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December 22nd, 2022:

Texas drops appeal of ruling that forbade banning the sale of handguns to people under 21

Dec 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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Least surprising headline of the week. And month, and year, and pretty much any other arbitrary timeline you choose.

Texas will no longer fight to ban 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying handguns in public. A judge ruled earlier this year that a state law banning the practice was unconstitutional, and Texas initially filed a notice that it would appeal. But Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw withdrew the appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman’s ruling was the first major decision about Texas gun laws since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the Second Amendment protected individuals who carry weapons for self-defense.

In September, the state filed a notice of appeal, which angered gun rights activists.

“Once again, government officials in the state of Texas are proven to be anti-gun stooges,” Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, said in a news release at the time.

Neither the notice of appeal nor the withdrawal listed legal arguments or reasons for doing so; DPS and the Texas attorney general’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

See here and here for the background. I’m quite certain that the legal reasoning behind this is “we never wanted to appeal this in the first place but there was an election coming up and we wanted to tread carefully, and now that everyone has been safely re-elected we can drop the pretense”. This was predictable enough to be visible from orbit. My question for the lawyers is, could some other group pick up the appeal in place of the state, the way the then-Republican Congress took up the defense of DOMA after the Obama administration dropped out? I don’t know what the conditions are for that.

It’s winter surge time again

Dec 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, though I think you already suspected this.


COVID-19 cases are rising across Texas two weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday, echoing last year’s surge of the omicron variant.

There are more than 18,000 positive cases across the state this week, up from a little over 7,000 the week of Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving this year was kind of like PTSD,” said epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, author of Your Local Epidemiologist. “I think all of us epidemiologists were holding our breath, just to make sure this was going to be a regular Thanksgiving.”

While hospitalizations and deaths are still low thanks to COVID-19 vaccinations and the updated bivalent booster that targets omicron, cases have been steadily climbing since November.

The change this year, Jetelina said, is the combination of flu, RSV, and now COVID. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports the intensity of influenza-like illness has remained “very high” in the past few weeks, with an increase in the number of influenza outbreaks and more than 28,000 positive flu tests in the week ending in Dec. 3.

“RSV and flu are just back with vengeance,” she said. “We’re starting to get a sneak peek of what this new normal is.”

Other states, like New York, have issued a health advisory to encourage people to mask indoors while cases are high. Jetelina said it’s important to think about protecting the most vulnerable members of the community, like the elderly and folks who are immunocompromised.

“I’m going to have 90-year-old people at my house for Christmas this year,” she said. “That, to me, means I am wearing an N-95 mask in public everywhere I go the week before Christmas. It helps ensure I don’t miss the event because I’m sick, but it also helps break that transmission chain so I don’t bring it to my grandparents.”

She says it’s not too late to get vaccinated to protect against COVID and the flu.

“I’m tired, everyone’s tired, [but] the virus isn’t tired of us,” she said.

We saw this coming in October, and we know what a “tripledemic” is. The virus levels in the wastewater are high. You know what I’m going to tell you: Get your bivalent booster and your flu shot. Wear that mask in crowded indoor spaces. Isolate yourself if you feel sick. Think about the high-risk people in your life. We’re not in 2020 any more, and the current dominant strains are thankfully not as virulent as delta was. You really can do a lot to maximize your safety while giving up very little. But you have to actually do it.

No, really, are we emotionally prepared for this freeze?

Dec 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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Ready or not, here it comes.

State officials warned residents Wednesday to prepare their homes and vehicles for the coming freeze while trying to reassure on-edge Texans that the electric grid will stay online.

Temperatures are expected to plummet Thursday into single digits — with even lower wind chills. Leaders urged residents to check their car tires and batteries to be sure no one gets stranded on the road, to burn wood or gas inside only if there’s proper ventilation, and to insulate pipes.

“This is a dangerous storm coming our way,” said Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management. “The temperatures will be extremely cold and the winds will be high, which will generate some very dangerous wind chills.”

Forecasters predicted life-threatening minus-10-degree wind chills in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and wind chills as low as minus 30 degrees in the Panhandle, Kidd said. Aside from light precipitation in the Panhandle, the state was expected to stay dry.

The lack of concerns over icy roads and infrastructure makes this a different threat than the 2021 Winter Storm Uri, which overwhelmed the state’s main electric grid and killed hundreds of people. Officials are promising that, this time, the power will stay on.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the grid that powers most of Texas, and the Public Utility Council made improvements after Uri, such as ensuring natural gas-fired plants have additional sources of fuel on site and improving communications among electricity regulators, oil and gas regulators, and the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

“The grid is ready and reliable,” said Peter Lake, chair of the Public Utility Commission, which regulates grid operators, on Wednesday. “We expect to have sufficient generation to meet demand throughout this entire winter weather event.”

ERCOT officials expected power demand to be highest from Thursday night through Saturday morning. The peak — near 70,000 megawatts — was predicted Friday morning, when grid operators expected to have nearly 85,000 megawatts of supply if all goes as planned.

“We do expect to have sufficient generation supply to meet the forecasted demands,” said Pablo Vegas, ERCOT’s president and CEO.

Of course, in an extreme scenario, the grid could still face rolling blackouts or tight conditions, and ERCOT could still issue a conservation notice. There may also be local power outages that have nothing to do with the viability of the power grid, caused by things such as wind knocking trees onto power lines.

See here for the background. We’ll find out soon enough. You’ll forgive me, and millions of other Texans, if we remain skeptical. I hope you all stay warm and safe, and that we have a good long time before we have to worry like this again.

Texas blog roundup for the week of December 19

Dec 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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The Texas Progressive Alliance has some chestnuts and an open fire ready to go as it brings you this week’s roundup.

(more…)

Now is a great time to buy a Christmas tree

Dec 22nd, 2022
by Charles Kuffner.
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Procrastinators rejoice.

When it came to buying a Christmas tree in Houston it paid off to procrastinate.

Prices, already high last year, jumped further this year as retailers sought to lock in supplies despite increases spurred by skyrocketing fertilizer and fuel costs. But that strategy appears to have overestimated demand, leaving many tree sellers with stock they are now hustling to sell down before the holiday passes and glorious trees become plain old mulch.

In a survey of wholesale Christmas tree growers across the U.S., every grower surveyed said that the cost of growing and selling Christmas trees has gone up from last year, according to the Real Christmas Tree Board, an industry research group. As a result, more than 70 percent said they increased their prices from 5 percent to 15 percent, and another 16 percent said price increases would be even higher.

That held true in Texas, where Stan Reed, executive secretary of the Texas Christmas Tree Growers Association, said fuel and fertilizer fed the increases. There are only about 150 farms in Texas that can grow varieties of pines, cypress and red cedar that are used as Christmas trees, according to Reed. Other popular trees, such as fir and spruce, are imported from North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon and Wisconsin.

Reed said a seller importing 600 trees from Oregon paid $10,000 this year, compared to about $6,000 last year, making each tree just under $7 more expensive to import.

Buying from farms or lots that source from within the state may be cheaper, but even at those locations the increased price of fertilizer has tacked on an additional costs to be passed on to consumers. Global fertilizer costs have soared over the past year, rising 80 percent in 2021 and another 30 percent in the first half of 2022, according to the World Bank.

But while those higher prices were passed along to shoppers earlier in the season, many Houston tree sellers have launched deep discounts in the past week or so. At Houston Garden Centers, which has more than 20 locations around Houston, Christmas trees are half off. And Buchanan’s Native Plants in the Heights started giving away trees Monday.

Those free trees are first-come, first-served, so don’t wait too much longer. There were some drought-related issues last year that also contributed to a tight tree supply and more incentive to stock up for this year. However we got here, if you’ve been holding out to wait for a bargain, this is your time. I hope your kids forgive you for making them wait.