Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

The farm team

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Roll Call takes a look at the Texas Democrats of the future.

Rep. Joaquin Castro

Democrats rarely fielded competitive Senate candidates over the past two decades — the party’s three best performers in that time span received 44 percent, 43 percent and 43 percent — but that may change by the next midterm cycle. State and national Democrats are gearing up for a competitive Senate bid as early as 2018, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is up.

The first potential candidate names out of the mouths of most operatives are the Castro twins, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro and freshman Rep. Joaquin Castro — though there are mixed opinions about which one is more likely to jump. Wendy Davis’ name comes up as well, should she comes up short in this year’s gubernatorial race, and the buzz in some Democratic circles is that Davis’ running mate, state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, has as promising a political future as Davis.

Beyond those four, there is a second tier of candidates who could possibly run statewide but don’t quite yet have the same star power. It includes freshman Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who ousted eight-term Rep. Silvestre Reyes in 2012. He is young and attractive, but his geographic base is weak — El Paso is remote and actually closer to the Pacific Ocean than it is to the Louisiana border.

Democrats also named state Reps. Trey Martinez Fischer and Chris Turner as possible statewide contenders and pointed to Houston Mayor Annise Parker, albeit with caution. Parker is openly gay, and some say that while Texas is evolving on a number of issues, gay rights is not likely to be one of them in the immediate future.

We’ve discussed the 2018 election before. Based on her comments so far, I don’t see Mayor Parker as a potential candidate for the US Senate. I see her as a candidate for Governor or Comptroller, assuming those offices are not occupied by Democrats.

Among the future contenders for [Rep. Gene] Green’s seat, Democrats identified state Reps. Armando Walle, Carol Alvarado and Ana Hernandez, plus Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia.

There is perpetual scuttlebutt in the state that [Rep. Lloyd] Doggett is vulnerable to a Hispanic primary challenge. Other Democratic strategists discount that line of thinking, citing Doggett’s war chest and ability to weather whatever lines he’s drawn into.

Whenever he leaves office, Democrats named Martinez Fischer and state Rep. Mike Villarreal as likely contenders. Martinez Fischer could also run in Joaquin Castro’s 20th District if he seeks higher office.

As for Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s Houston-based 18th District, state operatives pointed to state Reps. Sylvester Turner and Garnet F. Coleman, who could also run for Rep. Al Green’s seat.

Working backwards, Rep. Sylvester Turner is running for Mayor in 2015. That would not preclude a future run for Congress, of course, but I doubt it’s on his mind right now. I love Rep. Garnet Coleman, but I’ve never really gotten the impression that he has his eye on Washington, DC. Among other things, he has school-age kids at home, and I’m not sure how much the idea of commuting to DC appeals to him. The same is true for Sen. Rodney Ellis, whose district has a lot of overlap with Rep. Al Green’s CD09. Ellis has by far the biggest campaign warchest among them, which is one reason why I had once suggested he run statewide this year. Beyond them, there’s a long list of current and former elected officials – Ronald Green, Brad Bradford, Jolanda Jones, Wanda Adams, Carroll Robinson, etc etc etc – that would surely express interest in either CD09 or CD18 if it became open. About the only thing that might alter this dynamic is if County Commissioner El Franco Lee decided to retire; the line for that office is longer than I-10.

As for Rep. Gene Green, I’d add Rep. Carol Alvarado and James Rodriguez to the list of people who’d at least consider a run to replace him. I’m less sure about Sheriff Garcia. I think everyone expects him to run for something else someday – he’s starting to get the John Sharp Obligatory Mention treatment – but I have no idea if he has any interest in Congress. And as for Rep. Doggett, all I’ll say is that he’s shown himself to be pretty hard to beat in a primary.

Texas’ 23rd, which includes much of the state’s border with Texas, is the only competitive district in the state and turns over regularly. If Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego lost re-election and Democrats were on the hunt for a new recruit, one could be state Rep. Mary González.

Should 11-term Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson retire, Democrats said attorney Taj Clayton, along with state Reps. Yvonne Davis and Eric Johnson would be likely contenders for her Dallas-based 30th District.

State Rep. Armando “Mando” Martinez is also a rising star. But his local seat in the Brownsville-based 34th District is unlikely to open up any time soon — Rep. Filemon Vela, from a well-known family in South Texas, was elected in 2012.

The great hope for Democrats is that continued Texas redistricting litigation will provide an additional majority Hispanic district based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. State Rep. Rafael Anchia is the obvious choice for that hypothetical seat, along with Tarrant County Justice of the Peace Sergio L. De Leon.

And then there are a handful of Texas Democrats who stir up chatter but have no obvious place to run for federal office. Democrats put former state Rep. Mark Strama and Jane Hamilton, the current chief of staff to Rep. Marc Veasey, in this category.

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Lily Adams, granddaughter of Ann Richards, is a respected political operative in Washington, D.C., and recently earned attention as a possible candidate talent.

I’m rooting for Rep. Gallego to win re-election this fall, but no question I’d love to see Rep. González run for higher office at some point. Taj Clayton ran against Rep. Johnson in 2012, getting support from the Campaign for Primary Accountability (which appears to be in a resting state now), along with Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who also appears in this story as someone to watch. Rep. Anchia is someone I’ve been rooting for and would love to see get a promotion. Mark Strama is off doing Google Fiber in Austin. I have no idea if he’d want to get back in the game – like several other folks I’ve mentioned, he has young kids – but he’s been mentioned as a possible candidate for Mayor in Austin before; if he does re-enter politics, and if he has an eye on something bigger down the line, that would be a good way to go for it. Lily Adams is 27 years old and has never run for any office before, but she’s got an excellent pedigree and has apparently impressed some folks. In baseball terms, she’s tearing up it in short season A ball, but needs to show what she can do on a bigger stage before anyone gets carried away.

Anyway. Stuff like this is necessarily speculative, and that speculation about 2018 is necessarily dependent on what happens this year. If Democrats manage to beat expectations and score some wins, statewide hopefuls may find themselves waiting longer than they might have thought. If Democrats have a crappy year, by which one in which no measurable progress in getting out the vote and narrowing the gap is made, some of these folks may decide they have better things to do in 2018. As for the Congressional understudies, unless they want to go the Beto O’Rourke route and mount a primary challenge to someone, who knows how long they may have to wait. It’s entirely possible all this talk will look silly four years from now. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Posted in Election 2018 | Tagged Adrian Garcia, Al Green, Ann Richards, Annise Parker, Armando Walle, Beto O'Rourke, CD09, CD16, CD18, CD20, CD23, CD29, CD30, CD35, Chris Turner, Congress, Election 2012, Election 2014, Election 2018, Eric Johnson, Garnet Coleman, Gene Green, Governor, Joaquin Castro, Julian Castro, Leticia Van De Putte, Lily Adams, Lloyd Doggett, Mando Martinez, Mark Strama, Mary Gonzalez, Mike Villarreal, Pete Gallego, Rafael Anchia, Rodney Ellis, Senate, Sheila Jackson Lee, Silvestre Reyes, Sylvester Turner, Taj Clayton, Ted Cruz, Texas, Trey Martinez-Fischer, Wendy Davis, Yvonne Davis | 1 Comment

HISD board votes for Mexican-American studies class

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

You would think this wouldn’t be a big deal.

Juliet Stipeche

The Houston school board, representing the largest district in Texas, threw its support Thursday behind the creation of a Mexican-American studies course in Texas public schools.

The 9-0 vote followed some debate over whether the district would appear to be favoring one culture over another.

“Unanimous is beautiful,” advocate Tony Diaz said after the decision.

HISD board president Juliet Stipeche, who brought the resolution to the board, argued the course was important given that Hispanic enrollment in the state’s public schools tops 51 percent.

She asked her fellow trustees and district officials whether they could name five Mexican-American leaders in U.S. history. They struggled to name a fifth.

“It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we don’t know,” she said.

In Austin [this] week, the State Board of Education plans to discuss developing new elective courses, including a Mexican-American history and culture class for high school students.

You can imagine what will happen when the SBOE gets involved.

On Wednesday, the Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote on developing state curriculum standards for new courses – including, controversially, a high-school elective class in Mexican-American history.

To proponents, the proposal seems to fill an obvious need. Fifty-one percent of Texas’ public-school students are Hispanic. And in the past, the state has created curriculum guidelines for a host of elective classes, including subjects such as floral arrangement, musical theater, landscape design and turf-grass management.

“If we can inspire a child by teaching about Mexican-Americans’ struggles and difficulties, why wouldn’t we do that?” asks Ruben Cortez, D-Brownsville, the state board member who proposed the course.

Opponents – likely in the majority on the Republican-dominated state board – answer that question in many ways.

Some argue that school districts don’t need an official state curriculum to offer the class, and say that the Texas Education Agency is too busy now creating guidelines for other classes required by House Bill 5’s sweeping changes to the state’s graduation requirements.

“I think it is up to the local school districts whether or not to offer a Mexican-American studies course,” board chairman Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, wrote via email. “Several districts in Texas already do.”

Other opponents of Cortez’s proposal believe it’s simply wrong to offer a state-endorsed ethnic-studies course. They say that it undercuts Texan and American identity.

“I’m Irish,” says board member David Bradley, R-Beaumont. “So I’d like to propose an amendment to create an Irish-American Studies class.

He noted that many HISD students speak Urdu: “Why not Indian-American Studies? That may sound silly. But I’m raising a serious point. In Texas public schools, we teach American history and Texas history. We don’t teach Irish-American history and Italian-American history.”

Board member Patricia Hardy, R-Weatherford, said the state already includes a considerable amount of Mexican-American history in the curriculum. A former social-studies teacher, she argues that a Mexican-American studies class would do students a disservice if it displaces other social-studies offerings.

“World geography or world history would be more to a student’s advantage,” she says. “They need more global courses that are broader than Mexican-American.”

I mean, come on. Do we really need to explain why in Texas a more in depth examination of Mexican-American history might be a worthwhile addition to the curriculum? I might have had a bit more patience for the SBOE’s excuses here if it weren’t for the fact that they had previously voted to remove a specific requirement that students learn about the efforts of women and ethnic minorities to gain equal rights, as part of an overall effort to make the social studies curriculum more acceptable to the tender sensibilities of aggrieved right wing interests. It was bad enough that even conservative scholars and Republican legislators were critical of the changes. All this is doing is trying to undo some of that damage. Stace has more.

Posted in School days | Tagged Barbara Cargill, David Bradley, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Juliet Stipeche, Patricia Hardy, SBOE, schools, social studies, Texas | Comments Off

What the Burnam case is about

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I’m still not sure what to think about Rep. Lon Burnam’s electoral challenge against Ramon Romero in HD90.

Rep. Lon Burnam

In a case that election officials statewide are monitoring — because it involves the use of electronic devices such as iPads — attorneys say enough ballots are in question to make a difference in the race Burnam lost by 111 votes to local businessman Ramon Romero Jr.

“We feel like there’s basically voter fraud and illegality that went on out there,” said Art Brender, a local lawyer and former Tarrant County Democratic Party chairman who is on the legal team representing Burnam. “We’ll know pretty soon.”

Romero, a businessman who owns A-Fast Coping Tile and Stone, said he believes this case will be resolved soon — in his favor.

“We didn’t have tablets. What he’s alleging has nothing to do with our campaign,” he said. “I don’t believe there was anything illegal that happened. It is sad that this is where we are. We should be moving forward.”

[…]

Burnam’s lawsuit alleges that some voters in the district were approached by campaign workers who asked them to fill out applications to vote by mail on an electronic device such as an iPad.

Burnam wants to review these applications, saying he believes “that these documents and other testimony will establish beyond question that the computerized-signature operation was illegal and that I won the election.”

His legal challenge claims that of the nearly 5,100 votes cast in this race, 951 were mail-in ballots — more than enough to decide the election.

But his request for copies of all applications for mail-in ballots was rejected Friday during a hearing before state District Judge Robert McFarling of Denton, who recently was appointed to oversee the case.

Ann Diamond with the Tarrant County district attorney’s office argued against releasing all the applications, saying they are not publicly available and they include private information (telephone numbers, addresses and more). About 30 of the forms have been released.

Brender maintains that the records are public information and what he has reviewed already shows that at least three people may have voted twice — once in early voting and once on election day. A review of all the applications could show even more problems and potentially invalidate enough ballots to flip the election results.

McFarling chose to not order the release of that information, saying even if there was a problem with the way a ballot was requested, the vote should still be counted.

And he said there was no proof that data requested would lead to “admissible evidence” in the case.

“You have to have a factual basis … before we start messing with the rights of individuals to vote,” he said. “I don’t think it’s sufficient to say … we think there might be something wrong … and we want to check it out.”

See here and here for the background. I have no opinion on this particular ruling, I’m more interested in the big picture.

A key issue in this case is the use of electronic devices to request mail-in ballots — and whether that’s legal in Texas.

Political observers say the state’s Election Code only addresses electronic signatures at polling places, such as when voters cast their ballot during early voting or on Election Day.

“The use of an iPad to fill out forms to request an absentee ballot would not appear to comply with the letter of state election law, but would appear to be in line with the spirit of the law,” said Mark P. Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.

“The law simply has not been updated to take account of the rising use of iPads and other mobile devices, leaving a vacuum in the state’s election law.”

Stephen Vickers, chief deputy elections administrator in Tarrant County, said he couldn’t comment on the case because of the pending litigation.

The ultimate ruling in this case may well determine how election officials statewide process mail-in ballots for at least the rest of the year.

“This case also should hopefully spur the Texas Legislature to modify the state’s election law during the 2015 legislative session to allow for the use of electronic devices to complete mail-in ballot request forms,” Jones said. “Perhaps that reform will be the first bill that Rep. Romero files.”

[…]

Officials with both major political parties say they are watching this case.

“We trust the courts will take the issue seriously … [and] determine the best manner in which to proceed,” said Manny Garcia, communications director for the Texas Democratic Party.

Said Republican Party of Texas Chairman Steve Munisteri: “We are interested observers to see what the court rules to see if we are following the law correctly.”

There’s been some trolling about voter ID on this, but of course the voter ID law is only about in person ballots, and this challenge is all about absentee ballots. Technically, it’s not about the ballots themselves, but about the process to request an absentee ballot, and whether an iPad or similar device is allowable under the law as written. By the letter of the law I’d say not, but by the spirit – the law does allow for “telephone facsimile machines” – it’s clearly a Yes. I have no idea how the courts – or the Legislature, if this eventually winds up as an election contest to be adjudicated by the Lege – will rule, but I definitely agree (and have already said) that the law should be updated to allow this usage. There’s no good reason for it not to be allowed. There is good reason to be concerned about the peripheral effects of this case:

Romero said he wasn’t surprised by the lawsuit. But he believes this isn’t something “as Democrats that we should be insinuating.”

“Lots of people came out and were excited about being part of the primary. Now they don’t understand what’s going on,” he said. “They hear words of illegality and that scares people and makes them stay away.

“He should be welcoming me in Austin, helping with the transition. Instead, he’s doing this,” Romero said. “But he has a right to do this and we’re not mad at him. We’ll be down in Austin come January.”

I agree with Romero on this, and if his magnanimity is any indication, he’ll make a fine State Rep if he prevails in this case. Whatever the outcome, let’s make sure we update that law.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, Election 2014, election contest, HD90, iPads, lawsuit, Lon Burnam, Ramon Romero, Secretary of State, Tarrant County, Texas, The Lege, voter ID | Comments Off

Would pot be a cash crop?

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Trib takes a serious look at Kinky Friedman’s campaign platform.

Currently, it is illegal to grow and possess marijuana in Texas and most other states, and while hemp is legal for consumption, Texas and most other states do not allow farmers to grow it.

Experts with experience in the legal pot industry in other states, though, say a host of regulatory and environmental factors could complicate any potential benefits growing marijuana might have in Texas.

States that have recently legalized marijuana growing, including Colorado and Washington, have just gotten started, so they are difficult test cases to assess. But in California, where medicinal marijuana cultivation has been legal since 1996 and is plentiful, many farmers say the crop hasn’t been as good for agriculture as Friedman has suggested.

Much of the problems farmers and scientists in California report stem from the fact that under federal law, the plant remains illegal, so states cannot legally regulate its growth as they do other crops.

“Without prohibition, you wouldn’t have this problem,” said Tony Silvaggio, an environmental sociologist at Humboldt State University in California, who has researched the effects of marijuana farming in California.

[…]

“We don’t know anything empirical about what happens when serious professional farmers are allowed to do this,” said Jonathan Caulkins, who has studied the economics of marijuana growth at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College in Pittsburgh. But he suspects the price of marijuana would fall if it was mass produced, which could reduce its demand in the black market and reduce crime.

That doesn’t mean Texas farmers would benefit, though. Marijuana plants are difficult to harvest because the buds must be individually snipped from each plant. That work is labor intensive, and most farm workers today don’t have those skills.

The market for marijuana producers is also unlikely to get very big, Caulkins said, because it’s a high-yield crop. Only about 10,000 acres nationwide would be needed to satisfy the country’s demand, he said. If farmers grow more marijuana, they could oversaturate the market and drive down prices.

Hemp, on the other hand — which comes from the same plant as marijuana but has less THC, the chemical that produces a high — is easier to harvest, and demand in the U.S. is rising. Friedman has suggested that the first step to marijuana legalization is to allow Texans to grow hemp, which is used in a variety of products, from clothing and twine to edible seeds, protein powder and cosmetics such as moisturizers and essential oils.

Hemp has long been legal in Canada, but only a few hundred growers have licenses to produce there, Caulkins said. That doesn’t bode well for predictions of a hemp revolution in Texas that Friedman argues would occur if the state legalized growing it. A Congressional Research Service report on hemp last year came to a similar conclusion, noting that hemp crops can also cross-pollinate with marijuana crops. That means farmers growing hemp could suddenly find that their product has enough THC content to make people high, putting them in the crosshairs with the law — or that marijuana growers’ products would lose their potency.

Even if hemp and marijuana growth become possibilities for Texas farmers, it’s not clear that it would be a moneymaking enterprise. Those who profit most from agricultural production are typically at the end of the supply chain, like grocery stores or bakers, Caulkins said — not farmers.

“The people who are going to make money are going to be the bakeries that buy [it] … and put it into brownies,” he said.

I don’t know, given the local food movement these days, I wouldn’t underestimate the appeal of artisanal, locally-sourced reefers. It’s all in the marketing. Most of the problems cited in the story stem from the federal prohibitions against marijuana. That’s not something Texas can address directly, but just as action by cities tends to lead to a legislative response from the state, I expect that having more states legalize pot in some fashion will lead to changes in federal law. Attitudes about marijuana are shifting, thanks in large part to growing concerns about the cost of the War On Drugs. I won’t be surprised to see some kind of federal action, even if it’s strictly on the incarceration end, by the end of President Obama’s term in office. Texas could almost certainly accelerate that process if it reformed its marijuana laws, even if that just means accommodating medical marijuana. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and if the main obstacle to Kinky Friedman’s fondest dreams is the feds, there are things we can do to affect that.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Barack Obama, California, Election 2014, hemp, Kinky Friedman, marijuana, Texas | 1 Comment

Who’s afraid of the Republican slate?

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I was reading this story about a kerfuffle in the Republican runoff for Railroad Commissioner when a thought struck me.

A Republican candidate seeking a post that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry said he won’t cut ties to his energy business if elected to the Texas Railroad Commission – a state board that historically has had a poor track record disentangling itself from industry interests.

Ryan Sitton is co-founder and chief executive officer of PinnacleAIS, which advises companies about maintenance of equipment used in oil and gas operations.

Sitton said he will maintain an ownership stake in PinnacleAIS if he becomes a commission board member – a declaration that raised questions by his GOP and Democratic opponent, ethics experts and tea party Republicans.

“That is a conflict of interest and it is very frightful,” said Wayne Christian, a former state representative also seeking the post.

I’m not terribly interested in the particulars of this fight because the overly cozy relationship between the energy industry and the elected officials that regulate them is a very old story, and typically neither candidate has clean hands. What occurred to me in reading this story is how undistinguished the two candidates are, and how that seems to be the case up and down the statewide ballot for the GOP this year. Consider this: Among the leading candidates in the primaries, including the two that won outright, Wayne Christian and Sid Miller are clowns, George P. Bush is a legacy whose advisers prefer to keep under wraps, Glenn Hegar and Ken Paxton are a couple of basically undistinguished legislators, and Dan Patrick is Dan Patrick. Murderer’s Row these guys ain’t. The fact that they’ve all spent the bulk of their campaigns talking about nothing – they all hate abortion, the Obama administration, illegal immigrants, and Sharia law, and they all love guns – adds to the overall picture of ridiculousness.

The Republicans did have some substantial candidates on their ballot. Malachi Boylus and J. Allen Carnes never had a chance to get out of their primaries. Jerry Patterson and Dan Branch, who is still alive but a big underdog, had to degrade themselves in their races in a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to separate themselves from their mostly solid records of public service. Those past accomplishments, and their at least occasional willingness to talk about issues and – heaven forfend – what the office they’re running for actually does were anchors for them, not assets. I get that they’re running in a primary, and they have to address what the voters in that primary want to hear. Democratic primaries are often contests of personality as well, and the winner is often who loves what the base voters love the hardest, but the spectacle of these campaigns has been on another level.

And then there’s the top of the ticket. For all his status as the heir apparent to Rick Perry, Greg Abbott hasn’t exactly been setting the terms of the debate in the Governor’s race. I would argue that Wendy Davis has driven the story of this election from the beginning. That’s not always been good for her – indeed, for about two months running it was mostly bad news about her and her campaign – but good or bad, it’s been about her. Say what you want about Rick Perry, but all of his gubernatorial campaigns have been on his terms. Since February, Abbott’s tone-deafness and Davis’ attacks have been the main event. Oh, he tried to knock her back with his ethics proposal about bond lawyering that maybe ten people in the state understood, but it’s been a steady drumbeat Ted Nugent, Lilly Ledbetter, Charles Murray, and school finance. Neither Abbott’s own words nor those of his surrogates have done anything to help him or change the narrative, and there’s still more out there. At some point you have to wonder what else there is to him beyond a ginormous campaign warchest and a long history of being a Republican on statewide ballots.

Now in the end, of course, none of this may matter. We all know what Texas’ proclivities are, we know how historically weak the state Democratic Party has been and how far behind they are in building infrastructure and a GOTV machine. However you feel about the polls we’ve seen so far, none of them have shown a shift in the fundamentals. The next poll to give Wendy Davis 44% or more of the vote will be the first such poll since John Sharp roamed the earth. These guys may be clowns and empty suits, but they’re also the favorites to win. What I know is that I don’t fear them, at least not as opponents. If they beat us, it’s not because they can run faster or jump higher or lift heavier things. It’s because they have a head start. We may not be able to overcome that this time, but if this is what we’re up against, it’s all that we have to overcome. We will get there.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Attorney General, Comptroller, Dan Patrick, Election 2014, Glenn Hegar, Governor, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, Land Commissioner, Lite Gov, Railroad Commission, Republican Party, Sid Miller, Texas, Wayne Christian | Comments Off

Look out for LVdP

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Do not underestimate her.

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte

In the lavish Belo Mansion, tucked in the heart of this city’s downtown, Sen. Leticia Van de Putte is locked in a back-and-forth with small-business owners from the region.

Van de Putte, the San Antonio Democrat running for lieutenant governor, is courting support — and cash — from the mix of lawyers, restaurateurs, real estate investors and nonprofit managers in the room.

And she brings a clear message: Erase any notion that her campaign exists solely to lend a Hispanic face on the Democratic ticket for Sen. Wendy Davis, the gubernatorial nominee, to court Latino voters. Van de Putte is in it to win it.

“I’ve never been good at being a martyr. I wish I was that noble, but I’m way too competitive,” she said. “I know I can do this.”

Donation envelopes, marked with ranges from $50 to $5,000, are laid at one end of a conference table where the small group is huddled.

“But I need your help.”

Currently trekking through the state on a giant campaign bus, Van de Putte is by all accounts the underdog in the race for the state’s No.2 office, likely to be outgunned and outspent by an entrenched Republican machine.

Yet political analysts think the San Antonio pharmacist, mother of six — and grandmother of six more — could be the strongest candidate on the Democratic ticket.

“Her prospects for victory are very unlikely,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. “But they are probably the best odds of any Democrat this cycle.”

[…]

For Van de Putte to be competitive in the race, she’s also going to have to raise big bucks. Jones, the political scientist from Rice, estimates she’ll need in the range of $15 million to compete against Patrick or Dewhurst.

“Republicans just start off with a built in advantage when it comes to fundraising,” he said.

On the tour, Van de Putte has been hitting the fundraising circuit hard. On occasion, she puts in several hours of “call time” with potential donors from the back the campaign bus.

Private fundraisers were scheduled throughout the trip. And the donation envelopes are present at most of the stumps.

I had the opportunity, along with several of my blogging colleagues, to meet briefly with Sen. Van de Putte while she was in Houston on Saturday. The thing about Sen. Van de Putte is that she’s as personable as anyone you’re likely to meet. She’s funny, she’s direct, she’s very comfortable in her own skin. As Molly Ivins would have put it, she’s got a ton of Elvis in her. That’s an asset we’ve not had in abundance on the Democratic side of the statewide ballot in recent cycles, and it’s no small thing.

To know Sen. Van de Putte is to like her, but the challenge is ensuring enough people know her. As she was uncontested in her primary, the last finance report she filed was in January, so we don’t know how her campaign is doing on the fundraising front. I don’t know how much she really needs to raise, but it is in the millions. I get the impression she’s doing well on that front, but we won’t know for sure until July. By the same token, we keep hearing bits and pieces about support for her from Republicans that are not happy with the prospect of Dan Patrick as Lite Gov. I try to keep stuff like that in perspective because I really want it to be true. My hope is that we’ll hear more of this, and have more names attached to the stories, after Patrick (presumably) wins his runoff in May. It would be nice to see some of those same names show up in her finance report, and of course there’s the matter of groups like the Texas Farm Bureau putting their money where their mouths are. Sen. Van de Putte won’t have any trouble firing up Democrats for November. Stuff like this will let us know if it’s contagious outside of the base. Juanita and Stace have more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Dan Patrick, Election 2014, fundraising, Leticia Van De Putte, Lite Gov, Senate, Texas | Comments Off

Don’t forget about Kesha

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From the HuffPo:

David Alameel

Texas Democrats are working hard in the U.S. Senate race — against a member of their own party.

Activists in the state want to make sure that Kesha Rogers doesn’t get their party’s Senate nomination because she is a follower of Lyndon LaRouche, who heads a fringe political movement that has been compared to a cult.

Rogers has already advanced further than most people expected; she came in second in the March 4 primary, meaning she and Dallas dentist David Alameel are facing off in a run-off election on May 27.

“Having her on the ballot would just be bad,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) told Fox4 in Dallas-Fort Worth.

“She’s a member of the LaRouche Movement, which has a history of violent exclusionary and discriminatory rhetoric,” added Taylor Holden, Dallas County Democratic Party executive director. “The Dallas County Democratic Party does not recognize members of the LaRouche Movement, including and especially Kesha Rogers.”

Dallas County Democrats also tweeted on Monday, “Friends don’t let friends vote Kesha Rogers in the Primary Runoff (May 27).”

Honestly, I haven’t heard that much about the Senate runoff so far. David Alameel isn’t on every webpage I visit these days, as he was leading up to the primary. With few runoffs in local races, this should be a low turnout affair – I’ll set the under/over at 200,000 votes, about what there was in the 2006 Democratic Senate primary runoff. Which is fine, since these should be the most plugged-in voters, thus the most likely to know not to vote for Kesha. As previously noted, returns from March in Harris County look promising for May. Kesha herself is doing what she can to stay in the news, which I believe works in favor of sanity. Still, talking up the need to vote for Alameel in the runoff is everone’s job, and I expect Alameel will spend a few bucks on mail and other forms of outreach as we enter May. Just remember to do your part by showing up and voting for Alameel, and it’ll be fine.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged David Alameel, Democratic primary, Election 2006, Election 2014, Kesha Rogers, runoff, Senate, Texas, turnout | Comments Off

Pratt Mess gets messier

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

How much worse can it get?

Judge Denise Pratt

Hundreds of divorce, child support and custody cases dating back to 2012 will have to be revisited – and possibly sent back to trial – as a court administrator sorts out what he called the “random chaos” left behind by former District Family Court Judge Denise Pratt.

The freshman jurist, who abruptly resigned late last month, left nearly 300 court orders stacked on the floor and desk of her 311th District Court, according to Judge David Farr, the administrative judge for Harris County’s nine family courts.

Most of the orders, Farr said, are final agreements needing only a judge’s signature, meaning families are waiting to hear that their cases have been concluded or think they already are.

“Somebody may be out there thinking they’ve been divorced for a couple months; not the case,” said Farr, who is charged with finding judges to staff Pratt’s court until Gov. Rick Perry announces a replacement. Farr said cleaning the administrative mess after Pratt’s sudden departure likely will take months.

[…]

Farr said a majority of the orders he found in Pratt’s courtroom, some nearly a year and a half old, are topped with sticky notes – blue, yellow, green, pink – containing hand-written messages from Pratt giving directions, expressing concerns or posing questions about the terms of an agreement to which both parties had signed off.

He said there is no way to determine whether the issues raised on the sticky notes were addressed, or the correct status of the orders without them, meaning lawyers will have to be called in for status hearings, and many families will incur additional legal costs.

“It is random chaos that’s going to have to be dealt with case by case by case,” Farr said. “Every single thing I pick up makes my head hurt, it’s so problematic.”

Austin lawyer Lillian Hardwick, co-author of the “Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics,” said a Texas judge as high ranking as Pratt has not left a “mess of this size” behind in recent memory, citing a statewide list of resignations since 2001. Some judges have been sanctioned in the past for similar administrative failures, she said.

Asked about the stacks of orders, Pratt’s lawyer, Terry Yates, said “the staff of the 311th are adamant that the numbers cited are grossly exaggerated.”

“It is kind of pitiful that people continue to beat a dead horse,” Yates wrote in an e-mail.

See here for the background. So basically, either the lawyers and clients and Judge Farr are all lying, or Judge Pratt really is a lousy judge. Seems like an Occam’s Razor situation to me. And remember – she’s still on the ballot, and still could be the Republican nominee.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Denise Pratt, Election 2014, Harris County, judicial races, primaries, Republican Party | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for April 6

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The national divorce rate is a more complicated question than you might think.

Who wants to get hoaxed about marrying a prince?

The best day of the week to buy groceries is Wednesday.

“Put aside, for now, the shameless hypocrisy of these self-styled heroes of the free market secretly engaging in such grotesquely anti-competitive practices. What’s particularly interesting to witness is how, in contrast to the smarmy public face of the Silicon Valley execs (the corporate mottos of Apple and Google are “Think Different” and “Don’t Be Evil”), in fact, when it comes to protecting their profits, these companies demonstrate the kind of ruthlessness that would do the old-school robber barons proud.”

“The reason contraception operates within the health insurance system rather than with a cash grant subsidy system is that it is part of professional medical care, and not simply a commodity that is available for purchase and subsidy should society so desire.”

It’s not the one percent so much as it is the one percent of the one percent that’s really hoovering up all the wealth.

RIP, Ray Hutchison, former legislator and husband of former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Who knew Newsweek had such a weird story behind it?

Getting marginal voters to the polls is what this year’s election is all about.

“Tesla Motors Inc’s electric vehicles can be located and unlocked by criminals remotely simply by cracking a six-character password using traditional hacking techniques, according to newly released research.”

“That means it’s also the time of year for America’s second-favorite pastime: the scoreboard marriage proposal. To step up your engagement game, we reached out to all 30 MLB teams to find out the cost of putting a ring (World Series or otherwise) on it at each stadium.”

Real fame is when someone cosplays as you…and other people know who they’re supposed to be.

On writing letters of reference.

From the If At First You Don’t Succeed, You Should Probably Try Something Else department.

“No matter how you slice it, [Paul] Ryan is balancing the budget almost entirely by slashing spending on the poor.” He’s not being subtle about it, either.

“The more you learn about how debt collection works, the more you’re surprised that they ever find the right target in the first place.”

A handy guide to Republican excuses about Obamacare enrollment numbers.

RIP, Charles Keating. Take Alan Stanford and mix in Ralph Reed, you’ll get Charles Keating.

“Remember, flaws are OK“.

RIP, Frankie Knuckles, godfather of house music.

Congratulations to Willard Scott on his marriage. Mazel tov, you crazy kids.

“I knew it! (I had long suspected, but this is the smoking gun!) The Kochtopus is a crypto-Schopenhauerian cult! It is all a subtle plot to deny Americans their freedom – as Schopenhauer denied human freedom!” Also, too: Cool icon, dude.

Oh, South Carolina. I mean, seriously.

David Letterman is retiring. In times like these, Mark Evanier is your best bet to make sense of it all.

Do you need another reason to hate credit reporting services? Here you go.

“This is the conservative double standard in the realm of corporate rights: When the corporation supports a right-wing pet project—say, denying women reproductive care—conservatives pen encomia to the First Amendment’s corporate protections. But when a corporation dares to support a progressive cause like gay rights, conservatives cry foul at its alleged censorship of individual views.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

Pasadena lurches towards redistricting

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s getting ugly.

Pasadena City Council

A Pasadena councilwoman was forcibly ejected by armed officers and the mayor was accused of packing a gun during recent meetings on a controversial redistricting plan.

Councilwoman Pat Van Houte was removed from a meeting Tuesday on orders of Mayor Johnny Isbell after exceeding a three-minute speaking limit. And at a redistricting hearing in March, another councilman said he was “shocked” to see Isbell carrying what looked like a handgun.

Pasadena, pop. 150,000, is among the first in the nation to test last year’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme court that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The high court voided the preclearance requirement for election changes, which had been the law of the land for nearly half a century in many Southern states.

After the ruling, Mayor Johnny Isbell pushed forward a plan, narrowly approved by the city’s voters. It switches two of the city’s eight council seats from district to citywide elections.

[…]

Van Houte acknowledged that she exceeded her time limit Tuesday before Mayor Johnny Isbell pulled the plug and ordered her removed by two armed officers.

Van Houte said she was not given sufficient time to voice her objections to the proposed new map: “If someone is trying to represent the best interests of their city, they should not be thrown out for doing it. I’ve not seen this happen in the nearly five years that I’ve been on council.”

In the map approved on first reading Tuesday, she and another incumbent from the north end, Ornaldo Ybarra, objected to being located in the same district and having to run against one another. She was evicted before the vote was taken.

Ybarra and the other two from the north end denounced the map and walked out in solidarity with Van Houte prior to the vote. The map was approved with the mayor and the four council members from the south side supporting it.

See here, here, here, and here for the background. If this fight is ugly, it’s because the power grab that’s at its heart is ugly. Isbell says he granted Van Houte an extra minute before calling the cops on her, which is awfully big of him. But c’mon, dude. You hold all the cards and you know it. The least you could have done would have been to be magnanimous in victory and let the opposition say its piece. Not doing so marks you as insecure and a bully. Can’t say I’m surprised by that, but Isbell did have a chance to show himself to be otherwise, and he failed to take it.

Anyway. The maps that were under consideration are here – it’s proposed map #2 that will be voted on. The current map is here for comparison. A memo from Mayor Isbell about the maps and their population figures is here. The numbers apparently changed from what you see in the first table. I’m sure we’ll get a clearer picture of all that really happened when litigation is filed after the map is adopted.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged City Council, Election 2013, Johnny Isbell, lawsuit, Ornaldo Ybarra, Pasadena, redistricting, Texas, Voting Rights Act | Comments Off

National ag groups not happy with Republicans

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s all about immigration reform.

Craig Regelbrugge, who co-chairs the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, says a large majority of his group’s members — which include large and small farming enterprises and growers all around the country — are Republican, and many give to the GOP. But he’s increasingly hearing from members who are so frustrated by the Congressional GOP’s failure to act on reform — which is central to maintaining a workforce in the industry — that they are considering withholding campaign donations.

“I hear from growers frequently who basically say, `I used to be a loyal check writer when the Republican Party called, but at this point, the checkbook is closed,’” Regelbrugge tells me. “I’m hearing from growers who are no longer writing checks supporting the party.”

Mike Gempler heads the Washington Growers League, which represents growers ranging from mom-and-pop outfits to enterprises spanning 10,000 acres, and he says that “well over 90 percent” of his members vote Republican, and many write checks. Some of them sit in the district of GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington State, a member of the GOP leadership.

But, he says, they are increasingly convinced the GOP is no longer representing their interests in the immigration debate, if the failure to move on legislation is any indication, and are concluding that Republicans are very close to squandering a rare opportunity to achieve reform.

“We’re seeing a lack of response to our needs and concerns from significant parts of the Republican caucus in the House,” Gempler tells me. “They either have ideological issues or they are catering to a more reactionary crowd.”

“We want to see the leadership, including Cathy, move on this,” Gempler continues. “The chances for getting immigration reform are lessening quickly. If we don’t get this done by August recess, we’re going to be in trouble as an industry.”

[…]

All this gets to a point about the immigration debate that keeps getting lost: Major Republican-aligned groups want reform — from growers out west to the business community to to evangelicals — and when Republicans refuse to act because they fear blowback from anti-reform conservatives, they are prioritizing them over other core constituencies. Now the growers are increasingly convinced the chance for reform is slipping away and they are getting cut out as a result.

It also gets at a point that I’ve made here many times, which is that while all these groups may want reform, they continue to support – or at least, not oppose – plenty of Republican officeholders that stand in their way. The Texas Association of Business and the late moneybag Bob Perry were and are classic examples of this in Texas. The Texas Farm Bureau has joined in this unhappy chorus this year, and it remains to be seen if they will be as all-talk-no-action as their peers. We’ll know by their actions in the Lite Gov race. As for the national groups, withholding financial support is something, though with the latest SCOTUS shenanigans it may not amount to much. The bottom line is that they have the power to do something about this. A few well-placed primary challenges could do a world of good, and wouldn’t even require them to support any icky Democrats. Until they actually try to use that power, I’m not going to waste any time feeling sympathy for them.

Posted in La Migra | Tagged Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, Congress, Election 2014, farming, immigration, Lite Gov, Republican Party, Texas, Texas Association of Business, Texas Farm Bureau | Comments Off

News flash: The Bigfoot exhibition was a fake

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

Steve Austin knows the truth

After a falling out with his Bigfoot crew, master tracker Rick Dyer, whose new title may be “con artist”, admitted that the 8-foot tall body named “Hank” that wooed crowds last month in Houston is a prop made to look like a Bigfoot.

The crew, including spokesman Andrew Clacy, had an apparent rift in Daytona last week with accusations, lawsuit threats and resignations that led to Dyer announcing “the truth” on Facebook, and Clacy emailing a statement to the San Antonio Express-News on Monday, admitting that the body was a prop.

“From this moment on, I will speak the truth! No more lies, tall tales or wild goose chases to mess with the haters!” Dyer said on his Facebook, which has since been deleted. “I never treated anyone bad, I’m a joker, I play around, that’s just me.”

[…]

Chris Russell, of Twisted Toy Box in Washington, admitted to manufacturing the prop, which Dyer named “Hank”, of latex, foam and camel hair last year at Dyer’s request in an interview with a Bigfoot blogging site Sunday.

It is unclear how much Dyer paid to have the prop made, but a full-body mummy suit on the site is more than $700, although a custom prop the size of the Bigfoot was significantly more expensive.

Dyer’s post said that nationwide tour that charged people $10 to see the fake body pulled in close to $60,000, with Clacy making more than $12,000 in cash, meals and entertainment, or 20 percent.

See here, here, and here for the background. You have to admit, that was a pretty good return on his investment. One wonders what Dyer could do with an honest idea if he put his mind to it. He’s still claiming to have shot a Bigfoot despite this admission of fakery, so don’t hold your breath waiting for him to come up with an honest idea. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do for his next trick. I just know I won’t give him any of my money to see it. Thanks to Hair Balls for the link.

Posted in Skepticism | Tagged Bigfoot, Rick Dyer, Texas | Comments Off

Saturday video break: Baby Come Back To Me

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Time for some vocal harmonies, and a great place to start with that is The Manhattan Transfer. Here’s their oft-covered version of “Baby, Come Back To Me (The Morse Code Of Love)”:

If you’re around my age, you probably saw them perform that on a PBS special or something like that. Possibly you knew or were in a college a capella group that performed it as well. According to Wikipedia, TMH dedicated their version of this song to The Capris, who did it before them. Here they are:

Not bad. I like TMH’s rendition better, but it’s easy to see why they’d feel a debt to The Capris. And because I so seldom get to give a shoutout to my hometown in this context, here are some of my Staten Island homeboys doing this on what must have been a public access cable show from back in the day:

Could have done with a little better sound mixing, and more camera focus on the lead singer, but overall I’d say they did a mighty fine job.

Posted in Music | Tagged cover songs, Staten Island, videos | Comments Off

Enforcing non-discrimination

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

In her annual State of the City address, Mayor Parker put a long-awaited item on the table.

Mayor Annise Parker

Mayor Annise Parker on Thursday said she would create a human rights commission to review violations of anti-discrimination laws, saying just talking about equality in the nation’s most diverse city is not enough.

“We don’t care where you started your life, the color of your skin, your age, gender, what physical limitations you may have or who you choose to love,” Parker told the audience at the Greater Houston Partnership’s annual State of the City luncheon at the Hilton Americas. “Yet Houston is the only major city in the nation without civil rights protections for its residents.”

[…]

Parker said she has made an effort in recent months to speak with groups concerned about the proposal, including the Greater Houston Partnership, which sponsored the State of the City address.

“Their concerns were generally, ‘Why would you even want to bring something like this up? Things are going so well in Houston, and our international reputation is so good. You will bring the crazies out. It will make Houston look bad,’ ” the mayor recalled from a meeting with President and CEO Bob Harvey and Chairman Paul Hobby last month. “But that’s never a reason not to do things and, until they actually have an actual ordinance in front of them to attack, it is what it is.”

Parker said it was the second time she met with Partnership leaders to avoid “surprising anybody” as she works to transform the idea into a written ordinance. She said she hopes to have an ordinance ready for a City Council vote in May.

The Mayor did talk about other stuff, but this is what dominated the stories. While the usual suspects did the usual whining about this, Mayor Parker also got pushback from some reliable allies.

Maverick Welsh, president of the Houston GLBT Political Caucus, said he thinks Parker’s fear is that if the ordinance includes private-sector employers, it won’t have enough votes to pass the council. However, Welsh said the Caucus supports an ordinance that includes citywide employment protections.

“If you favor an ordinance that does not include private sector employment, you’re siding with the right of employers to discriminate,” Welsh told Lone Star Q on Friday. “My opinion is, put the right ordinance on the table, let the council vote on it in the open. Let them vote on it in the open, so the community can know, and hold people accountable. I don’t see any reason for us to compromise on this issue. Discrimination is discrimination.”

Welsh added that the Caucus will still support the proposed ordinance if it doesn’t include citywide employment protections. “I don’t think the perfect has to be the enemy of the good,” he said.

[…]

Welsh said the argument against citywide employment protections is that they would amount to over-regulation that hurts business. But Welsh said citywide employment protections would actually make Houston more competitive.

“If we have these protections in place, we’re going to attract the best and brightest talent,” he said.

Welsh said some also believe that if the ordinance includes citywide employment protections, opponents will gather enough signatures to place a recall on the ballot — a relatively simple process in Houston. But Welsh said he expects that to happen no matter what.

“She’s going to take all the political heat for this anyway,” Welsh said of Parker. “We compromise against ourselves, and they still go crazy.”

The Mayor had previously come under fire for not being quicker about bringing this forward. The Houston GLBT Caucus did issue a statement in support of the proposal, but the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen so far suggests the grumbling will continue for awhile. If Mayor Parker does bring this to Council on May 7, it will be on the heels of the Uber/Lyft ordinance, so I think it’s fair to say things are about to get interesting at City Hall. Personally, I agree with Maverick Welsh – I see no reason not to go full monty on this. You may wind up where the proposal is now as a reasonable fallback, but aiming for that position from the beginning was never going to calm the haters or keep the hand-wringers from wringing their hands. It’s what they do, so you may as well budget for it. We’ll see how it goes with Council. You can see a full copy of the State of the City address here, and Campos has more.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Annise Parker, gay rights, HGLBT Political Caucus, Houston, Houston City Council, Maverick Welsh | 2 Comments

Perry special prosecutor is “concerned”

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

As are we all.

Rosemary Lehmberg

A special prosecutor investigating whether Gov. Rick Perry abused his authority when he eliminated state funding of the Texas public integrity unit — which investigates government corruption and is housed in the Travis County district attorney’s office — said what he’s found so far is “concerning.”

“I cannot elaborate on what exactly is concerning me, but I can tell you I am very concerned about certain aspects of what happened here,” San Antonio attorney Michael McCrum said in an interview with the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE-TV.

In that same interview, McCrum would not indicate whether he thinks a crime was committed when Perry withheld $7.5 million in state funding from Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg’s office because she didn’t resign after she pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge a year ago.

Asked by the Statesman and KVUE if his concerns pointed specifically at Perry or his staff, McCrum said, “Yes.”

Perry announced last summer that he would veto funding to the state’s public integrity unit if Lehmberg didn’t step down once the guilty plea was made public. Lehmberg didn’t resign, and the governor followed through on his threat, vetoing the two-year, $7.5 million in funding.

McCrum, who plans to present his investigation results to a special Travis County grand jury next month, could not be immediately reached by The Texas Tribune for further comment.

Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, said Perry stands by his actions.

“As he has done following every session he’s been governor, Gov. Perry exercised his constitutional veto authority through line-item vetoes in the budget,” she said.

See here, here, and here for some background, and here for the KVUE story. As has been discussed before, the point of contention is not that Perry vetoed the Integrity Unit funds, but that he threatened to do so unless Lehmberg resigned. It’s the threat plus the demand that may add up to a coercion charge. I have no idea what will happen with the grand jury, but I do know that if you take a shot at the king, you’d better bring him down. I look forward to seeing how this plays out. Juanita has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged District Attorney, Mike McCrum, Rick Perry, Rosemary Lehmberg, Texas, The Lege, Travis County, veto | 1 Comment

The new North Forest High School

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I’m really rooting for them to succeed. It’s not going to be easy.

While most schools measure progress by test scores and scholarship dollars, North Forest High School students point to the lack of bathroom fires as a sign that their campus is improving.

They also boast that they now have access to soap, toilet paper and paper towels, which were rarities when the campus was under the North Forest Independent School District, which was so saddled with academic woes and financial mismanagement that the state ordered that it be absorbed by the Houston school district.

Other notable changes since last summer when HISD took over, according to students, are that the school is cleaner and smells better, and teens no longer congregate in the halls after lunch for a time they called “mall,” as in ditching classes so they could socialize like they would at the mall.

“It was like a party,” 17-year-old Jarvis Dillard recalled. “More people were probably outside class than inside.”

The way students and administrators tell it, the campus had spiraled out of control during North Forest ISD’s decline. While the community didn’t initially welcome the takeover ordered last year by the Texas Education Agency after a lengthy battle, students say they are thankful it finally happened.

HISD spent more than $1.6 million renovating the dilapidated northeast Harris County campus, including removing metal detectors that gave the school the atmosphere of a prison and apparently failed to keep weapons out. Students said the instances of fights and weapons have declined this year.

“Everything has become way better,” said Ana Medina, 18, a senior.

[…]

Pamela Farinas wasn’t sure what to expect when she was tapped for the job of principal, moving from HISD’s Gregory-Lincoln Education Center.

“It was everything I thought and nothing I thought in the same breath,” said Farinas, a graduate of Houston’s Yates High School. “It kind of depends on the day, which part of the onion you peel back … There are days when we are shocked at what we find.”

The work to be done is immense and the obstacles extreme, she said. In almost every other category, the campus had nowhere to go but up.

Test scores are well below state averages and attendance had sunk to 87 percent in 2012, 9 percentage points below the state average. Just 56 percent of high school students graduated in four years in 2012, compared to the state average of 88 percent.

More than 100 students are on probation or parole. Roughly 30 girls are pregnant or already mothers. A large percentage of students have at least one parent in jail. A significant number of students have substance abuse problems, including an addiction to synthetic marijuana called Kush. (Support groups for addiction, anger management and defiance were created this school year to help students cope and build better social skills.)

The schools reputation precedes it, with organizations denying them field trips because of students’ past behavior. An out-of-state college told the principal they don’t recruit from North Forest and suggested the campus consider changing its name.

It’s a sentiment shared by some of North Forest High’s new teachers, but not the community, and that’s a battle the principal does not consider worth fighting at the moment.

“We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Farinas said.

A large part of the work this year has been making students understand that they are required to work hard and follow rules. It’s also been a challenge to get some parents to support that mission, she said.

“That has been our clash. It’s kind of a re-education: This is what school really is supposed to be like,” Farinas said.

As we know, the condition of most North Forest schools was appalling, and those that remain open have a lot of challenges to overcome. HISD has its own challenges and its own problems, but it’s hard to see how the transition from North Forest ISD to HISD can be anything other than a big step in the right direction. As I’ve said before, I hope HISD tracks the progress of the former North Forest ISD students to see how they fare in the new regime. But at least we can feel sure that the overall student experience has improved, and no matter what else happens that’s an accomplishment.

Posted in School days | Tagged HISD, Houston, North Forest, Texas Education Agency | Comments Off

Astrodome: Deep Space Nine

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This is now my favorite idea for What To Do With The Dome.

Houston, the final frontier

Right now the folks in Houston are trying to figure out what to do with the Astrodome, which has been sitting vacant for several years. Many plans for the dome have fallen by the wayside, including this multi-use approach which I really like. I’m going to throw my esteemed hat into the ring and declare that the Astrodome be converted into Deep Space Nine.

That’s right: a mega Star Trek tourist destination in the very city where the Space Program resides. This resort would look and feel like the space station seen in the show.

This is made possible by building the central hub and encircling promenade in the middle of the field, with three bridges that connect to the existing concourse in the Astrodome. The dome’s circular shape is quite handy here!

Thanks to the dome you can create a lot of celestial facades within, making it feel like you’re in deep space when you’re looking out of the windows of the station.

The resort would feature a hotel with lots of “housing quarters”, restaurants, bars, shops, and a casino (Quark’s bar and casino, naturally). In addition to the main bridge and promenade, other destinations would include “docked” spaceships like the Defiant. There is still plenty of real estate in the dome to include rides, a few space museums (of the non-fiction and science-fiction variety), Imax theaters, and so on.

Click over to see his illustration of how this would work. I don’t care how feasible this is or what the financing situation is, this needs to happen. Who’s with me on this? Link via Swamplot.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Astrodome, Harris County, Houston, Star Trek | Comments Off

Friday random ten: Presidenting is hard work, part 1

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

For no particular reason, I got it in my head to see what kind of song lists I could make by using artists with the same name as the Presidents. Turns out I could make two lists’ worth. Here’s the first one:

1. Mad About The Boy – Dinah Washington
2. Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me – Oleta Adams
3. Volunteers Of America – Jefferson Airplane
4. Blue Moon Of Kentucky – Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys
5. Two – Ryan Adams
6. Another World – Joe Jackson
7. Cloud 9 – George Harrison
8. All Too Well – Taylor Swift
9. SOS – Pierce Brosnan and Meryl Streep
10. Belle Banana Pancakes – Jack Johnson

You get the idea. Some names get repeated, for obvious reasons. I’ll have the second list next week. Can you fill in some of the blanks I had to leave?

Posted in Music | Tagged Friday random ten, President, theme lists | 1 Comment

Collier’s sales tax criticism of Hegar makes the news

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

That’s how you do it.

Mike Collier

Democrat Mike Collier, a certified public accountant from Houston, will start airing television ads criticizing opponent Glenn Hegar, a Republican state senator from Katy, for his support to phase out property taxes and increase state sales taxes.

Collier and Hegar are vying to replace outgoing Comptroller Susan Combs, a Republican.

The 30-second ad, which will air in Houston, uses video of Hegar touting his position at a January meeting of We The People-Longview Tea Party.

“I don’t like the property tax, never have,” Hegar says in the video. “I think we should replace it. The best thing to replace it with is a consumption-type tax, a sales tax per se.”

Later in the ad, a male announcer says, “Mike Collier has a better plan: Forecast revenues accurately. Invest in our schools. And, hold the line on taxes.”

[…]

Local property taxes account for roughly 47 percent of tax revenue in Texas, according to a 2012 report from the comptroller’s office. State and local sales taxes make up 32 percent of revenue.

Another 2012 study – written by former deputy comptroller Billy Hamilton and published by a Republican group called Texas Tax Truth – said consumers would have to pay up to 25 percent in state sales tax to make up for the approximate $45 billion in lost revenue caused by abolishing property taxes.

“There’s no way that Hegar can make a sensible convincing policy point that we should get rid of the property tax in favor of a broader, larger sales tax,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientistat Southern Methodist University.

And, the shift from property taxes would deprive local governments, school districts and other entities of their primary method of revenue collection, said John Kennedy, an analyst at Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. That would mean municipalities would have to rely primarily on the state to finance their operations.

See here for the background. Via TrailBlazers, here’s the ad in question:

Can I just say how excellent it is to have a competent Democratic candidate running for Comptroller? Here’s who we had in the past three elections:

2010: Nobody
2006: Fred Head
2002: Marty Akins

Arguably, that’s in descending order of effectiveness. I could be persuaded to swap Head and Akins. Basically, Collier is the first serious Comptroller candidate we’ve had since Paul Hobby. It’s a beautiful thing.

But, Collier’s line of attack isn’t guaranteed to stick, Jillson said. The Nov. 4 election is seven months away and voters may not remember a fight over taxes from April, he said.

Jason Stanford, a consultant working on the Collier campaign, said the Democrat’s team plans to maintain this line of attack through the November election.

“We can’t play this race according to the old rule book,” Stanford said. “We have to make this race about actual ideas and competence.”

The thing is, Collier could keep up this line of attack all the way through November without ever repeating himself, because there’s so many ways Hegar’s tax swap is attackable. Consider:

– Local taxing entities – counties, cities, school districts – would essentially cede all taxing authority to the state. Do you want local control over your city and school district budgets, or do you want to hand all that to Austin?

– Do you want to start paying $25,000 for a $20,000 car? With Glenn Hegar’s tax plan, you will.

– Unless you own a million dollar home, your taxes are going up. Unless you live in a place with a lot of retail activity, your city and your schools are going to get screwed.

– Can you imagine the black market that will spring up with a 25% sales tax? The Comptroller’s office will have to become an arm of the IRS to ensure adequate collections.

And on and on. Collier will still have to raise the money to get that message out, but having that message will likely make it easier to raise the dough. There’s no downside here. Burka and EoW have more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged budget, Comptroller, Election 1998, Election 2002, Election 2006, Election 2010, Election 2014, Fred Head, Glenn Hegar, Marty Akins, Mike Collier, Paul Hobby, property taxes, sales taxes, Texas, videos | 2 Comments

The rideshare battles continue

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From Houston:

The issue came up at yesterday’s council meeting and Mayor Annise Parker said that undercover Houston police sting operations have resulted in 26 citations for Uber and Lyft drivers. They were likely, misdemeanor violations for operating an illegal taxi.

The mayor’s remark was in reply to testimony from Duane Kamins, a partner, along with his brothers in Houston’s second largest cab company, Houston Transportation Services. He’s also a lawyer and filed an affidavit with the state revealing his findings during his own undercover operation where he was charged some dollars for trips to the pharmacy and thereabouts.

“We clearly have two rogue operators in the city of houston today, uber and lyft who are operating in clear violation of Chapeter 46 of the [city] code,” he said.

In his affidavit, which you can view below, Kamins describes getting charged $4.70 for a short trip from an Uber driver with the handle Abdessamad. He also details a $13 trip with Lyft driver Ballagio. And later, a $12 trip with a Lyft driver named Sebastian whom he knocks for relying too much on his GPS to get around.

Kamins, who obviously has a major stake in not wanting to add more competition to the local cabbie game, asked the council to take action against the companies. His beef is that someone is getting compensated for provided commercial transportation services on city streets.

You can click over and see the affidavit; I have not read through it myself. I can say that the statement at the end of the story that “Another taxi study is expected to be presented to the city council next week” is inaccurate. According to Christopher Newport, the Mayor’s office has arranged for two of the consultants that worked up the Houston Taxicab Study to make a presentation to City Council at a joint Texas Transportation Institute-Public Safety committee meeting on April 9th at 2 pm. There’s no new work being presented, just a discussion about the study and a chance for Council to ask questions.

Meanwhile, here’s an update from San Antonio:

The battle over the ability of ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber to operate in San Antonio reached City Council members Wednesday, as officials heard from dozens of cabdrivers who fiercely argued those companies should play by the existing city rules or get out of town.

Police Chief William McManus told the council’s Public Safety Committee meeting that the city will continue to enforce its vehicle-for-hire ordinance, which for now prohibits ride-sharing services from operating, while his department spends the next 30 days researching how other cities have dealt with these companies.

He agreed to come back to the committee with an update next month.

[…]

The chief’s comments were met with applause from taxi and limo drivers who crowded the room.

Earlier in the meeting, dozens of them spoke passionately and forcefully, urging the city to enforce its vehicle-for-hire ordinance, which currently does not allow ride-sharing services to operate.

They lobbed criticism after criticism at the companies, questioning their safety, their regulations and their intentions.

They held signs saying, “Support your local cabdriver.” Some compared companies like Lyft and Uber to barbarians, carpetbaggers or cockroaches who have invaded the market.

Both Uber and Lyft officials said they will continue to operate but won’t charge passengers for now. Police have said a violation of the vehicle-for-hire ordinance occurs when a financial transaction takes place.

Lyft calls its fares “donations.” Passengers also can give drivers “increased” donations.

For now, Lyft is operating the Lyft Pioneer program in San Antonio, which means they don’t charge passengers for an initial period after the customer first signs up with the company. Lyft spokeswoman Katie Dally said in an email that the company still doesn’t know when the Pioneer program will end.

The Rivard Report adds a few more details:

The committee, chaired by District 7 Councilman Chris Medina includes District 3 Councilwoman Rebecca Viagran, District 5 Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales, District 9 Councilman Joe Krier, and District 10 Councilman Mike Gallagher, will review the matter at May 7 meeting when McManus, in collaboration with the Transportation Advisory Board, will present a proposal for going forward.

How the ordinance will be enforced until then will be kept a “secret” for now as a part of normal SAPD operations, McManus said, provoking a round of laughter after nearly revealing how police intend to catch offending drivers after Viagran posed the question.

See here for the background. My thinking on this really hasn’t changed that much since I first heard about Lyft and Uber. It doesn’t make sense to me to not allow them to operate in Houston, or any other city. It should be possible to change existing regulations to allow them entry while still keeping it fair for legacy taxi services and ensuring that drivers and passengers are sufficiently covered by insurance. I don’t know what Council is going to do with this once they get it – I mean, in the end I do expect Lyft and Uber to be granted entry, at least in some form – but I am ready for them to get on with it. Whatever action Council ultimately takes, I think they need to see it as a start and not as the end. Services like Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, whether you call them “ridesharing” or “transportation network companies”, are brand new. We can talk all we want about innovation and serving the public, but nobody knows what the medium to long term effect of these companies will be. Randy Bear notes that San Francisco is reviewing the economic effect of the newcomers and discussing whether they need their own regulations in addition to what the California Public Utilities Commission adopted. This is a process, and I don’t think we should expect to get it right the first time, given that we have so little experience to guide us. My understanding at this time is that Council should have this on their agenda by the end of the month. Let’s make an honest effort and be prepared to revisit it in another six or twelve months.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Annise Parker, California, Christopher Newport, Houston, Houston City Council, Lyft, San Antonio, San Francisco, taxis, Texas, Uber | Comments Off

It’s called “social media”, Ted

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Ted Cruz is shocked, shocked to learn that his silly little Facebook poll got shared with some people who weren’t supposed to answer it.

Not Ted Cruz

An old maxim about the law – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s chosen profession – holds that courtroom litigators don’t ask questions if they don’t already have the answers.

But in the chaotic world of social media, as the Texas Republican found out, all bets are off.

An impassioned Facebook clash involving tens of thousands of posterserupted this week in response to Cruz’s informal online survey marking the fourth anniversary of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

“Quick poll,” the survey began, “Obamacare was signed into law four years ago yesterday. Are you better off now than you were then? Comment with YES or NO!”

More than 53,000 responses had been logged as of Tuesday, dominated in recent days by Cruz opponents eager to defend a health care law that the tea party favorite had tried to repeal last fall through a government shutdown.

A surge of “yes” and “absolutely” comments overwhelmed an initial wave of anti-Obamacare posts, leaving Cruz’s staff with the clear impression that something was amiss.

“This is very clearly a manufactured, concerted effort from the left,” said Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. “Maybe a better use of their time would be advocating for an Obamacare website that actually works.”

That’s so precious. So much so that I can’t quite put my reaction to that into words, so I’ll just do this:

Like that, yeah. Back to the story:

Dave Kapell, a small-business owner in Minneapolis, also voted yes, noting that a plan he found on Minnesota’s insurance exchange was saving him $200 a month. Kapell said nobody solicited his participation in the poll. “It just popped up on my Facebook page,” he said in an interview. “I think somebody I know reposted it.”

Amazing how that works. That Facebook sure is something, isn’t it? Someone ought to figure out how to leverage it for use in a campaign. I bet it’d work really well for that.

Anyway. BOR has some screenshots. Go look and have a good laugh at Cruz’s cluelessness.

Posted in General snarkiness | Tagged Facebook, health insurance, Senate, Ted Cruz, Texas | 2 Comments

The Mayors opine for high speed rail

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

They pen an editorial in its favor.

We are proud to be mayors of three of the largest and fastest-growing cities in America. Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston have weathered the recent economic downturn and are now the engines powering our state’s tremendous job growth. While we celebrate the individual successes of our respective cities, we also recognize how important Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston are to each other.

With the bounty of economic growth comes the challenge of thousands of new people relocating to our cities, as well as increased commerce in the form of trucks on our highways. Moreover, many Texans are surprised to learn that over 50,000 “super-commuters” travel between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston more than once a week. Additionally, millions of our respective residents have friends and family separated by the 240-mile stretch of Interstate 45. These factors create congestion and place a massive and growing strain on our infrastructure.

[…]

One of the reasons high-speed rail projects in the United States have been unsuccessful thus far is that they have relied solely on government funding for completion. We hope that Texas Central Railway can succeed because its approach to this project is unique. For the first time, we are seeing a market-driven approach to high-speed rail led by private investment. We applaud the way in which Texas Central brought a much-needed project, an innovative approach and its checkbook to Texas.

Countries across Europe and Asia have enjoyed high-speed rail service for decades, but the United States is not yet home to the kind of rail line proposed by Texas Central. As Texans, we take great pride in blazing a path for the rest of the country to follow. This effort will do just that.

High-speed rail will provide a travel alternative that will help alleviate congestion on I-45, create thousands of quality jobs and may help Texas travelers reduce their carbon footprint. We look forward to the day when the residents of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth can travel on a high-speed rail between our two metropolitan areas in fewer than 90 minutes.

See here for the background. The same op-ed ran in the Chron on Monday as well. I would quibble with the wording of that first sentence in the third from last paragraph – as with anything related to government funding, politics is always the bigger issue than the funding itself. Be that as it may, as the TCR folks will readily tell you, the Houston-Dallas corridor is uniquely well-suited for their project – two huge urban centers a workable distance apart, separated by a lot of flat and empty land with existing freight rail rights of way to leverage. I absolutely hope TCR will be a big success that will serve as a catalyst for other rail projects, beginning with the completion of the Texas Triangle, with a Houston-Austin connection and extensions to Galveston, Oklahoma City, and Laredo/Monterrey, but I don’t know that I’d expect subsequent projects to follow the same business model. It’s entirely reasonable to me that some greater form of government involvement, perhaps a public-private partnership, may be needed for future lines. Or maybe this will be so successful it will demonstrate that somewhat less optimal alignments can still make money. It’s way too early to tell.

Anyway. Since the op-ed mentioned supercommuters, I thought I’d refer back to this blog post about them, because we have quite a few in Texas. While the TCR line will undoubtedly make life easier for these hardy folks, I don’t think that will directly affect traffic much – I figure the bi-metro types either fly or do their driving on weekends and other non-prime times. Getting them off the road will still be a big win environmentally, of course. There’s just a lot to like about this.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Annise Parker, Betsy Price, Dallas, Fort Worth, high speed rail, Houston, Mike Rawlings, Texas, Texas Central High-Speed Railway | Comments Off

Abbott’s pre-K plan

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s about what you’d expect from someone who isn’t particularly interested in improving public education.

Still not Greg Abbott

Announcing the first of his education policy proposals Monday, Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott called for reforming pre-kindergarten programs before expanding access, saying that additional funding should be tied to academic outcomes.

Abbott’s plan, which was unveiled in Weslaco, proposes providing an additional $1,500 per student on top of the funding the state already provides for half-day pre-K programs if the program meets performance requirements set by the state.

“Expanding the population of students served by existing state-funded programs without addressing the quality of existing prekindergarten instruction or how it is being delivered would be an act of negligence and waste,” Abbott’s policy proposal reads.

Abbott’s proposal comes with a $118 million price tag in the 2016-17 biennium and includes a focus on annual reviews for children beginning school in 2016.

His pre-K proposal flies in the face of state Sen. Wendy Davis’ proposal for increased access to full-day pre-kindergarten programs in February.

The Democratic gubernatorial contender’s plan, which proposes that school districts across the state offer full-day pre-K programs beyond the three hours a day the state already funds, pivots on her push for further restoration of $5.4 billion in spending cuts made by the Legislature in 2011, which included a cut of more than $200 million to the state’s Pre-K Early Start Grant program. The fund, which the Legislature created in 2000, had funded pre-K expansion in schools looking to extend their programs.

While the Legislature restored $30 million in funding for the program in 2013, Davis has called for the restoration of more funds and has called on Abbott to settle an ongoing school finance lawsuit, which was prompted by the cuts.

It’s hard to see how this plan would do anything but benefit the school districts and students that need it the least at the expense of the districts and students that need it the most. Part of the problem is that too many kids start out behind even before they reach pre-k age.

Educators say that many parents, especially among the poor and immigrants, do not know that talking, as well as reading, singing and playing with their young children, is important. “I’ve had young moms say, ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to talk to my baby until they could say words and talk to me,’ ” said Susan Landry, director of the Children’s Learning Institute at the University of Texas in Houston, which has developed a home visiting program similar to the one here in Providence.

And these are the children who are least likely to measure up under Abbott’s proposal, which would seem to necessitate more standardized testing. That’s just what we need.

From the Chron story, we see that among other things, Abbott’s proposal is based in part on faulty assumptions.

The revamped state program would require pre-K providers that receive state funds to set benchmarks and report data to the Texas Education Agency.

The plan also called for a strategy to steer parents of eligible 4-year-olds away from the federally funded Head Start program to state-funded pre-K programs because of research that has found gains by Head Start alumni were short-lived.

Many public school districts in Texas use both, administering Head Start and state-funded pre-K classes.

Abbott said the quality of state-funded pre-K programs is largely unknown because information regarding these programs is rarely gathered. He called for “greater transparency of pre-K programs” to better “assess the return on taxpayers’ investment.”

That’s a mischaracterization of the research about Head Start. But even if you buy into that idea, why is it better to prefer a system for which there’s no quality research about its outcomes? What if the state-funded pre-k classes aren’t as good? And if they are as good, why is Abbott still defending $200 million in cuts to state-funded pre-k while only proposing at most $118 million in additional funds? Citing an intellectually dishonest race hustler like Charles Murray as a source doesn’t add any confidence, either. This whole thing is a mess, and there’s still the rest of his education plan to come. Don’t expect much. BOR, PDiddie, Jason Stanford, and John Coby have more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged budget, Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, Head Start, lawsuit, pre-kindergarten, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

Another lawsuit against HB2 to be filed

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

If at first you don’t succeed…

Less than a week after a federal court upheld two new Texas abortion requirements already in effect, abortion providers announced plans to file a second lawsuit targeting additional regulations that the Republican-led Legislature passed in July.

The suit that the group plans to file Wednesday in a federal court seeks a court order to block the regulations — which take effect in September — that require abortion facilities to meet the same structural standards as ambulatory surgical centers.

The new abortion regulations have been blamed for the closure of about a dozen abortion clinics in the state, which currently has 24 active abortion clinics. The upcoming lawsuit alleges that unless the remaining clinics rebuild from the ground up and become essentially mini-hospitals, most could shutter. That would leave fewer than 10 facilities.

“There is no question that the politicians who passed this law intended this as the final blow in their assault on women’s constitutional right and ability to safely and legally end a pregnancy in Texas,” said Nancy Northrup, president and chief executive officer of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing several abortion providers in the suit.

Legislators who backed the regulations and abortion opponents said that the rules are intended to protect women’s health and that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest the rules create an undue burden on the majority of Texas women attempting to access abortion.

The upcoming lawsuit will also ask the court to exempt the Whole Woman’s Health clinic in McAllen, which recently closed because its physicians couldn’t obtain hospital-admitting privileges, and a Reproductive Services clinic in El Paso from a rule that took effect in November. That rule requires physicians to obtain hospital-admitting privileges within 30 miles of an abortion facility. The abortion providers claim that the facilities should be able to continue operating because the clinics are “among the last, if not the only, reproductive health care providers offering safe, legal abortion care in their communities,” according to the group’s press release on the suit.

Can we just cut straight to the part where the Fifth Circuit overturns the district court and allows the law to be implemented as written? Not that I want this to happen, of course, but it’s what I expect at this point, and I can’t take the mood swing any more. Besides, we all know that Edith Jones already has an opinion written, she just needs to fill in a few blanks in her template. Why waste time? Trail Blazers, the Observer, and RH Reality Check have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged abortion, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, lawsuit, Planned Parenthood, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

How can we miss you if you won’t go away?

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Denise Pratt is a gift that keeps on giving.

Judge Denise Pratt

Denise Pratt may not be gone just yet.

Two days after announcing her immediate resignation as presiding judge of the 311th family District Court – and the suspension of her re-election campaign – Pratt sent a text message to supporters on Sunday asking them to “call or txt” an influential endorser, Dr. Steven Hotze, and encourage him to wait a few weeks before announcing his support for her challenger in a May 27 runoff, Alicia Franklin.

“I am stil heavily favored by the party and attys as seen by wed fundraiser,” Pratt wrote. “And let him know he will b supported also.”

“It’s bizarre,” Franklin said on Tuesday, noting that Pratt had called her on Friday to concede, making her promise to “win in November.”

Despite Pratt’s resignation late Friday, Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said her name still will appear on the ballot next month because she missed a March 12 withdrawal deadline. If she wins, Stanart said, her name would appear on the November general election ballot unless she becomes ineligible by moving out of the county, being deemed mentally incompetent by a court, being charged with a felony or dying.

That was followed this morning by a statement, which I also received, that reads, in full, “Despite published reports to the contrary, I have, in fact, suspended my reelection efforts and I am not conducting a campaign.” That, I suppose, clears that up, but there’s still the fact that she’s on the ballot. Like I said yesterday, if her name is on the ballot she can still win the runoff, and thus be the nominee in November. If she withdraws at that time, Democrat Sherri Cothrun wins by default. If she tries some kind of evasive maneuver by claiming to be a resident of another county, which would allow for a replacement candidate to be selected a la Tom DeLay’s “I’m a Virginian” scam in 2006, you can be certain it will wind up in court.

(By the way, remember when Greg Abbott filed an amicus brief on DeLay’s behalf in that fiasco? Good times, good times.)

“If your name is on the ballot, you can win, on a technical basis, yes, that is technically possible,” said Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill. “The question would be: Is she going to run a campaign?”

Nice try, Jared, but “technically” winning is the same as winning. Feel free to make that argument in court if it comes to that. As Mark Jones says, y’all better hope she loses in May, because it gets messy for you otherwise.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged CD22, Congress, Denise Pratt, Election 2006, Election 2014, Greg Abbott, Harris County, Jared Woodfill, judicial races, lawsuit, primaries, Republican Party, Sherri Cothrun, Stan Stanart, Tom DeLay | 3 Comments

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 31

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is glad that so many people will be getting health insurance even if that number should have been much higher as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff pushes back on some happy talk about the voter ID law.

Dos Centavos reviews the biopic of Cesar Chavez and reminds us that the radical fringe in Texas would like to keep his name and others like him out of our kids’ classrooms.

Horwitz at Texpatriate made the case for anyone but Hogan, including Kinky Friedman, in the Democratic primary for Agriculture Commissioner.

The Texas Central Railway, the latest effort to launch high speed rail from Houston to Dallas, made their initial plans public this week and PDiddie at Brains and Eggs had the advance (before) and the post-press conference report (
after).

Thanks to James Moore at Texas to the World, Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos learned Ted Cruz is a cheapskate who spends more time in Iowa than in the Rio Grande Valley. Libby also discovered Ted Cruz lied about The Biggest Lie in all Politics.

Texas has a woefully inadequate and unfair tax system, and that puts us in a bind when we need stuff. Because as WCNews at Eye on Williamson reminds us Stuff Costs Money.

Texas Leftist is glad Democrats have finally stumbled upon a winning strategy for 2014. The questions now… Can we keep the fire burning through November, and will Greg Abbott/ GOP weasel out of having general election debates??

Reading a book about the settlement routes of Black people in the United States, Neil at All People Have Value wrote about ideas of movement beyond physical migration. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

===================

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

The Great God Pan Is Dead wants to know what Rice University has against art.

Cody Pogue asks and answers the question “What is Texas?”

Mark Bennett defines the ethics of decolletage.

Offcite photographs the Alps of Pasadena. No, really, it makes sense once you read it.

Nonsequiteuse has a suggestion for those who think the equal pay issue is no big thing.

The Texas Living Waters Project implores you to give your feedback on our state’s water future.

Jen Sorenson, a freelance artist now living in Texas, illustrates her experience with Obamacare.

Texas Vox asks “How many oil spills will it take?”

Texas Vox marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

And finally, in much happier anniversary news, Amy Valentine celebrates her fifth anniversary of being cancer-free.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged blog roundup, TPA | Comments Off

Precinct analysis: Republican primary election

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve done the Democrats, so now let’s take a look at the Republicans. In this case, I did have a few specific questions in mind, so my approach here will be a little different. First, we all know that Steve Stockman’s ~~performance art piece~~ campaign against Sen. John Cornyn didn’t amount to anything, but did he at least make some noise in his own Congressional district?


Candidate       CD36    Else   CD36%   Else%
============================================
Cornyn         8,231  65,363  48.69%  55.57%
Stockman       5,359  27,093  31.70%  23.03%
Others         3,314  25,161  19.60%  21.39%

Total         16,904 117,617

So sort of, yeah. Cornyn was held under 50% in the bit of CD36 that’s in Harris County, and it’s clear that Stockman picked up that he lost, but it didn’t make a difference overall. As it happens, the other counties in CD36 are all entirely within CD36, so we can look at the whole district as well now that we have the Harris data:


County      Cornyn  Cornyn%  Stockman  Stockman%
================================================
Chambers     1,609   41.02%     1,322     33.70%
Hardin       2,937   40.52%     2,986     41.20%
Harris       8,231   48.69%     5,359     31.70%
Jasper       1,274   54.28%       780     33.23%
Liberty      2,496   38.02%     2,007     30.57%
Newton         226   46.40%       194     39.83%
Orange       3,546   44.51%     2,925     36.72%
Polk         2,626   46.46%     1,820     32.20%
Tyler        1,121   46.01%       961     39.44%

So again, Stockman held Cornyn under 50% in CD36, but he still trailed in every county except Hardin. His performance in Harris was particularly weak. It’s possible that someone could have beaten Big John, or at least forced him into a runoff, but Steve Stockman was not that someone.

Along similar lines, I wondered how Dan Patrick did on his home turf of SD07 versus the rest of the county:


Candidate       SD07    Else   SD07%   Else%
============================================
Patrick       30,398  48,373  64.84%  53.78%
Not Patrick   16,481  41,578  35.16%  46.22%

Total         46,879  89,951

Unlike Stockman, Patrick really killed it on his home turf, but he still won a majority elsewhere as well. That cannot be a comforting thought to David Dewhurst.

Given the inflammatory rhetoric about immigration and the pushback by Latino Republicans against Dan Patrick, I also checked to see if Patrick did any worse in the five State Rep districts held by Latinos (HDs 140, 143, 144, 145, and 148) than he did elsewhere:


Candidate     Latino    Else Latino%   Else%
============================================
Patrick        5,515  73,256  56.58%  57.64%
Not Patrick    4,233  53,826  43.42%  42.36%

Total          9,748 127,082

Short answer: No. Of course, we don’t know how many of the Republican primary voters in these districts were Latino – the Anglo voting age population in these districts range from 12K (HD140) to 37K (HD148), so there are plenty of non-Latinos to go around. Regardless, at least in Harris County, Patrick’s rhetoric wasn’t a problem for these voters.

Finally, how did the Latino Republican candidates do in the Latino districts?


Candidate     Latino    Else Latino%   Else%
============================================
Abbott         8,929 119,258  92.28%  94.52%
Martinez         381   2,713   3.94%   2.15%
Others           366   4,207   3.78%   3.33%

Total          9,676 126,178

Candidate     Latino    Else Latino%   Else%
============================================
Medina       1,558    15,993  16.91%  13.56%
Torres         420     3,144   4.56%   2.67%
Hegar        4,442    62,214  48.22%  52.74%
Hilderbran   2,792    36,620  30.31%  31.04%

Total        9,212   117,971

A little bit of a benefit, mostly for Debra Medina, but overall less than a drop in the bucket. Even if the differences had been dramatic, the paucity of voters in these districts would have minimized the effect. But the difference was trivial, so it didn’t matter anyway.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged CD36, Comptroller, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Debra Medina, Election 2014, Glenn Hegar, Governor, Greg Abbott, Harris County, Harvey Hilderbran, John Cornyn, Lite Gov, Miriam Martinez, precinct analysis, primaries, Raul Torres, Republican Party, runoff, SD07, Senate, Steve Stockman | Comments Off

Perry says Texas will not comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Amazing the number of laws Rick Perry refuses to obey, isn’t it?

More than a decade after the Prison Rape Elimination Act unanimously passed Congress, federal standards for implementation of the law have been finalized. Now, Gov. Rick Perry and some prison reform advocates are at odds over what those standards mean for Texas lockups and the taxpayers who pay for them.

In a March 28 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Perry wrote that while he believed the law was well-intended, he would not certify that the 297 state prisons and local jails that are subject to PREA comply with its regulations come May 15, the certification deadline set by Department of Justice.

The new standards, he wrote, are “impossible,” out of touch with the daily realities of state prisons and would require heavy financial burdens.

“Absent standards that acknowledge the operational realities in our prisons and jails, I will not sign your form and I will encourage my fellow governors to follow suit,” Perry wrote.

But a spokesman for the correctional officers union said that not complying with the federal rules puts Texas at risk financially and legally.

Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the prison system has already made significant progress in meeting PREA standards.

“We are compliant with most of PREA’s standards, except for the cross-gender supervision standard,” Clark said.

[…]

“The Texas prison system already realized some time ago that they need to work to create safer environments for inmates,” said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Still, noncompliance with PREA could have financial consequences. It would not only result in a 5 percent reduction of federal funding, but it could make the state vulnerable to lawsuits, said Lance Lowry, president of the Texas correctional employees union.

“The governor’s office has a gross misunderstanding of what the PREA act is all about,” Lowry said. “And the state’s failure to comply with regulation will open up a tremendous amount of liability.”

In recent years, Texas has revamped parole, reduced recidivism, added specialized drug courts and reduced overall prison costs. Still, Deitch said, challenges remain — most importantly, sufficient staffing.

“I think the governor makes a lot of very good points in his letter. He highlights some of the issues that will be hardest for correctional agencies in the state,” Deitch said. “But I think it’s also really important for us to realize that [the state agencies] are already very close to being in compliance now.”

There’s also the fact that just because something isn’t easy to do, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have to do it. We don’t take that attitude with schoolchildren, and we shouldn’t take it with Governors, either. If the Harris County jail can meet this standard – ahead of schedule, by the way – then so can TDCJ.

Grits had this story before the Trib and the Chron did, with followups here and here. Go read what Grits has to say and see what you think. It would also be nice to know what the two leading candidates for Governor think about this as well. Lone Star Q has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Barack Obama, George Bush, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, jails, Justice Department, rape, Rick Perry, Texas, Texas Department of Criminal Justice | Comments Off

Fearing the fire reform

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This ought to be interesting.

Rumblings of coming reforms in Houston Fire Department’s operations have union leaders and the department’s command staff wary, despite Mayor Annise Parker’s insistence that these concerns are unwarranted.

HFD’s staffing shortage has driven up overtime costs, creating a budget crisis that has, on some days, seen ambulances and fire trucks pulled from service. These budget discussions have dominated City Hall in recent weeks, leading the mayor and some council members to question whether the department’s $450 million budget could be spent more efficiently.

Parker, for instance, said she questions whether the city should invest in more ambulances and fewer new fire trucks, given that 85 percent of HFD’s calls are medical emergencies and that fire trucks are more expensive to purchase, staff and maintain. She also wonders whether the city is “oversaturated” in the way it places its 103 fire stations and deploys its 216-vehicle fleet.

The mayor is adamant, however, that she will not pursue reforms without a planned third-party study of HFD’s operations that is months away.

“Let me say this for about the 15th time publicly: I am not interested in splitting fire and EMS, nor am I interested in privatizing our EMS service in the city of Houston,” Parker said. “Are we clear? People make stuff up all the time. It’s just amazing.”

Most of the concern centers on the upcoming utilization study for the fire department, and a recent reorganization that has “HFD” and “EMS” reporting to different people. The firefighters’ union is worried that despite the Mayor’s insistence that it won’t happen, fire and EMS will be split into two distinct groups, with EMS workers being separate from the firefighters’ pension plan. The study is still several months away from beginning, and who knows what it will eventually conclude, but I think it’s safe to say there will be resistance to any recommendations of big changes. The early returns are quite revealing:

[HFD Chief Terry] Garrison and [HPFFA President Bryan] Sky-Eagle each said they would not fight the third-party study Parker wants as long as their input is welcomed. But some council members questioned whether the reforms such a study might recommend could be implemented.

Even idling a few trucks has affected the public’s perception of their safety, Councilman Ed Gonzalez said.

“Can you imagine if we said we’re going to start shutting down stations?” he said. “That’s a huge monster to undertake.”

Councilman Dave Martin was blunter.

“The council member is going to go crazy, the citizens are going to go crazy and World War III is going to break out,” he said. “I’d bet my last nickel it’s not going to be able to happen.”

I’ll be blunt as well. I’ve conducted over 100 interviews with Council candidates since 2007. Pretty much every one of them says something to the effect of how the city needs to be more efficient, to do more with less, to find new ways to deliver services in a cost-effective manner – you get the idea. Everyone wants the city to live within its budget and not raise taxes while doing all the things the city needs to do. Well, public safety is the majority of the budget, and if we can’t even talk about how they’re spending that money – if we can’t “look for efficiencies” and all those other cliches in that part of the budget – then we’re just chanting mantras about the budget and how we manage it. I’m not saying we have to accept any of the recommendations that the study will eventually make – for any number of valid reasons, we may find those recommendations to be unsuitable – but I am saying we need to keep an open mind. Change is always hard, but if it makes sense we ought to at least consider it.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Annise Parker, budget, Dave Martin, Ed Gonzalez, HFD, HFRRF, Houston, Houston City Council, HPFFA, Terry Garrison | Comments Off

Cleaning up Pratt’s mess

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s up to the other judges now.

Judge Denise Pratt

The administrative judge for Harris County’s nine family courts said Monday it could take months to sort out the mess left behind in the 311th family court following the abrupt resignation of its presiding judge, Denise Pratt.

The freshman jurist’s immediate departure, announced late Friday, came as a surprise to Judge David Farr, who was left scrambling Monday to find a judge to preside over a court where he said there are “boxes, piles, stacks” of hundreds of courts orders that have not been signed or entered into the court computer system.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Farr, who met with the 311th staff Monday morning. “It gets worse with every report from my staff.”

According to monthly caseload statistics kept by Farr’s office, Pratt’s court had the most cases pending at the end of February – 2,713 – of any of the nine family courts. Farr had to reschedule one case that had been set to go to trial on Monday.

[…]

Farr said judges usually provide prior notice before leaving, to allow for “a clean handoff between themselves and their successor.”

“There was no notice whatsoever,” he said, noting that he did not find out about Pratt’s plans until Friday, the day of her announcement, when someone alerted him to a post on her Facebook page.

Farr, who met with staff of the 311th Court Monday morning, said he assumes Perry will not appoint a replacement, who would serve through year’s end, until June 1. Pratt, who had been slated to appear on the ballot in a May 27 runoff, had been campaigning for a second term that begins Jan. 1.

See here for the background. You may recall that Pratt made news for having dismissed hundreds of cases at the end of last year, mostly without notice. According to an earlier version of the story, all dismissals now must go through Judge Farr first. What I’m hoping is that now that she is no longer a colleague, one or more of the remaining judges and/or members of their staff will now feel free to talk to the press about this. It would be very useful for someone who doesn’t have a stake in the outcome of any cases that had been before Denise Pratt to offer a frank assessment of her career as a judge. You can read between the lines here for a sense of Judge Farr’s frustration, but I’d like to hear it straight up. A little transparency would do a lot of good.

One more thing:

Pratt also suspended her re-election campaign, but still will appear on the ballot after securing the highest percentage of the vote in a five-way contest on March 4 for a term that begins Jan. 1. The Harris County Republican Party Chairman said Friday that the challenger, Houston family lawyer Alicia Franklin, will be the party’s nominee.

I’m not sure if it’s the outgoing Chair or the incoming Chair that’s being quoted here, but it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty sure he can’t guarantee that. Pratt is still on the ballot – the deadline to withdraw was March 12 – so she could still win the runoff. I don’t think Paul Simpson gets to wave a magic wand and install Alicia Franklin if that happens. Granted, I think it’s unlikely after all the bad publicity that Pratt will win the runoff, but as long as she is on the ballot it’s a possibility.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged David Farr, Denise Pratt, Election 2014, Harris County, Houston Bar Association, judicial races, Rick Perry | 1 Comment

And the first open enrollment period comes to an end

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Lots of people signed up in the last few days of enrollment. Some tried but came away empty.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Some of the hundreds of Houstonians who sought last-minute help enrolling for the Affordable Care Act on Sunday left thrilled to have health insurance for the first time in their lives, while others walked away frustrated by high prices, long waits and computer glitches.

“The lowest price plan for me was $387 per month and included a $6,000 deductible. Is this what they think people can afford who are unemployed? This is outrageous,” said Lupe Escalante, 63, a recently laid-off office administrator who attended an enrollment event Sunday at Community of Faith church in north Houston, one of a bevy of events held to help people meet the Monday deadline.

Under the law, uninsured people will be subject to fines of $95 per adult and $47.50 per child – a $285 family maximum – on next year’s income taxes. However, individuals who earn less than $10,150 and married couples earning less than $20,300 will be exempt from the penalty.

Extensions can also be granted for people who started, but did not finish enrollment, by the deadline.

For reasons unclear, the story fails to explain why Ms. Escalante did not get a quote for a policy she could afford. The simple answer is that she almost certainly falls into the coverage gap, earning too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to receive a subsidy. The reason for the existence of the gap is that Texas was one of many states to not expand Medicaid, for which Ms. Escalante would surely now qualify if Rick Perry and the Legislature had done so. Alec MacGillis spells it out.

In Texas, parents can only qualify for Medicaid if they earn less than 19 percent of the poverty level—that is, below $4,531. In Alabama, it’s even lower—16 percent of the poverty level. It’s barely higher than that in Louisiana, Georgia, Missouri, and Mississippi and Florida, all of which have their eligibbility threshold set below 40 percent of the poverty level—that is, below $9,540 for a family of four. In other words, one must be subsistence-level indigent in these states to even think about qualifying. And that’s only if one has kids—if one is a non-disabled adult without dependent children, forget it: no matter how poor you are, you don’t qualify for Medicaid.

So: right now, we have passed a law meant to expand coverage to all Americans, and yet it does not reach the poorest of our fellow citizens in nearly half the states in the country. That, on its face, is a major policy failure. No one really wanted to say this during the law’s drafting, but its underlying goal was to get coverage to people in red states where there was no local political will to address the problem. It’s generally preferable to let states address their own needs, but in this realm, only Massachusetts and a few others had even attempted to bring about near-universal coverage. The only way people in Birmingham or Brownsville were going to get covered was if the federal government saw to it that they did.

We know how that worked out. Despite all the obstacles here and in other states, many people tried to enroll over the weekend and on Monday, pushing the total signup number up towards 7 million, the number that had been originally floated around before the healthcare.gov site took the month of October off. Even more people than that now have insurance because of Obamacare, and there may be many more that are not being counted by current metrics. We’ll know what the final Texas number is soon, but we won’t really know what the national numbers are for months. Whatever they wind up being, the reality is that they could and should have been a lot more. All we needed was state leaders who cared about solving a problem more than they cared about making fools of themselves on Facebook. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard to do. Wonkblog and Jonathan Bernstein have more.

Posted in National news | Tagged health insurance, insurance exchanges, Medicaid, Rick Perry, SCOTUS, Ted Cruz, Texas, U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services | 1 Comment

Always going backwards

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

That’s the Republican Party of Texas.

When the Texas Republican Party made a guest worker program part of its 2012 platform, it was hailed as an important step forward for the party. The GOP needed to adjust itself, people said, to appeal to a new generation of Texas voters, and reorient itself toward some kind of immigration reform package. The acknowledgement of the need for a guest worker program was a small move in that direction, but it was significant. So naturally, two years later, some Republicans want to strip it back out of the platform ahead of this year’s state convention in June.

As reported by the Quorum Report’s Scott Braddock [last] Monday, the Texas Eagle Forum’s Cathie Adams has been floating language that would strip the guest worker plank out of the party’s platform. Cathie Adams, as Phyllis Schlafly’s top lieutenant in the state, may seem like a marginal figure to some—she’s spent much of the last several years attempting to persuade tea party groups that major figures in the national Republican party and U.S. government are secret Muslims—but she’s also a former chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party, and she holds a lot of sway with tea party groups around the state.

Adams told Quorum Report that it’s a mistake for the GOP to have anything other than a hard-line position going into the 2014 midterms and 2015 legislative session. Her proposed language unambiguously rejects any congressional moves to address immigration:

THEREFORE BE IT IS RESOLVED that we reject any and all calls for blanket or incremental amnesty and encourage the enforcement of existing state and federal laws regarding border security, national security, immigration and employment.

[…]

Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who became prominently identified with the platform change, told Bloomberg Businessweek he was less than certain about his side’s success as he rose to speak in favor of the change. “Well, here’s the end of a political career,” he remembers thinking. But the platform did change. Supporters hailed it as a “bold step toward leadership” on immigration.

But it’s debatable how much that small shift is evidence of a larger one in the GOP. For one thing, it’s never presented as a humanitarian issue—it’s a business issue. The important thing is ensuring a steady supply of labor, not the welfare and well-being of the countless documented and undocumented migrants in the state. “I’m no bleeding heart; I oppose birthright citizenship,” Patterson said later. “But we need the labor.”

Scott Braddock has a copy of the QR story on his site; the Chronicle is now reporting on it as well. That story was published a day before the one-year anniversary of the national GOP autopsy that detailed what they needed to do to deal with demography and shifts in public attitudes going forward. So much for that. This is likely to be a good year for the GOP nationally, with an extremely favorable Senate landscape and turnout patterns that still favor them in non-Presidential years. But 2016 looms as the polar opposite for them, with a brutal Senate scene and the potential Hillary juggernaut. One way or another, they’re going to have to face up to reality. I suspect it’ll take more than one electoral thrashing for that to truly sink in.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Election 2012, Election 2014, Election 2016, Republican Party, Texas | 1 Comment

Burnam election challenge update

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Moving along, but no timeline as yet.

Rep. Lon Burnam

A state district judge from Denton County will oversee a case involving long-time state Rep. Lon Burnam‘s accusations that votes were cast illegally in the Democratic Party primary last month.

State District Judge Robert McFarling was appointed Friday by state District Judge David Evans, the administrative judge for the Eighth Judicial Region. McFarling will replace state District Judge R.H. Wallace.

The Texas Election Code dictates that a judge from outside the county hear a case involving an election challenge.

[…]

Burnam has also filed motions to subpoena former Elections Administrator Steve Raborn and interim Elections Administrator Stephen Vickers.

Raborn announced his resignation in December and will become president of Votec, a company based in San Diego, Calif., that focuses on voter registration and election management software.

Raborn’s motion stated that the elections administrator is neutral, but is required to protect records from unauthorized release and that the elections office is compiling records that can be released publicly.

“Because the documents sought involve the privacy rights of hundreds of people, they cannot be released to the litigants merely to satisfy their curiosity if there is no reason to believe votes were cast by persons who were not entitled to vote, or to believe that persons who were entitled to vote were denied the right to vote,” the motion stated.

His motion went on to say that no mail ballots from District 90 were denied, and that the question is whether there may be persons who voted who may not be entitled to vote.

See here for the background. As I said before, the question Burnam is raising is pretty straightforward – does the elections code as it exists allow for mobile computers to process vote by mail applications? – though obviously open to interpretation. I’ll be surprised if this one doesn’t wind up before the Supreme Court eventually, however it gets decided initially. Again, I think the law should allow what Ramon Romero’s campaign team did, and I think someone should write a bill to clarify the laws in question regardless of how this case is decided. It would be fitting if whoever wins this lawsuit is the one that files the bill.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged absentee ballots, Democratic primary, Election 2014, HD90, iPads, lawsuit, Lon Burnam, Ramon Romero, Tarrant County, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

The CFPB is almost ready to roll out payday lending regulations

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Whenever governments start thinking about cracking down on small-dollar, high-interest financial products like payday loans and check cashing services, a shrill cry goes up from the businesses that offer them: You’re just going to hurt the poor folks who need the money! What do you want them to do, start bouncing checks?

A field hearing held by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today was no exception. The young agency has been studying how the industry functions for a couple years and is now very close to issuing new rules to govern it. To start setting the scene, CFPB Director Richard Cordray came to Nashville — the locus of intense payday lending activity recently — to release a report and take testimony from the public.

The report, building on a previous white paper, is fairly damning: It makes the case that “short term” loans are usually not short term at all, but more often renewed again and again as consumers dig themselves into deeper sinkholes of debt. Half of all loans, for example, come as part of sequences of 10 or more renewed loans — and in one out of five loans, borrowers end up paying more in fees than the initial amount they borrowed.

[…]

Passing a rate cap, however, is not the only remedy. In fact, it’s not even possible: The CFPB is barred by statute from doing so.* And actually, the Pew Charitable Trusts — which has been tracking payday lending for years — doesn’t even think it’s the best approach.

“The core problem here is this lump-sum payday loan that takes 36 percent of their paycheck,” says Pew’s Nick Bourke, referring to the average $430 loan size. “The policy response now has to be either eliminate that product altogether, or require it to be a more affordable installment loans.”

Bourke favors the latter option: Require lenders to take into account a borrower’s ability to repay the loan over a longer period of time, with monthly payments not to exceed 5 percent of a customer’s income. That, along with other fixes like making sure that fees are assessed across the life of the loan rather than up front, would decrease the likelihood that borrowers would need to take out new loans just to pay off the old ones.

See here for the background. It’s fine by me if the CFPB takes a different approach than usury caps. States and localities can still do that themselves if they wish, with the CFPB’s rules serving as a regulatory floor. It’s a step forward any way you look at it, with the potential to do a lot more if needed.

Now, the installment loan plan wouldn’t leave the industry untouched. When Colorado mandated something similar, Pew found that half of the storefront payday lenders closed up shop. But actual lending didn’t decrease that much, since most people found alternative locations. That illustrates a really important point about the small dollar loan industry: As a Fed study last year showed, barriers to entry have been so low that new shops have flooded the market, scraping by issuing an average of 15 loans per day. They have to charge high interest rates because they have to maintain the high fixed costs of brick and mortar locations — according to Pew, 60 percent of their revenue goes into overhead, and only 16 percent to profit (still quite a healthy margin). If they were forced to consolidate, they could offer safer products and still make tons of money.

Meanwhile, there’s another player in the mix here: Regular banks, which got out of the payday lending business a few months ago in response to guidance from other regulators. With the benefits of diversification and scale, they’re able to offer small-dollar loans at lower rates, and so are better equipped to compete in the market under whatever conditions the CFPB might impose.

Actually, there are two other potential players here as well: Post offices and WalMart stores, both of which could do a lot to streamline this industry by aggressively competing on price. If that happens to drive a lot of small, inefficient players out of the market, too bad for them. These options would unfortunately require an act of Congress to become reality, and the odds of that are vanishingly small. But the point is that those options exist, and if the regs that the CFPB does put forth winds up squeezing a lot of the existing players, the demand will be there for bigger dogs to come in. In most cases that would be bad, but this is the exception. We’ll see how it goes. And whatever does eventually happen, let’s not forget that if we had less poverty, we’d have less demand for payday lending. Consider that yet another argument for raising the minimum wage.

Posted in National news | Tagged banks, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, minimum wage, payday lenders, Richard Cordray, US Postal Service, WalMart | Comments Off

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