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July 26th, 2020:

Weekend link dump for July 26

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
2 comments

The COVID risk chart we really need.

“Folks, this is the nature of child-rearing.”

“The detonation forever changed the course of history, ensuring the end of World War II and marking the dawn of the atomic age. After 75 years, the test is both revered for the scientific advancements it helped to usher in and vilified for the moral and diplomatic implications that still linger in its wake.”

One of the weirdest murder stories you’ll ever read, with implications for how crimes in outer space may be handled someday.

“Woman Who Refused To Wear Mask At Starbucks Wants Half The $100k In Tip Money Barista Got From GoFundMe Campaign”.

“The African continent is very slowly peeling apart. Scientists say a new ocean is being born.”

“The Roman Empire would have a better reputation if it had enjoyed more leaders like Augustus and Marcus Aurelius and fewer like Caligula and Nero, and someday a couple of thousand years from now there will be some blogger saying the same about America. Bad leadership matters, and George W. Bush and Donald Trump have provided the kind of leadership that leaves an indelible stain.”

“The key to Biden’s success is simple: He’s slicing into Trump’s coalition, pulling back the older, whiter voters Democrats lost in 2016. The Biden campaign’s insight is that mobilization is often the flip side of polarization: When party activists are sharply divided by ideology and demography, what excites your side will be the very thing that unnerves the other side.”

RIP, Vincent Mandola, longtime Houston restauranteur.

From the Bad Uses For Drones department.

“Trader Joe’s said it will change the names carried by some of its international food products in response to an online petition that called on the grocery chain to ‘remove racist branding and packaging.'”

“This is a thread of fun times I had while enforcing the new company policy of required masks at the grocery store I work at”. My God, so may people are huge entitled babies.

“Such resentment is a choice. It is not an easy choice, both because it is unpleasant and because it is laughably absurd. But if one is stubbornly determined to make such a choice, and to repeat it, and to stick with it, one can train oneself to ignore the absurdity of it and to learn to enjoy and to savor the bitter acquired taste of resentment. Stick with that choice long enough and you can lose your taste for anything else.”

“Guilt by association is really not a thing in American law.”

As long as we are rooting for Major League Baseball to be played in safety for its entire season, let us also root for someone to hit .400 during that season.

RIP, Pam Francis, Houston photographer known as the Annie Liebovitz of Texas.

MLB players take a knee on Opening Day. Good for them.

“Trump used northeastern states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which lowered their infection curve with strict stay-at-home orders, as part of a misleading argument that much of the US was free of the virus. What he didn’t say is that those states succeeded because they ignored his calls to reopen.”

“And so what I believe is that having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man. Lastly, what I want to express to Mr. Yoho is gratitude. I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women.”

RIP, Regis Philbin, best known for being Regis Philbin.

“There is no acknowledgement here that Ted Yoho, not lacking political and professional ambition himself, was also building his brand by deciding to accost Ocasio-Cortez in front of reporters. Nor is there acknowledgment that it worked for him.”

RIP, Olivia de Havilland, two-time Oscar winner from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

July 2020 campaign finance reports: Harris County

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

You can always count on January and July for campaign finance reports. This roundup is going to be a little funky, because all of the candidates filed eight-day reports for the March primary, and a few also filed 30-day and eight-day reports for the July runoff. I’ll note those folks, because it means that some of the comparisons are not really apples-to-apples. But this is what we have. The July 2019 reports are here, and the January 2020 reports are here.

Kim Ogg, District Attorney
Mary Nan Huffman, District Attorney

Ed Gonzalez, Sheriff
Joe Danna, Sheriff

Christian Menefee, Harris County Attorney
John Nation, Harris County Attorney

Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor
Chris Daniel (SPAC), Tax Assessor

Rodney Ellis, County Commissioner, Precinct 1

Michael Moore, County Commissioner, Precinct 3
Tom Ramsey, County Commissioner, Precinct 3


Candidate     Raised     Spent     Loan     On Hand
===================================================
Ogg           64,109   223,775   68,489      29,698
Huffman       30,455    58,215        0      11,385

Gonzalez      37,352    28,320        0      73,959
Danna         56,446    26,240        0       8,490

Menefee       24,236    32,768        0      11,680
Nation             0         0        0           0

Bennett       
Daniel         1,302        51   25,000       1,705

Ellis         53,835   575,804        0   3,029,506

Moore        156,790   245,110        0      96,832
Ramsey       346,150    49,829        0     308,942

Both Ogg ($385K) and Gonzales ($317K) had plenty of cash on hand as of January, but they both spent a bunch of money in their contested primaries; Ogg needed to do so more than Gonzalez took the wise approach of not taking his little-known opponents lightly. I expect they’ll raise enough to run their campaigns, but as they’ll benefit from the Democratic nature of the county, I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be big moneybags. I haven’t seen much of a campaign from Huffman as yet, and Joe Danna is a perennial candidate who gets most of his contributions as in-kind. What I’m saying is, don’t expect a whole lot from these races.

The same is largely true for the County Attorney and Tax Assessor races. Christian Menefeee had a decent amount raised for his January report, so he’ll probably take in a few bucks. I know absolutely nothing about his opponent, who doesn’t appear to be doing much. I don’t know why Ann Harris Bennett hasn’t filed a report yet, but he’s never been a big fundraiser. Chris Daniel has always used that PAC for his campaigns, and he had a few bucks in it as District Clerk but not that much.

Rodney Ellis brought a lot of money with him from his time as State Senator when he moved to the County Commissioner spot, and he will continue to raise and spend a significant amount. If previous patterns hold, he’ll put some money towards a coordinated campaign, and support some other Dems running for office directly. The race that will see the most money is the Commissioner race in Precinct 3. Michael Moore was in the Dem primary runoff, and the report you see is from July 6, which is to say it’s his eight-day report. That means the money raised and spent is from a 22-day period, which should give a bit of perspective. Both he and Tom Ramsey will have all the resources they need.

Abandon ship!

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

LOL.

During Troy Nehls’ recent bid for the Republican nomination in one of Texas’ battleground congressional districts, the Fort Bend County sheriff prominently displayed his support for President Trump across his campaign website.

“In Congress, I will stand with President Trump to defeat the socialist Democrats, build the wall, drain the swamp, and deliver on pro-economy and pro-America policies,” Nehls said under the top section of his issues page, titled “Standing with President Trump.”

Within two days of Nehls’ lopsided runoff victory, that section had been removed, along with a paragraph from Nehls’ bio page that stated he “supports President Trump” and wants to “deliver President Trump’s agenda.” Fresh language now focuses on his record as sheriff during Hurricane Harvey and managing the agency’s budget.

Nehls’ abrupt shift in tone captures the challenge facing Republican candidates in suburban battleground districts up and down the ballot, including Nehls’ district and two neighboring ones, where polling suggests Trump’s coronavirus response has alienated voters and, for now, created strong headwinds for his party’s congressional hopefuls.

In those contested districts, which even Republicans acknowledge Trump may lose, GOP candidates are navigating the choppy political waters by emphasizing their personal backgrounds and portraying their Democratic foes as too extreme. Most have dropped the enthusiastic pro-Trump rhetoric they employed during the primaries.

It is not uncommon for candidates to tailor their messages to the far ends of their party bases during the primaries before tacking back toward the center for the general election.

Still, it remains a unique challenge for Republicans in competitive races to distance themselves from the president and his lagging poll numbers without angering their supporters, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I think how you do that is still not quite clear, but I also think the ground is really shifting,” Henson said. “(Trump’s) overall favorable-unfavorable numbers are going down, he’s losing ground among independents, and we see glimmers — but just glimmers — of doubt among some Republicans in some suburban areas.”

Hilarious. The story also notes the Republican challenger in CD07, who was endorsed by Trump in the primary but would prefer that you not talk about that, and the CD10 race where Democratic challenger Mike Siegel is working to tie Trump to longtime incumbent Mike McCaul. We’ve seen this movie before, though in years past it had always been Democrats attempting this tightrope act, either by emphasizing their close personal friendship with Dubya Bush or their many points of disagreement with Barack Obama. It worked better in the former case than the latter, as anyone who remembers 2010 can attest.

The main advantage the Republicans running now have is that the districts they’re in are (for the most part, CD07 being an exception) still Republican, at least as of 2018. Those Democrats of yore had been running in districts that were often 60% or more red, and they depended heavily on folks who were willing to split the ticket for them – until they didn’t, of course, which is what happened en masse in 2010. The challenge today is holding onto the folks who had been fairly reliable Republican voters before 2016. Donald Trump (and to a lesser extent his acolytes like Dan Patrick) are the reason these voters are turning away, which is why the strategy of pretending that Trump doesn’t exist is so compelling. The problem with that is that Donald Trump is the Republican Party these days, and the Republican Party is Donald Trump. That presents a bit of a conundrum for the likes of Troy Nehls, himself a longtime Republican officeholder. He may yet win – maybe the district won’t have shifted enough, or maybe enough people will vote for him because they liked him as Sheriff regardless of other factors, or whatever. But I’m pretty sure this isn’t the campaign he thought he’d be running when he first entered the race.

Harris County issues school closure order

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

This was expected.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Harris County and Houston health authorities on Friday ordered all public and non-religious private schools to delay opening for in-person instruction until at least Sept. 8 — a date likely to be extended unless the region sees a significant reduction in its COVID-19 outbreak.

Flanked by their respective health authorities, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said the region’s novel coronavirus outlook appears too dire to allow the restart of face-to-face classes before Labor Day. Most Houston-area public school districts already had pushed back their in-person start dates to Sept. 8, though a few remained on track to hold on-campus classes in August.

“The last thing I want to do is shut down a brick-and-mortar representation of the American dream,” Hidalgo said Friday. “But right now, we’re guided by human life.”

With the decision, officials in all five of the state’s largest counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar and Travis — have ordered the closure of public schools through at least Labor Day.

None of the Greater Houston region’s other large counties — Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria and Galveston — have issued closure orders. However, Montgomery County public health officials recommended this week that their school districts delay their start dates or remain online-only through Labor Day.

The Harris County order comes four days after Hidalgo and Public Health Executive Director Umair Shah issued a non-binding recommendation that campuses stay closed until October at the earliest. While county and city officials held off Friday on mandating closures through September, Hidalgo said reopening buildings immediately after Labor Day “is still likely too soon.”

County and city officials said they will need to see a significant decrease in multiple measures, including case counts, rate of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths, before they OK the reopening of campuses. Local health officials, however, have not set specific COVID-19 outbreak benchmarks that must be met.

“If we want our schools to reopen quicker in person, it’s going to take all of us pulling together to do that,” Shah said.

See here for the background. This was done in part so that HISD would be in compliance with the TEA’s current guidelines. We all want our kids to get back to school in a safe manner as quickly as possible. That means not flattening but crushing the curve, getting coronavirus infections way down to much more manageable levels. We have the month of August to make that happen. Are we going to take this seriously – face masking, social distancing, self-quarantining as needed – or not? The choice is ours.

Of course Abbott’s “Strike Force” are all Abbott donors

Jul 26th, 2020
by Charles Kuffner.
Comments are off for this post

I have three things to say about this.

Members of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s coronavirus “strike force” have contributed hundreds of thousand of dollars to his re-election campaign as the number of COVID-19 cases and the death toll has mounted, records show.

Since naming members of the Strike Force to Open Texas in mid April, Abbott pulled in just over $640,000 from appointees or affiliated groups, according to his most recent campaign finance report on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. All had donated previously to Abbott, one of the most prodigious fundraisers in Texas political history.

The new contributions drew fire from ethics watchdogs and the Texas Democratic Party, the latter accusing Abbott of having “profited off this crisis” and calling on him to return the money.

[…]

Among the latest strike force donors who gave to Abbott in the last six weeks: former Astros owner Drayton McLane, $250,000; Texas restaurant operator Bobby Cox, $137,596; South Texas businessman Alonzo Cantu, $25,000; the Border Health PAC, closely tied to Cantu, $150,000; Sam Susser, chairman of BancAffliated, $50,000; Bruce Bugg, chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, $25,000; and Balous Miller, owner of Bill Miller BBQ, $5,000, records show.

Susser, the banker and investor who recently gave Abbott $50,000, said he gives money to the governor not to influence any policy outcomes but because he believes the governor is “doing a terrific job leading our state.”

“If any of those critics would like to have my job, and can do it better, more power to them,” Susser said. “I try to do the best I can. It cost me a ton of time and money to do those things. And I’m not very empathetic to whatever criticism may be out there.”

1. Duh!

2. I mean, seriously, this is the way Abbott has operated since Day One. Donors get appointments, and appointees make donations. As it ever was, as it shall be.

3. Hey, remember when Abbott first named the Strike Force, which was supposed to help him reopen the economy now that we had that pesky virus under control? And it had a couple of medical expert types who were supposed to help develop a strategy for comprehensive testing and tracing? Good times, good times. What metric do you suppose Sam Susser is using to evaluate his and his teammates’ performance on the Strike Force? Because from where I sit, I don’t think it would be that hard to find people who would in fact have done a better job. The bar to clear is not very high.