish to Morrow’s controversial tenure, which was sparked by his surprise victory over incumbent James Dickey in the March elections. Alarmed by Morrow’s conspiracy theory-fueled bombast and disinterest in actually running the organization, party officials created a steering committee in June that handled many of the duties typically reserved for the chairman.

[…]

The writing was on the wall Thursday, when word got out that the secretary of state’s office accepted Morrow as a write-in presidential candidate. By the end of the day, the county party was getting backup from the state party, whose chairman Tom Mechler issued a statement affirming that Morrow became ineligible to serve as county chairman upon filing for president.

On Friday, Morrow did not exactly say whether he knew that when he applied to be a write-in candidate he was effectively resigning from the county party. “I knew in the back of my mind,” Morrow told reporters, “it might cause a problem.”

That’s a slight change from what Morrow had been saying on Thursday, when word of this development first came to light.

In a statement Thursday afternoon, state GOP Chairman Tom Mechler said Morrow “became ineligible to hold the office of Travis County Republican Chair” upon filing Friday to be a write-in candidate. Morrow told The Texas Tribune earlier Thursday he could not be ousted.

“They don’t have the grounds to do that, and anybody who says so is probably lying,” Morrow said. “The case law on this is probably extremely thin.”

[…]

A party spokesman declined to elaborate on the announcement, but a person close to the party said the news conference will likely be about Morrow’s fate. It was not immediately clear how the process of Morrow stepping down would unfold, and at least one party official cautioned that the party was still conferring over the issue.

The county party nonetheless has the support of Mechler.

“There is absolutely no place for rhetoric as distasteful as Mr. Morrow’s in the Republican Party of Texas,” Mechler said in the statement. “We are excited to move forward with the Travis County GOP and the new incoming Chair as soon as an election is held to fill the position.”

The bombastic Morrow fired back on Twitter by asking Mechler to perform a sex act on him. Morrow remained defiant as speculation built Thursday afternoon that an effort was afoot to see him out as chairman.

“If other people attempt to pull a coup like this, there will be trouble,” Morrow added. “The bottom line is the Texas voters, the Republican Party, have spoken.”

It’s hard to know what might have happened between Thursday and Friday to facilitate Morrow’s change of mind, probably because as Dave Barry once said about Lyndon LaRouche, where you and I have a brain, Robert Morrow has a Whack-a-Mole game. Be that as it may, this is a terrible loss for people who need some cheap, tawdry laughs in their political news consumption, a group in which I include myself. Also, too, did you know it only took 38 signatures to “appear” on the ballot as a write-in candidate for President, by which I mean “have the write-in votes that are cast for you included in the official count by the Secretary of State”? And that Morrow met that threshold, but Evan McMullin did not? I can’t wait to see if Morrow manages to exceed 38 actual votes this November; the low total among 2012 Presidential write-ins was 87, so I’d say he has a decent shot at it. We may never see his like again, that’s for sure. The Austin Chronicle has more.

Endorsement watch: Civil court incumbents

Aug 28th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

Keeping up with the weekly endorsement schedule, we have round one of Civil Court endorsements, as there are many Civil Court races this year.

11th Civil District Court: Kevin Fulton

The candidates in this race to replace outgoing Judge Mike Miller are both living proof of the American Dream. Republican Kevin Fulton, our choice for the bench, grew up in gritty South Central Los Angeles. The family of his Democratic opponent Kristen Hawkins fled Communist Hungary. Both candidates went on to graduate from law school and start their own firms. Both have the right temperament and work ethic to succeed on the bench.

61st Civil District Court: Erin Elizabeth Lunceford

Gov. Greg Abbott chose well when he appointed Erin Elizabeth Lunceford, 55, to this court in July 2015, and voters should give her a full term. A graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, Lunceford, a Republican, has 27 years of practice, is board certified in Personal Injury Trial Law and is also an associate member of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

80th Civil District Court: Larry Weiman

When civil judges want to brag about their number of jury trials, the size of their dockets and their overall productivity, they compare themselves to Judge Larry Weiman.

125th Civil District Court: Kyle Carter

Democrat Kyle Carter – first elected to the bench in 2008 – gets our nod for another term. This graduate of the South Texas College of Law genuinely seems to love his job and to view it as an opportunity not only to administer justice but to help people. Carter, 40, said that he’s started an organization, Judges At Work in Schools, and visits local schools to educate students about the judicial system, career opportunities and the importance of education.

127th Civil District Court: R.K. Sandill

Judge R.K. Sandill, 40, admits that he’s developed a reputation for being curt. He expects lawyers to come prepared and has no patience for counsel who waste his and their client’s time. But over his two terms, this hard-working, qualified judge has learned how to keep the docket moving without being too harsh on the attorneys.

129th Civil District Court: Michael Gomez

Voters should return Democrat Michael Gomez to the bench for four more years. Although his numbers in the Houston Bar Association judicial qualification poll weren’t stellar when he was first elected in 2008, Gomez has grown into the role and last year he was awarded Judge of the Year by the Hispanic Bar Association of Houston. According to Gomez, 42, anyone who “loves his job the way I do is always looking for a way to do things better.”

133rd Civil District Court: Jaclanel McFarland

Judge Jaclanel McFarland brings a lot of personality and small-town common sense to her court. In meeting with the Chronicle editorial board, the two-term Democratic judge explained how she hates it when opposing counsel just rely on email instead of actually talking to each other.

The 11th is an open bench, while the 61st was filled by appointment after Judge Al Bennett was elevated to federal court. The rest are all Democratic incumbents. The next batch contains four Democratic incumbents (Englehart, Schaffer, Smoots-Hogan, Palmer), one Republican incumbent (Halbach), and two Republican appointees (Mayfield Ibarra and Dorfman). There’s one incumbent I don’t expect the Chron to endorse (Palmer); beyond that, we’ll see.

Saturday video break: Mah Na Mah Na

Aug 27th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

There are many ways to spell that, but we all know the words. Sing along with the Asylum Street Spankers:

Very sad there’s no live video recording of that, it was always a blast to watch them perform it. With the title rendered as two words and not four, here’s CAKE:

Yes, I know, the video is a clip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. I guess the band never made their own video for this.

Of course, the version everyone knows if from The Muppet Show, imported from Sesame Street:

The original version of the song, by Piero Umilani, is from a movie Sweden: Heaven and Hell (Svezia, inferno e paradiso).

If your first thought was like mine, that you expected a Benny Hill sketch to break out as you were watching that, then the song’s history should be easily comprehensible.

Microbreweries win their distribution rights lawsuit

Aug 27th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Excellent news.

A Texas law that prohibits brewers from selling territorial rights to distribute their beer is unconstitutional, a judge ruled Thursday, serving up a major victory to beer companies seeking to expand their presence in stores, bars and restaurants throughout the state.

The decision says the government has no compelling interest in prohibiting brewers from seeking cash compensation when negotiating a contract with distributors, who have almost exclusive authority to handle sales between producers and retailers.

“This law, it was written by beer distributors to enrich big beer distributors and that is not a legitimate state interest,” said Matt Miller, senior attorney and head of the Austin office of the Institute for Justice, which litigated the case on behalf of Texas craft brewers Live Oak, Revolver and Peticolas.

The law, passed three years ago, allows brewers and distributors to negotiate for things like equipment and marketing efforts, but not direct compensation. That denies brewers who have worked to build up their business the ability to “capture the value of their brand” once they are large enough to require a distributor, said Charles Vallhonrat, executive director of the Texas Craft Brewers Guild.

A cash infusion from a distribution contract also would allow smaller breweries to expand operations, hire new employees and build up marketing teams to increase sales, Vallhonrat said.

Thursday’s ruling by state District Judge Karin Crump in Austin came after both the brewers and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission sought summary judgments in the lawsuit. After considering depositions from both sides, Crump declared the law violates state constitutional protection for economic liberty.

[…]

Plaintiff Chip McElroy, founder of Live Oak Brewing Co. in Austin and one of the law’s most vocal critics, called it “unjust … unconstitutional … just plain wrong.”

“It took our property and gave it to them for free,” McElroy said Thursday.

Arif Panju, another Institute for Justice attorney in the case, said the ruling applies to out-of-state breweries as well. Miller said it protects all entrepreneurs looking to build up their businesses.

Miller said the ruling will help breweries going forward but does not address those who struck distribution deals while the 2013 law was in effect.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has 30 days to file an appeal. A spokesman said agency lawyers are in touch with the Texas Attorney General’s Office and likely will appeal.

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the ruling. I hope the TABC will reconsider its inclination to appeal. This law serves no one’s interests except those of the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas. The state should not be spending its own resources pursuing a reversal of this ruling. As noted elsewhere in this story, if the original bill that forbade the microbreweries from selling their distribution rights had been about any other commodity, it would have been laughed out of the Capitol. Surely we have better things to do than this.

Pasadena voting rights case moves forward

Aug 27th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Good news.

Pasadena City Council

A federal judge has denied Pasadena’s request to throw out a lawsuit challenging its controversial city council redistricting plan, which a group of Hispanic and Latino residents alleges dilutes the voting rights of the suburb’s growing minority population.

Judge Lee Rosenthal’s ruling Wednesday after a roughly two-hour court hearing means the case continues toward trial, which Rosenthal has tentatively set for November.

Wednesday’s session was one of the first significant hearings in the voting rights case, which has received national attention as emblematic of modern-day battles over the issue more than 50 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

The city had asked Rosenthal to rule on a motion for summary judgment in favor of the city’s 3-year-old method of electing the council, which called for races for six single-member seats and two at-large seats, stating that the plan allows the Hispanic minority population the opportunity to elect four members.

Rosenthal rejected that argument, stating that the new method creates a majority of Hispanic citizens of voting age in three districts, compared to four in the previous election system, when there were eight single-member districts.

This lawsuit was filed in 2014 and stemmed from the redistricting plan pushed by Mayor Johnny Isbell in 2013 that switched the city from having eight district members to six district members plus two At Large members. I’m glad to see this happen, but it shows the stark difference between a world in which preclearance exists and one where it doesn’t. This redistricting plan had been previously denied by the Justice Department but went forward after the Shelby ruling from SCOTUS. Nearly three years after Mayor Isbell’s plan was narrowly approved by voters, the lawsuit over it is finally cleared for trial, with an initial ruling likely months away and ultimate resolution farther out. It wouldn’t be a surprise if it is still being litigated two years from now, or five years from initial passage of the scheme. If that redistricting plan is eventually found illegal, that’s an awful lot of time for it to have been allowed to be in place, presumably causing harm, while the lawyers fight it out. If preclearance were still in place, none of this would have happened.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that this plan will be tossed. It’s always hard to say how litigation like this will play out. In the meantime, the Chron’s Mike Snyder recently published a series of stories relating to the fight over voting rights in Pasadena that is worth your time to read if you haven’t already done so:

With changes looming, Pasadena mayor launched attack against Latino council hopeful

Mayor: New Pasadena council system would have passed federal review

Voting rights case part of long history of Pasadena ethnic strife

I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

Getting the (wind and solar) power to the people

Aug 27th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

It’s all about the transmission lines.

The Lone Star state is by far the largest state for wind power, with nearly 18,000 megawatts of wind generation capacity already built and another 5,500 megawatts—nearly equal to California’s total installed capacity—planned. The biggest driver of that wind boom was an $8 billion transmission system that was built to bring electricity from the desolate western and northern parts of the state to the big cities of the south and east: Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.

Completed in 2014, the new wires—known as Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, or CREZ—have the capacity to carry some 18,500 megawatts of wind power across the state. That’s not enough to handle the 21,000 megawatts of capacity Texas expects to reach this year, and it’s creating a situation that’s straining the transmission system and potentially resulting in periods where the turbines go idle.

Now the state’s utilities and transmission companies are faced with spending hundreds of millions more to upgrade the system, demonstrating just how costly and complicated it is to shift from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, even where those sources are abundant.

EDF Renewable Energy, which owns five wind farms in northern Texas, and other operators have proposed adding second lines to existing transmission lines from the panhandle, where much of the new wind-farm construction is happening. Doing so, EDF says, will accommodate nearly 4,000 megawatts of new generation expected in the panhandle over the next several years.

“If some of these projects get developed in the panhandle and they haven’t done the upgrades to the grid, for sure those farms will be curtailed,” says Frank Horak, the CEO of Austin-based energy consultancy Astek Energy.

[…]

Another looming challenge is an expected surge in solar projects in Texas. The state ranks third in terms of total solar capacity, and another 6,000 megawatts of solar projects are planned. That will further strain the grid.

“Last time I looked there were 42 solar projects in far West Texas that were in the interconnection queue waiting for new transmission because there’s a bottleneck there now,” says Horak. Most of those projects will remain on hold until new wires are in place; some may never be built.

Seems to me to be a supply and demand problem, with the supply of transmission not keeping up with the demand of energy production. Texas’ population continues to grow, and the grid is increasingly dependent on wind and solar power to meet usage peaks, so it would be very shortsighted not to keep investing in more transmission capacity. This ought to be a no-brainer.

No injunction against HISD school name changes

Aug 27th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

The changes can remain, at least for now.

A civil court judge has declined to stop the Houston school district from changing the names of eight campuses that were named after Confederate loyalists.

Judge John Wooldridge this week denied a request by several taxpayers suing the district to temporarily halt the renaming of the schools with a temporary injunction.

The ruling does not end the lawsuit, filed in June, but represents a significant incremental victory for the Houston Independent School District.

See here for the background. The board of trustees had recently approved a $1.2 million expenditure to pay for the name changes, which depending on your opinion of the name changes themselves is either a necessary expense or a waste of money. The lawsuit will go forward, though I couldn’t find any other reporting to indicate if any kind of schedule were set or anticipated, with the new names remaining in place.

Friday random ten: Ladies’ night, part 10

Aug 26th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Several iconic acts, plus some great covers.

1. I Can’t Stand The Rain – The Commitments (Angeline Ball, Maria Doyle, Bronagh Gallagher)
2. Everybody Knows – Concrete Blonde (Johnette Napolitano)
3. Like A Star – Corinne Bailey Rae
4. Too Late To Turn Back Now – Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose (Rose Cornelius)
5. Pedestrian At Best – Courtney Barnett
6. To Lay Me Down – Cowboy Junkies (Margo Timmins)
7. Analyse – Cranberries (Dolores O’Riordan)
8. Push Down & Twist – Crushed Out (Moselle Spiller)
9. She Bop – Cyndi Lauper
10. When I Was A Boy – Dar Williams

The ladies in The Commitments functioned mostly as backup singers, but they got their chance to shine as well. Concrete Blonde is covering Leonard Cohen, while the Cowboy Junkies are doing the Grateful Dead. Did you figure out for yourself that “She Bop” was about masturbation, or did you (like me) only learn it while reading a story about how smutty modern (i.e., circa 1985) songs were? Thank you, Parents Music Resource Council!

Voter fraud: Still a myth

Aug 26th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

7 comments

Just a reminder, in case you needed one.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Politicians and voting rights advocates continue to clash over whether photo ID and other voting requirements are needed to prevent voter fraud, but a News21 analysis and recent court rulings show little evidence that such fraud is widespread.

A News21 analysis four years ago of 2,068 alleged election-fraud cases in 50 states found that while some fraud had occurred since 2000, the rate was infinitesimal compared with the 146 million registered voters in that 12-year span. The analysis found only 10 cases of voter impersonation, the only kind of fraud that could be prevented by voter ID at the polls.

This year, News21 reviewed cases in Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Kansas, where politicians have expressed concern about voter fraud, and found hundreds of allegations but few prosecutions between 2012 and 2016. Attorneys general in those states successfully prosecuted 38 cases, though other cases may have been litigated at the county level. At least one-third of those cases involved nonvoters, such as elections officials or volunteers. None of the cases prosecuted was for voter impersonation.

“Voter fraud is not a significant problem in the country,” Jennifer Clark of the Brennan Center, a public policy and law institute, told News21. “As the evidence that has come out in some recent court cases and reports and basically every analysis that has ever been done has concluded: It is not a significant concern.”

Lorraine Minnite, a political science professor at Rutgers University-Camden who wrote a book on the phenomenon in 2010 called “The Myth of Voter Fraud,” said in an interview that she hasn’t seen an uptick in the crime since. “Voter fraud remains rare because it is irrational behavior,” she said. “You’re not likely to change the outcome of an election with your illegal fraudulent vote, and the chances of being caught are there and we have rules to prevent against it.”

[…]

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called voter fraud “rampant” in Texas. A records request from News21 to the Office of the Attorney General of Texas shows that more than 360 allegations of voter fraud were sent to the attorney general since 2012. Fifteen of those cases were successfully prosecuted. Four of those convicted were voters – the rest were elections officials or third-party volunteers.

Minnite, who has studied voter fraud for 15 years, said that actual instances of fraud lie somewhere between the number successfully prosecuted and the number of allegations. In her experience, few allegations meet the criteria of fraud: “intentional corruption of the electoral process” by voters.

“Large numbers getting reduced, reduced, reduced at each level is the pattern that I’ve seen over and over and over again,” Minnite said. “The assumption should be the reverse of what it is. It should be ‘We’ve got a lot of errors here.’”

We’ve covered a lot of this before, so you know the drill. The logistics of vote fraud by impersonation have never made any sense, especially when compared to fraud by mail ballot, compromising electronic voting machines, or corrupting the vote counting process, but then it was never about making sense. Look at it this way: If voter fraud really is as “rampant” as Greg Abbott claims it is, then he was massively incompetent as Attorney General at rooting it out. And Ken Paxton isn’t any better at it, either. By their own logic, they were and are terrible failures as Attorney General.

Anyway. News21 is “a cornerstone of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education”, which you can read about at that link. This story was part of their impressively large Voting Wars project, which features a load of stories about the process, politics, and demographics of voting. Check it out.

Schedule set for voter ID discrimination arguments

Aug 26th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The next phase of the voter ID litigation will begin shortly after Election Day.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

A federal judge has scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 24 to determine if the Texas Legislature approved a voter ID law in 2011 with the intent to discriminate against minorities.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that Texas’ voter ID law had a discriminatory effect, but said a lower court judge overreached in finding that lawmakers had a discriminatory intent in passing the measure.

However, the federal appeals court instructed U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to revisit the issue.

Ramos, in a two-page order Thursday, rejected arguments from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that she should back off the discriminatory intent claim until the Legislature has a chance to fine-tune the voter ID law when lawmakers come back to Austin. Paxton’s office proposed a schedule for the intent claim in which the first set of briefs would be filed on June 28 — 30 full days after the Legislature’s regular session is set to end.

[…]

The discriminatory intent claim is a key element in the still-pending voter ID case. If it is found that state lawmakers acted in that manner, the law could not only be struck down but it could open the door for a court to once again require Texas to seek federal approval when changing its elections laws.

You can see a copy of the order here. It’s important to note that the previous rulings didn’t actually throw out the voter ID law. You still have to show ID to vote, and if you have a driver’s license or other form of ID that had been acceptable under that law, you still have to show it. The ruling simply meant that other forms of ID, along with an affidavit swearing that you don’t have one of the originally sanctioned forms, is now sufficient to let your vote be counted. It’s an improvement to be sure, but it’s not a return to how it was pre-voter ID. A ruling that the intent of the law and not just the effect of the law was to discriminate would mean the law in its entirity would be tossed. The district court originally found such intent but the Fifth Circuit demurred, requiring the lower court to reconsider under a stricter set of parameters. That’s what this is about.

If the district court again finds discriminatory intent, then not only would the law be thrown out but preclearance under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act would be back on the table. I think that’s unlikely (assuming the re-finding was upheld) on the grounds that North Carolina has not yet been put back under preclearance, but it’s still early. In any event, the schedule from the court is as follows: Both parties present their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to the court by November, 18th 2016, submit responsive briefings by December 16th, 2016, and oral arguments on January 24th 2017. Should make for an exciting first few weeks of the next legislative session as well. The Lone Star Project and Rick Hasen have more.

Superintendent Carranza on bathroom access

Aug 26th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This is what I like to see and hear.

Richard Carranza

The new HISD superintendent, Richard Carranza, did not discuss specifics but certainly signaled an open-minded approach to the issue of which restrooms students should be allowed to use.

“I think, you know, kids are human beings, and I think that a human being should be treated like a human being,” Carranza said, as he welcomed students on the first day of school.

He also took questions and was asked for his thoughts on a judge’s ruling which temporarily blocks the Obama administration’s directive to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice.

“I have to look at what they said in particular about the transgender bathroom law. I can tell you that in my former experience, I spent 7 years, almost 8 years in San Francisco, we had transgender bathrooms the entire time I was there. Never had one issue, zero reported issues with a transgender restroom. So you know I think we need to kind of peel the onion. Is it really about the restroom, or is it about something else?” Carranza said.

Houston ISD began including gender identity in its nondiscrimination policy years ago and has allowed campuses to find solutions on a case-by-case basis.

Simple, yes? No problems here, either. I’d be willing to bet that if it weren’t for the potty-obsessed histrionics from Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, most people wouldn’t even know that HISD included gender identity in its nondiscrimination policy. Because it really is a non-issue, unless someone makes the conscious choice to make it an issue. There’s video of Superintendent Carranza’s statement at the link above if you’re interested.

Driverless taxis debut in Singapore

Aug 26th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

Not fast enough, Uber.

The world’s first self-driving taxis will be picking up passengers in Singapore starting Thursday.

Select members of the public will be able to hail a free ride through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it will be the first to offer rides to the public. It will beat ride-hailing service Uber, which plans to offer rides in autonomous cars in Pittsburgh, by a few weeks.

The service will start small — six cars now, growing to a dozen by the end of the year. The ultimate goal, say nuTonomy officials, is to have a fully self-driving taxi fleet in Singapore by 2018, which will help sharply cut the number of cars on Singapore’s congested roads. Eventually, the model could be adopted in cities around the world, nuTonomy says.

For now, the taxis only will run in a 2.5-square-mile business and residential district called “one-north,” and pick-ups and drop-offs will be limited to specified locations. And riders must have an invitation from nuTonomy to use the service. The company says dozens have signed up for the launch, and it plans to expand that list to thousands of people within a few months.

The cars — modified Renault Zoe and Mitsubishi i-MiEV electrics — have a driver in front who is prepared to take back the wheel and a researcher in back who watches the car’s computers. Each car is fitted with six sets of Lidar — a detection system that uses lasers to operate like radar — including one that constantly spins on the roof. There are also two cameras on the dashboard to scan for obstacles and detect changes in traffic lights.

The testing time-frame is open-ended, said nuTonomy CEO Karl Iagnemma. Eventually, riders may start paying for the service, and more pick-up and drop-off points will be added. NuTonomy also is working on testing similar taxi services in other Asian cities as well as in the U.S. and Europe, but he wouldn’t say when.

“I don’t expect there to be a time where we say, ‘We’ve learned enough,'” Iagnemma said.

Doug Parker, nuTonomy’s chief operating officer, said autonomous taxis could ultimately reduce the number of cars on Singapore’s roads from 900,000 to 300,000.

“When you are able to take that many cars off the road, it creates a lot of possibilities. You can create smaller roads, you can create much smaller car parks,” Parker said. “I think it will change how people interact with the city going forward.”

Uber is planning to roll out its driverless car pilot in Pittsburgh shortly, but they will not be first in line. The claim that driverless cars will ultimately solve traffic congestion is one of which I remain deeply skeptical, but we’ll see, perhaps sooner than I think. In the meantime, you can read more about NuTonomy, which has its origins at MIT, and this pilot test here, here, and here. Would you ride in one of these things?

When is Texas going to file that voter ID appeal?

Aug 25th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

The Lone Star Project would like to know.

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Last week, Texas AG Ken Paxton made a big show in the press by announcing that he would file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the ruling of the 5^th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals that the Texas voter ID law is discriminatory in violation of the Voting Rights Act. He bragged, “We’re going to take it to the highest court in the land and hopefully get this turned around.”

Yet now, more than a week later, Paxton hasn’t taken any action on the SCOTUS Appeal. What gives?

Is Paxton scamming GOP activists?
Chances that the U.S. Supreme Court taking up the Texas case are not good, and the odds of him ultimately prevailing are worse. The 5^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals is the most conservative federal court in the nation, so it’s unlikely their finding of discrimination would be reversed.

Paxton’s advisors have likely informed him that a SCOTUS appeal is a longshot. However, his political base is made up of the most extreme, divisive and irrational activists within the Texas Republican Party. They drank the phony voter fraud Kool-Aid served up by Greg Abbott and other Republicans and likely won’t accept a rational legal decision. Ken Paxton’s on the spot, so instead of shooting straight with his own supporters, he may be scamming them and stalling for time.

Is Paxton intentionally creating voter confusion through threats and delays?
The most likely reason for Paxton’s threat to appeal and his failure to follow through is to confuse voters and the media about what voting rules really will be followed in November.

By hitting the media talk show circuit and talking about a Supreme Court appeal, Paxton creates uncertainty. At the same time, the state is issuing confusing and misleading documents implying that the overturned voter ID law remains unchanged.

And Paxton has gone far beyond talking about filing an appeal with the Supreme Court. He went on Fox News and made a s eries of threatening remarks vowing to prosecute voters who may misunderstand or make a mistake under the new voting procedures.

Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott, and other Texas GOP leaders know that the most damaging aspect of their relentless insistence on a discriminatory voter ID law is that voters become uncertain about the rules and see the very act of voting as risky and intimidating.

Indeed, the announcement of an appeal was made on August 16. That was six days after the “softening” agreement was approved by the federal district court judge, and four full weeks after the Fifth Circuit ruling that affirmed the lower court ruling. I Am Not A Lawyer, and I know this sort of thing can take some time, but I don’t think it takes that long, especially given that the Fifth Circuit ruling was an en banc ruling that had affirmed the three-judge panel ruling last August. By the way, the state filed its request for an en banc review of that ruling in less than four weeks, so it’s not hard to conclude that they are taking their time here. And to be clear here, I don’t really care if they had decided to file an appeal or not. It’s that it’s not at all hard to believe, as the LSP alleges, that the main goal here is sowing confusion. If the intent is to file an appeal, then get on with it already. If not, then shut up and do what the court ordered.

Another Voting Rights Act violation alleged

Aug 25th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From Friday:

Still the only voter ID anyone should need

Today, a coalition of 10 groups sent a letter to Carlos Casco, Secretary of State of Texas, requesting that his office take immediate steps to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1985 (VRA) and the Texas Elections Code.

Evidence currently shows that the State is failing to provide critical materials for potential Volunteer Deputy Registrars (VDRs) in Spanish and is not uniformly distributing Spanish language materials in all counties across Texas.

Under the Texas Elections Code, it is a crime to handle a completed voter registration form in any Texas county without being appointed as a VDR for that particular county. The failure to provide Spanish language materials identical to the English language materials, or to ensure all Texas Counties make the Spanish language materials available, for potential VDRs excludes Spanish-speaking Texans from equal participation in the electoral process and can lead to depressed voter turnout in predominantly Latino voter communities.

The letter calls for the Secretary of State to, among other things, translate and distribute all VDR training materials into Spanish, ensure that all Texas counties create reasonable ways for potential VDRs to complete the required training in any minority language covered in that county by the VRA, and require full compliance with any minority language requirements stipulated by the VRA in all Texas counties.

The letter is signed by groups including the Texas Civil Rights Project, the League of Women Voters, MOVE San Antonio, the Texas Organizing Project, and more.

You can see the full letter they sent to Secretary Cascos here. The Texas Civil Rights Project has been busy this year – they filed a lawsuit over voter registration procedures at DPS in March. I don’t know what the current status of that is. According to the letter, they want a response from the SOS by August 31. We’ll see what happens. Link via Rick Hasen, and see here for more.

Driverless Ubers

Aug 25th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

4 comments

Ready or not, here they come.

The option to hail a ride in a self-driving car, which was science fiction just a few years ago, will soon be available to Uber users in Pittsburgh, the first time the technology has been offered to the general public.

Within weeks, the company announced Thursday, customers will be able to opt into a test program and summon an autonomous Ford Fusion. But since the technology has not been perfected, the cars will come with human backup drivers to handle any unexpected situations.

Although other companies including Google are testing self-driving cars on public roads, none offers rides to regular people. As an enticement, the autonomous rides will be free, the company said.

Uber, which has a self-driving research lab in Pittsburgh, has no immediate plans to deploy autonomous cars in other cities. But in an interview with The Associated Press, CEO Travis Kalanick said development of the vehicles is paramount for the San Francisco company, which has grown exponentially after starting seven years ago.

“We’ve got to be laser-focused on getting this to market, because it’s not a side project for us,” he said. “This is everything. This is all the marbles for Uber.”

Without drivers, the cost of hailing a ride will be cheaper than owning a car, changing the way we all get around, Kalanick has said.

By using human backup drivers, Uber is basically testing the technology and taking people along for the ride, said Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina professor who studies self-driving technology.

“Part of this is marketing in the sense that they’re going to be doing continued research and development of these systems,” he said.

The story notes that Uber has acquired Otto, the startup company that provided kits for driverless trucks. As you know, I remain skeptical, not of driverless cars themselves – I have no doubt the technology is coming, probably sooner than I’m comfortable with – but of the grand predictions of how they will reshape society. I think the questions are more complicated, and the time frame is longer, than some people think. But who knows? I’m sure the lure of free rides will give Uber plenty of demand for this test, and there will be much to learn from it. I’ll be very interested to see how it goes. And hey, driverless Ubers sure would solve that pesky background check issue, elsewhere. The Wall Street Journal, Kevin Drum, the Guardian, and the Chron’s Chris Tomlinson have more.

Texas blog roundup for the week of August 22

Aug 25th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

The Texas Progressive Alliance keeps the flame burning as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Paxton continues his war on transgender people

Aug 24th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

2 comments

This is just ugly.

Ramping up its fight over the rights of transgender people, Texas filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government over a regulation prohibiting discrimination against transgender individuals in some health programs.

Texas, on behalf of Franciscan Alliance, a religious hospital network, and four other states are claiming the new federal regulation would force doctors to perform gender transition procedures on children and requested the court to block the federal government from enforcing the regulation. The federal rule on nondiscrimination in health care prohibits denying or limiting coverage for transgender individuals, including health services related to gender transition.

The lawsuit was announced by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the Franciscan Alliance. It was filed Tuesday morning in the Wichita Falls-based District Court for the Western District of Texas.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, who on Monday sided with the state and blocked the Obama administration’s guidelines to accommodate transgender students. Those guidelines say that schools must treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for the purposes of complying with federal nondiscrimination statutes.

[…]

Among several legal claims, they argued that the new rule violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it compels religiously affiliated health organizations to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. The federal government is “forcing them to choose between federal funding and their livelihood as healthcare providers and their exercise of religion,” the wrote in a court filing.

You can see a copy of the lawsuit here. Think Progress pulls out some of the highlights:

Essentially, this suit is akin to Hobby Lobby, except it objects to transgender care instead of birth control.

The complaint repeatedly refers to standards of care, and the need for states and physicians to be able to maintain “standards of care that rely upon the medical judgment of health professionals as to what is in the best interests of their patients.” Requiring doctors to perform procedures that they do not believe are in the best interest of the patient would turn “the venerable medical oath to ‘do no harm’ on its head.” Physicians should have the ability “to offer a contrary view” to HHS’s conclusions that transition-related treatments are no longer “experimental.” The plaintiffs in the suit believe that transition care is not only still experimental, but also “ethically questionable and potentially harmful.”

Building standards of care around this belief, the complaint assures, does not compromise patients’ respect:

Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, especially when in need of medical attention. The standard of care established in Texas, and around the country, enables patients to obtain quality healthcare as determined by medical professionals, and not those outside the doctor-patient relationship. The Regulation, however, usurps this standard of care. It discards independent medical judgment and a physician’s duty to his or her patient’s permanent well-being and replaces them with rigid commands.

Nowhere, however, does the suit acknowledge the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which has maintained research-informed standards of care for transgender people for nearly 40 years. The WPATH standards, first proposed in 1979 and updated several times since, are based on “the best available science and expert professional consensus.” They recommend affirming transgender people’s identities and recognize that gender transition improves their well-being.

The plaintiffs in the suit make no secret of the fact that they reject this science in favor of their own religious beliefs. For example, the suit cites CMDA’s “Transgender Identification Ethics Statement,” which takes the literal opposite position of the WPATH standards, because validating transsexual “desires” is “contrary to a Christian worldview:

In contrast to the current culture, CMDA believes that finding one’s identity within God’s design will result in a more healthy and fulfilled life. CMDA believes, moreover, that social movements which contend that gender is decided by choice are mistaken in defining gender, not by nature, but according to desire. Authentic personal identity consists in social gender expression that is congruent with one’s natural biological sex. CMDA recognizes that this traditional view has become counter-cultural; however, CMDA affirms that God’s design transcends culture.

CMDA’s statement also claims that affirming children’s gender identity and allowing them to delay puberty has “lifelong physical, psychological, and social consequences,” even though the available evidence says the exact opposite — that delaying puberty is safe and totally reversible.

Like CMDA, Franciscan similarly rejects the existence of transgender identities:

Franciscan holds religious beliefs that sexual identity is an objective fact rooted in nature as male or female persons. Like the Catholic Church it serves, Franciscan believes that a person’s sex is ascertained biologically, and not by one’s beliefs, desires, or feelings. Franciscan believes that part of the image of God is an organic part of every man and woman, and that women and men reflect God’s image in unique, and uniquely dignified, ways. Franciscan does not believe that government has either the power or the authority to redefine sex.

The suit claims that even providing “psychiatric support” as part of a medical transition would violate its “best medical judgment and its religious beliefs.” Even simply providing insurance coverage for such procedures would “constitute impermissible material cooperation with evil.”

I can’t even wrap my mind around this. Substitute “gay” for “transgender” in the paragraphs above, and ask yourself if this would come close passing legal muster, let alone common decency and medical ethics. And yes, this is the same judge who granted a national injunction in the bathroom case. Give Ken Paxton his due – he knows who the friendly judges are. The Current has more.

Three more candidates announce campaigns for open HISD Trustee seat

Aug 24th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

From the inbox, candidate number 1:

Victoria Bryant

Victoria Bryant, an entrepreneur and businesswoman, announced her candidacy today, August 15, for Houston ISD Trustee in District VII. The position is up for election this November with the resignation of Harvin Moore, one of the board’s longest-serving members.

District VII includes River Oaks, Memorial, and Briargrove, and is home to some of the best schools in the state. But this year the district faces the daunting budgetary challenge of funding school operations without disrupting classroom standards.

“Education is key to keeping Houston and Texas an economic powerhouse,” Bryant said. “As a mother with children enrolled in HISD schools, I will fight for a quality education system that will give them the tools they need to compete in a global economy.”

Bryant is the founder and president of Ambassadors Caregivers, a home health care business serving seniors, the disabled, and the elderly. She currently serves as President of the World Chamber of Commerce of Texas and on the Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital Women’s Advisory Council. She is also a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the University of Houston’s College of Education and its College of Business.

“Victoria Bryant is an advocate for education with extensive experience in medicine and health care,” said Tony Buzbee, attorney and River Oaks resident. “Her business background will be crucial to solving the district’s budget shortfalls and modernizing our schools.”

Years ago education opened many windows of opportunity for Bryant, the daughter of Vietnamese refugees who resettled in Houston in the 1970’s. Bryant attended Carnegie High School and the University of Houston College of Pharmacy, where she earned her Doctorate of Pharmacy. “My dad did everything he could to make sure I had every opportunity in the world – and it started with a great education,” said Bryant. “Here in our district, we have incredible teachers and involved parents. That said, we have much more to do to educate and empower our children for success. As we invest in their future, I am your voice on the board.”

See here for the background. Anne Sung, who ran against Moore in 2013, has also announced her intention to run for the seat. I found this 2014 Houston Business Journal story on Victoria Bryant while googling around for her.

Sung and Bryant are joined by two others: John F. Luman, III and Danielle Paulus are also listed as candidates on the HISD webpage about the special election. Paulus, as you can see from her LinkiedIn profile, is also known as Danielle Paulus-Dick, and appears to be the wife of Eric Dick, which made my eyes roll so hard. I asked around and learned that both Bryant and Luman have Republican primary voting histories – Danielle Paulus appeared on this list after I had done that, but we do all know about Eric Dick – while Sung is a Democrat, so the basic contours of this campaign are clear, if there are no others jumping in. The filing deadline is tomorrow, August 25, so the clock is ticking. Whoever emerges victorious, in November or a December runoff, will have to do it again in 2017 for a full term. I’ll check back afterwards to see what the final lineup will be.

STAAR test lawsuit survives motion to dismiss

Aug 24th, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

Comments are off for this post

On to trial.

After a group of parents sued the Texas Education Agency over the 2016 administration of STAAR exams, state lawyers argued this summer that the parents had no standing and asked the courts to drop the case.

This week, the first day of school for many Texas children, Travis County District Court Judge Stephen Yelenosky denied their request in a one-page order with no further explanation.

The decision, which comes after a recent hearing, means the lawsuit brought by parents from Houston, Wimberley, Austin and Orangefield — whose children were in the third, fifth and eighth grades last school year — will be able to proceed.

[…]

Education Commissioner Mike Morath, listed as the primary defendant in the suit, threw out all grade promotion consequences for fifth- and eighth-graders this year because of score delays under a new testing vendor, the filings note. They also say that students could have been advanced to the next grade by a graduation committee regardless of Morath’s decision, and that there are no such consequences for third-graders. The filing also says there is “no allegation any of the plaintiffs failed or were specifically harmed by the allegedly noncompliant test — or even that the length of the test affected the child’s performance in any way.”

But the parents would like to see all scores thrown out. Their lawyer Austin-area lawyer, Scott Placek, who hailed Monday’s decision as a “big victory,” said they will keep fighting until that happens.

“The judge said without qualifications they have the right to be there and they have the right to have their case heard and so we’re in the position now where the case can really go forward,” he said. “I think we’ll look to move the discovery expeditiously and get to trial as quickly as we can because kids are being impacted already as they head back to school.”

See here and here for the background, and here for a copy of the judge’s order. The plaintiffs’ crowdfunded group The Committee to Stop STAAR has two posts on its webpage concerning TEA reports that they say show the STAAR test was not administered in compliance with the law. This ought to get very interesting.

What can we do to increase the odds of a downballot Democratic victory?

Aug 23rd, 2016

by Charles Kuffner.

1 comment

Yesterday, I raised the possibility of downballot Democrats winning statewide races if 1) polling in the Trump/Clinton matchup remained at or below the six point spread in the recent PPP poll and 2) Democrats did a better job voting all the way down the ballot than Republicans, as has been the case in recent Presidential elections. What can Democrats do to increase the odds of this happening?

Let’s start by recognizing what we can’t do. Trump’s gonna Trump, Clinton is going to do what she does, and the numbers will be what they are. If you’re reading this and you know how you’re voting, you’re not part of this equation – you’re already factored in. We also can’t affect what Republicans, whether NeverTrumpers or not, do downballot. It’s my supposition that conditions are favorable for Republicans to see fewer votes in downballot races this year than they might normally expect, but that’s all that it is. Even if I’m right about that, it may not be enough to make a difference. All Democrats can reasonably do is try to position themselves as best they can to take advantage of this if there is something to take advantage of.

So what can we do? The good new is, this isn’t complicated.

1. Vote all the way down the ballot – I presume you already do that, but nothing is too obvious that it need not be stated. Vote all the way down the ballot, and vote for Democrats. I’ve been addressing the Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals in these two posts, and before that I’ve been harping on the lower appeals courts. Don’t forget the district and county courts, too.

2. Spend your money and volunteer energy here in Texas – How much more incentive do you need than the prospect of winning a statewide race for the first time since 1994? Give a few bucks to your local party/coordinated campaign, volunteer to phonebank, you know the drill. Do something to spread the message. It doesn’t matter if there aren’t any local races of interest, either. If there can be a grassroots GOTV effort in Lubbock, there can be one anywhere. Find one and be a part of it.

3. Support the candidates in question – Here are the Democratic candidates running for Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals:

Mike Westergren – Justice, Supreme Court, Place 3
Dori Contreras Garza – Justice, Supreme Court, Place 5
Savannah Robinson – Justice, Supreme Court, Place 9

Lawrence “Larry” Meyers – Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 2
Betsy Johnson – Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 5
Robert Burns – Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals Place 6

Meyers is an incumbent, having switched parties prior to the 2014 election; the rest are challengers. You could send them a few bucks to help them get their names out – even a little bit of extra name recognition may translate to a few extra people not skipping their race – or talk about them in your social circle. The name of the game is name recognition.

4. Reach out to left-leaning friends and family who won’t support Hillary Clinton – We all have people like this in our lives. A gentle suggestion that they vote for some downballot Democrats probably can’t hurt.

Like I said, not exactly rocket science. Everything I’ve said here is intuitive, and would have an effect on the margins, since that’s where an effect can be had. I think the key here is just thinking that it really may be possible. Again, I stress the “may be” part – I don’t want to over-promise, but I do want people thinking about this.

August, 2016:

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