Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

HISD on HB5

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good information on the changes made to school curricula and graduation requirements.

With most details of the state’s new reform of public education – known as House Bill 5 – settled only last week, HISD is ready with a multimedia toolbox to assist students, families, and support staff in making the most of the guidelines that will require students to choose academic and career paths that will prepare them for success beyond high school.

The district launched its “Plan Your Path” informational website, houstonisd.org/PlanYourPath, on Feb. 5. It offers:

• Simple explanations by grade level of STAAR testing requirements, including changes in required end-of-course (EOC) exams for graduation;
• A guide to the revised Texas graduation plan;
• An exploration of “endorsements,” the five areas of focus – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM); Business and Industry; Arts and Humanities; Public Services; and Multidisciplinary – that HISD will offer to students to set and follow their academic and career goals;
• A section of frequently asked questions (FAQs), along with the opportunity to pose your own question;
• Advice for parents on how to work as partners with their children’s schools to assure their academic success.

Late in February, HISD will distribute an informational guide to all parents, in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese to explain HB 5, which will also be posted on school websites, and will host 10 community meetings throughout the district in March and April.

While many districts are struggling with dealing with HB 5’s changes, HISD was already developing many of its requirements on its own through its Linked Learning model. That initiative, which blends a rigorous academic focus with an emphasis on career awareness and preparedness from K-12, was fast-tracked when HISD received $30 million in federal Race to the Top funds in December in support of the concept.

There’s video, so click over and follow the links from there to Plan Your Path and elsewhere.

Posted in School days | Tagged graduation, high school, HISD, Houston, schools, The Lege | Comments Off

New frontiers in giant statues

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

David Adickes will bring his art to Webster.

The City of Webster is planning a 20,000 square-foot space-themed attraction with a towering astronaut statue to beckon visitors along I-45.

According a proposal unveiled this week, the city’s five-acre tract of land on the northwest side of I-45 and NASA Parkway will be home to the Apollo and Beyond Center, which will educate visitors on the Apollo space program and the area’s rich NASA history.

Officials have enlisted the talent of famed Houston sculptor and painter David Adickes to create an 80-foot statue of a spacesuited Apollo astronaut planting an American flag at the front of the attraction.

There is a proposal for a 50-foot pedestal under the astronaut, which would house a small museum and make the astronaut a total of 130 feet tall. part of the proposal is an elevator to the top of the statue allowing for a 360-degree view of the area.

If the statue of the astronaut goes to plan, it would be taller than the Sam Houston statue that Adickes created for Huntsville. Sam is 67 feet tall with a 10-foot pedestal below him. Adickes’ Angleton-area statue of one of Texas’ other founding fathers, Stephen F. Austin, is 60 feet tall and has a 12-foot pedestal.

Adickes has told the Apollo Center that the astronaut statue will take a little over a year for him to create. The blueprint for the A7L spacesuit that will be depicted in the statue is coming from NASA.

As an unabashed fan of Adickes’ sculptures, I wholeheartedly approve of this. More giant statues, I say. I’ll need to plan a trip to Webster to see the finished work.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged David Adickes, Houston, NASA, Texas, Webster | Comments Off

Saturday video break: The Acid Queen

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not many rock groups could pull off the “concept album” without it descending into a morass of self-indulgence and wretched excess. The Who was one of the bands that could get away with it, because Pete Townshend was such a genius. Here’s The Acid Queen, from their rock opera “Tommy”:

Did I mention that adding in a layer of psychedelia makes it that much harder to achieve? Because it does. And if very few artists can do this sort of thing, even fewer can cover them successfully. Needless to say, Tina Turner was one such artist:

Don’t even try to touch that. You just can’t.

This week marks the kickoff of a new project in Saturday videos, similar to the one I did with that Popdose Top 100 list, but with songs from my collection. I may or may not have all the versions for which I post videos, and in some cases I may do a “same name, different song” post. Should be fun, let me know what you think.

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

Abbott’s border surge plan

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

A whole lot of not much here.

Still not Greg Abbott

Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for governor, said Tuesday he wants to nearly double state spending to improve security along the U.S.-Mexico border, proposing a “continuous surge” with 1,000 new boots on the ground and millions of dollars worth of high-tech equipment.

The proposal, dubbed his “Securing Texans Plan” and unveiled Tuesday in Dallas, would also include tougher laws against sex crimes, gang activity and domestic violence.

At a cost of more than $300 million over two years, the proposal represents the largest government expansion he’s proposed as a candidate for governor. The border security package would entail the hiring of 500 new Department of Public Safety officers over four years — plus additional overtime and support staff — to help create what he called a “permanent border shield.”

“We must do more to protect our border going beyond sporadic surges,” Abbott said. “As governor I will almost double the spending for DPS border security. I’ll add more boots on the ground, more assets in the air and on the water, and deploy more technology and tools for added surveillance.”

Abbott would not specify any existing sources of funding to pay for the new programs. He said only that it would come from existing general revenue dollars.

“These are going to be budgetary priorities that must be paid first,” Abbott told reporters after his speech. He said seized dollars and asset forfeiture programs eventually would help pay for the border security portion, which exceeds $292 million over two years, but he wouldn’t say how to pay for it before that money kicked in.

Asked if there were any programs that would have to be cut to pay for the dramatic spending increase, Abbott said, “I couldn’t identify them.”

“It would be whatever legislators may come up with they want to have funded. That is left to the ideas that will be articulated by the 150 state reps and 31 senators,” he said.

Abbott said he would not rely on “any new form of revenue,” including taxes or fees, to pay for the proposals.

“To be perfectly clear right now and forever: absolutely no tax increases whatsoever for any of my programs,” he said. “The Abbott administration will not have any tax increases.”

The first thing you need to realize is that there’s absolutely nothing new here. Remember Operation Border Star? Or Rick Perry’s border cameras? Or how about the fact that President Clinton sent the Marines to patrol the border in the 90s, as a commenter at BurkaBlog pointed out. That ended after 17-year-old Ezequiel Hernandez, Jr was shot and killed. I wonder if anyone in the media will remember any of this and ask Greg Abbott about it.

Beyond the un-originality of the idea is the unlikelihood of it doing anything. The Texas-Mexico border is really long; adding 500 agents means one more agent every two miles or so. The refusal to say how he’d pay for this little scheme is typical Abbott hand-waving. Does anyone really think these 500 new agents could collect $300 million in asset forfeiture funds per biennium, more than what the entire border patrol collects now, without the entire operation turning into Tenaha? It’s a scandal waiting to happen.

There is a way forward here, and that is for Greg Abbott to call on his Republican colleagues in Congress to quit screwing around and support comprehensive immigration reform. You know, like the plan that the Senate passed but the House refuses to vote on, with the explicit blessing of Abbott’s former employee Ted Cruz. The Senate plan is hardly the end of the rainbow, but it’s a big step forward. If Abbott wants to push for a better plan than the Senate’s, one that fetishizes the shibboleth of border security less and seeks a realistic and compassionate way to let more of the many people who really want to come to the US but are being kept out by our broken and byzantine process, then more power to him. I expect to be appointed to the board of the Koch Brothers’ evil empire before that happens.

Abbott isn’t actually interested in solving the problem, though. He’s just throwing red meat to his base, despite having the primary in the bag. As much as the locals didn’t care for his “Third World country” rhetoric, I doubt he even noticed, or cared if he did. He knows who he’s talking to. It’s what he does.

One more thing:

Abbott also proposed introducing the so-called E-Verify system, used to determine whether a particular employee has legal status, in state government.

Even though he said the system was “99.5 percent” effective, Abbott said he would not apply that new enforcement program to the private sector, where the vast majority of undocumented immigrants work.

The big-business lobby, representing many companies that have for years relied on cheap immigrant labor, has long resisted increased worksite enforcement in Texas and elsewhere.

“I think that Texas should establish the leadership position by employing this first as a state body, show that it works, set the standard for what it should be, before the state goes about the process of imposing more mandates on private employers,” Abbott said.

I’m just curious here, but how many undocumented immigrants does Abbott think are currently working undetected in state government? If this is a problem, why wasn’t he calling for E-Verify to be implemented before now? Surely Rick Perry and the Legislature wouldn’t have opposed the idea. And suggesting that maybe private businesses might consider voluntarily adopting it if he sets a good example for them is just too precious for words. If the system is so damn effective – not an incontrovertible claim, of course – and if undocumented immigrants are such a huge problem, why wouldn’t you push to make it a requirement? Burka is right, we don’t have policy in this state, we just have ideology. And it’s just insane.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged border, cameras, E-Verify, Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, immigration, Mexico, Operation Border Star, Rick Perry, Rio Grande, Texas | Comments Off

HISD proposes closing five schools

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure about this.

Houston ISD officials are proposing to close five small schools at the end of this academic year, a move likely to set off protests from parents and alumni.

Some on the school board – which ultimately must approve the plan – already are expressing concerns about the closures, which would affect more than 2,000 students.

The campuses slated to close are Jones High School, Fleming Middle School, and Dodson, N.Q. Henderson and Port Houston elementary schools, according to Houston Independent School District spokeswoman Sheleah Reed.

The district posted news of the potential closures on the schools’ websites Wednesday, saying that they were “part of a plan designed to address fluctuating enrollment and changing demographics across the city.”

The schools each enroll fewer than 500 students, according to 2013 district data. In many cases, numerous students who live in the neighborhood transfer to attend other HISD campuses or leave for charter schools.

Jones High School in southeast Houston, once a thriving campus that launched the district’s Vanguard program for gifted students, enrolled 440 students last year, according to district data. More than 900 students zoned to Jones, however, left to other HISD high schools, with about half attending Milby and Chavez, each about 7 miles away.

“Something needs to be offered at that school. If it can be offered at Chavez, it can be offered at Jones,” said Cheryl Diggs, a 1988 Jones graduate who owns property in the nearby South Park neighborhood. “Give the students a reason to stay. It makes no sense.”

See School Zone and Hair Balls for more; the latter provided this link to HISD’s campus demographic and enrollment report. I get the rationale behind this, but it’s not clear to me that having a few smaller schools in a huge and diverse district like HISD is a bad idea. Maybe offering some kind of specialized programming at these campuses is a superior alternative to closing them. Closing schools can have a profound effect on a neighborhood, which is probably why at least three trustees so far – Paula Harris, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, and Juliet Stipeche – have had negative reactions. Whether this proposal ultimately makes sense or not, this is going to be a tough sell for HISD. A press release panning the idea from Working America is beneath the fold.

Continue reading →

Posted in School days | Tagged high school, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Juliet Stipeche, Paula Harris, Rhonda Skillern-Jones, schools | 3 Comments

More on the audit letters

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron asks some outside experts to go over those recently released audit letters.

Houston leaders appeared to have ignored the significance of recurring accounting and management problems or did not have the resources to fix them, according to accounting experts who reviewed 11 years’ worth of audit letters released by the mayor’s office last week.

“It really affects the ability of the government to manage its activities well,” said Douglas Carmichael, a professor at New York’s Baruch College with decades of experience as a CPA and writing accounting standards. “There seem to be errors permitted that a good system would prevent or detect.”

Carmichael and others noted, however, the number of weaknesses that could lead to inaccurate record-keeping or fraud had decreased in recent years.

The public release of the audit letters comes as the city’s Finance Department is readying a proposal to analyze accounting and financial procedures throughout every city department with an eye toward resolving persistent problems and preventing new ones.

The goal, Finance Director Kelly Dowe said, is to get department directors to consider financial transparency and accurate bookkeeping as important as the community services they provide.

[…]

The letters by the city’s outside auditor, Deloite & Touche, identified bookkeeping problems and areas with little oversight that could be tempting targets for fraud.

They noted millions of dollars’ of inaccuracies in financial statements that needed to be corrected before the city could issue its annual financial report. The auditors found that although money did not appear lost, it sometimes was not moved to the correct account on time, or financial statements did not reflect the true balance after a review of debits and credits. The auditors attributed some of those problems to inadequate communication from departments and a limited finance staff.

The letters also highlighted management deficiencies, such as failing to adequately track inventory or failing to require a collections contractor to provide documentation that it had properly billed for its services.

Some years, auditors suggested dozens of fixes, and some problems were identified repeatedly over the years before being addressed.

“It sounds like they just tossed it to the auditor and said, ‘You fix it,’ ” said Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, founder of a firm that performs the same kind of audits.

Whitley and other auditing professionals noted that Deloitte confirmed the financial statements as “clean” every year, despite the problems found. They said it also was promising that the most recent letter listed just four deficiencies, two of which were “significant,” rather than dozens.

The auditors probably would not have OK’d the revised financial statements if they had found actual wrongdoing or grave errors rather than just the potential for them, said Jacqueline Reck, past president American Accounting Association’s Government and Nonprofit Section.

See here for the background. Again, it doesn’t look like there was anything major in these letters. The bigger problem was in the city’s inability to address the issues in a timely fashion, though clearly progress was made. The bigger question is why City Controller Ronald Green thought they shouldn’t have been released. He had an AG opinion saying they didn’t have to be released, but against that there was the standard practice of other cities to release them, and the lack of any apparent cause for concern. He hasn’t had anything to say about it so far, which is too bad because I’d really like to understand his thinking. I hope he breaks his silence and tells us why he did what he did.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Annise Parker, Attorney General, audit letters, budget, Houston, Houston City Council, Ronald Green | 1 Comment

Reintroducing the jaguarundi

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Cool.

Jaguarundi (source: Wikipedia)

The federal government has established a recovery plan for the jaguarundi, almost four decades since the small wildcat was listed as an endangered species and almost three decades since one was confirmed in the U.S.

But don’t expect to see the reddish brown or grey feline returning to what remains of the thick brush in South Texas anytime soon. The plan recently approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is heavy on additional research and habitat restoration but is not especially optimistic about its prospects for success.

The jaguarundi, a bit bigger than the average house cat, had much of its preferred thorn scrub habitat cleared long ago in Texas for agriculture and more recently for development in the rapidly growing border region. The cats still prowl in northeast Mexico, where much of the research would take place.

“There’s just not a whole lot of information on the jaguarundi,” said Taylor Jones of the nonprofit WildEarth Guardians, which sued and reached a settlement with the government that called for the recovery plan. She hopes the plan will spark new research, and in the near term contribute to additional efforts to conserve and restore the cat’s habitat. “You certainly couldn’t bring them back if they didn’t have any place to live.”

[…]

It’s not clear how many jaguarundis existed when the species was first listed as endangered in 1976, but it was determined they were in decline because of habitat destruction. The last confirmed sighting of a jaguarundi in the U.S. was a dead one on a road outside Brownsville in 1986. Before that, the last was seen in 1969.

Lesli Gray, a spokeswoman for the federal wildlife agency, said there is no guarantee funding will exist to meet the agency’s goals, but at least a plan has been developed that outlines what is needed to delist the species or at least improve its population.

The plan calls for spending more than $7 million in each of the first two years. Under a fully funded plan, the jaguarundi could be downlisted by 2040 if three or more established populations are found with a total of at least 250 cats. The species could be delisted 10 years later.

I have no idea how well this will work, but I wish them the best of luck. Loss of habitat is a tough thing for a lot of species to overcome. The Center for Biological Diversity has more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Center for Biological Diversity, endangered species, jaguarundi, Texas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | Comments Off

Friday random ten: We miss you, Molly

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I managed to miss the anniversary of Molly Ivins’ death last week. For my penance, here are ten of my favorite Texas songs. I know she would have approved.

1. Stupid Texas Song – Austin Lounge Lizards
2. Deep Ellum Blues – Asylum Street Spankers
3. That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas) – Lyle Lovett
4. The Rivers Of Texas – Flying Fish Sailors
5. Texas Flood – Stevie Ray Vaughan
6. Odessa – The Mollys
7. Texican Style – Los Lonely Boys
8. La Grange – ZZ Top
9. Beaumont Boys – Ezra Charles
10. I Can’t Tame Wild Women – The Hot Club of Cowtown

The world is a more boring place without you, Molly. Rest in peace.

Posted in Music | Tagged Molly Ivins, Texas, theme lists | Comments Off

January campaign finance reports for Houston officeholders

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

One more set of finance reports to document, from city of Houston officeholders and candidates. I’m not going to link to the individual reports this time, since the city’s system automatically downloads the PDFs and I don’t feel like uploading these all to my Google drive. Here are the basic summaries, with my comments afterwards


Officeholder   Office    Raised    Spent     Loan     Cash
==========================================================
Parker          Mayor   121,165  574,185        0  461,089

Green      Controller     6,575   39,253        0   14,585

Costello          AL1    81,200   62,410   15,000  144,753  
Robinson          AL2    26,246   33,265        0   32,918
Kubosh            AL3    83,691   84,157   15,000   11,452
Bradford          AL4     8,050   30,257        0   33,485
Christie          AL5    15,275   11,606        0   10,548

Stardig             A     5,250   30,393        0   24,238
Davis               B    19,300   28,798        0   84,551
Cohen               C    47,982   76,405        0   93,364
Boykins             D    16,375   49,004        0    6,727
Martin              E    45,650   27,968        0   43,423
Nguyen              F    21,269    5,795        0    8,750
Pennington          G    13,550   30,046        0  192,142
Gonzales            H    40,375   33,623        0   90,782
Gallegos            I    38,882   18,279        0   22,940
Laster              J     3,500    8,081        0   77,408
Green               K    10,150   15,455        0   77,366


Hale             SD15         0      472        0        0
Noriega          HCDE         0    8,690    1,000    9,335

Chavez            AL3     3,150    6,652      160   15,716
Calvert           AL3     1,600   65,031   10,000    2,654
Brown               A    21,969   22,121        0   25,729
Peck                A         0    2,811        0        0
Knox                A     1,220   17,271        0      931
Richards            D     2,000   16,043        0    2,727
Jones, J            D         0        0        0    3,203
Provost             D     7,960    9,033        0       15
Edwards             D     3,745    4,415        0        0
Rodriguez           I         0    3,581        0    6,731
Garces              I    32,950   49,802        0        0
Ablaza              I       380   10,288        0      673
Mendez              I     2,050   19,120        0        0

Mayor Parker has a decent amount on hand, not as much as she had after some other elections, but then she won’t be on any ballot until 2018, so there’s no rush. I know she has at least one fundraiser happening, and I’m sure she’ll have a solid start on fundraising for whatever office she might have her eye on in four years’ time.

And speaking of being prepared for the next election, CM Costello is in pretty good shape, too. It’ll take a lot more money than that to mount a successful campaign for Mayor in 2015, and there are likely to be several strong candidates competing for the usual pots of cash, but every little bit helps.

The other At Large incumbents are in reasonable shape. Both Kubosh and Christie have done some degree of self-funding, so their totals aren’t worrisome. While I believe there will be some competitive At Large races in 2015, and not just in the two open seats, I don’t think anyone will be caught short in this department the way Andrew Burks was.

I continue to marvel at the totals in the district seats. Many of those incumbents have been helped by not having well-financed opponents. CMs Gonzales and Pennington are well placed if they have their eyes on another race. Personally, I think CM Gonzales ought to consider running for City Controller. If nothing else, that will likely be less crowded than the Mayor’s race in 2015.

CM Richard Nguyen, who was nicely profiled by Mustafa Tameez recently, received nearly half of his total – $9,500, to be exact – from various PACs after the election; this is called “late train” money. As far as the money he received from individuals, every one of them had a Vietnamese name. That’s some good networking there.

Of the others listed, two of them – Ron Hale and Melissa Noriega – are running for something in 2014. The rest, with one exception, was either an unsuccessful candidate in 2013 or a term-limited Council member. The exception is former CM Jolanda Jones, whose eligibility to run for something else remains disputed. The one notable thing in this bunch is the $25K that now-former CM Helena Brown had on hand. Given that CM Brenda Stardig left a lot of money unspent in 2011 when Brown knocked her off, there’s a certain irony to that. Beyond that, no one left themselves very much for a subsequent campaign if they have one in mind. I won’t be surprised if one or more people on this list runs for something again, perhaps in 2015, but if so they’ll be starting out as they did in 2013.

Posted in Election 2013 | Tagged Annise Parker, Brenda Stardig, campaign finance reports, Ed Gonzalez, Election 2011, Election 2013, Election 2014, Election 2015, Election 2018, fundraising, HCDE, Helena Brown, Houston, Houston City Controller, Houston City Council, Jack Christie, Jolanda Jones, Mayor, Melissa Noriega, Michael Kubosh, Oliver Pennington, Richard Nguyen, Ron Hale, Ronald Green, SD15, Senate, Stephen Costello, term limits | Comments Off

Making the push to sign people up for health insurance

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Harris County is at ground zero for this national effort.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

With less than two months remaining to enroll in the health care marketplace, the federal government is focusing outreach efforts on areas with the largest concentrations of uninsured, including Texas’ Harris and Dallas counties.

According to a study conducted for The Associated Press, half of the nation’s uninsured live in just 113 of the 3,143 counties. Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the U.S. – about 1 in 4 people – and the two biggest concentrations in Texas are Harris and Dallas counties. That sort of data are what brought U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to Dallas last week and why the agency is coordinating with Houston health officials on advertising aimed at spreading the enrollment message.

Martha Blaine, executive director of the Community Council of Greater Dallas, said Texas’ refusal to expand Medicaid is the main factor.

“I think the other reason that we’re not making the headway against the uninsured in Texas is that … with the federal exchange Texas did not receive any of the outreach money. And so we do not have high-profile outreach programs like California has,” Blaine said. “The general public does not have a unified message in Texas.”

Federal officials have identified 25 key metro areas to focus on before the March 31 end of open enrollment, including Dallas and Houston; South Florida and Orlando; the northern New Jersey megalopolis; Phoenix and Tucson; Detroit and Cleveland; Atlanta and Nashville. In mid-January, federal officials reported more than 118,500 Texans had used the health care web site to sign up for insurance.

To some extent, saying that “half of the nation’s uninsured live in just 113 counties” is functionally the same as saying a lot of people live in these counties. By my count, the 100 most populous counties in the US contain more than 40% of the total population, so having half the uninsured population in the top 113 seems right in line with that. On the plus side, having so many of them concentrated in a small number of places makes outreach easier. On the other hand, as Joan McCarter notes, the biggest of these big counties are mostly in states like Texas that didn’t expand Medicaid, which puts a lot of people into the coverage gap, and which are most subject to the resistance/sabotage efforts of their state governments. The people and groups doing the outreach have their work cut out for them.

In Austin, a coalition of activists launched on Wednesday a bilingual campaign to spotlight stories from Texans who cannot afford health care insurance because of the state’s refusal to expand Medicaid coverage to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act.

The initiative, dubbed “Texas Left Me Out,” is being spearheaded by more than 40 health care and community advocacy groups. The activist coalition has set up websites in English and Spanish and a phone line to collect stories from uninsured Texans about their experiences.

The group also said it planned to deliver letters to the offices of every member of the Legislature in an effort to convince state lawmakers “that this problem needs to be fixed and it needs to be fixed as quickly as possible,” said Sister JT Dwye, of the Catholic Church-affiliated Seton Healthcare Family.

I’ve noted the efforts of Texas Left Me Out before. They’re as much about winning elections as anything else, because we won’t be able to make sufficient gains on this problem until the nature of our government changes. Another tough job, but it’s got to be done. Check out the Texas Left Me Out and do what you can to get involved.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Census, Election 2014, health insurance, insurance exchanges, Medicaid, Texas, Texas Left Me Out | Comments Off

The cost of fighting the inevitable

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Trib headline: Anti-Regulation Politics May Have Hurt Energy Industry. Oh, the irony.

Houston Ship Channel, 1973

Businesses in energy-related industries in Texas say they have been unable to take full advantage of the natural gas boom that is roaring across the state because of a delay in the issuing of greenhouse gas permits — an instance in which Texas’ anti-regulation stance might have actually hurt business.

The Environmental Protection Agency began requiring the permits more than three years ago, but the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality refused to enact the rules, arguing that it was illegal to regulate greenhouse gases. That left the responsibility to the EPA, which is only slightly larger than its Texas counterpart and has a small permitting division. As a result, the backlog of applications grew quickly, as did the complaints.

Texas lawmakers directed the state’s environmental agency last year to begin following the federal regulations. But it will take months for the agency to implement its own rules to take over the permitting.

The state has long fought with the federal government over regulations, especially those from the EPA. The chairman of the Texas agency, Bryan Shaw, who is among the many state officials who question the science of climate change, has repeatedly criticized the EPA for developing rules that could cripple the Texas economy.

Electric power retailers, along with energy transport and chemical companies, have told the TCEQ that the delay has put Texas at a competitive disadvantage against other states that had agreed earlier to issue the permits. Some executives said they have considered building in other states because of the delays.

[…]

Several industry lawyers and consultants estimated that the TCEQ would issue permits several months faster than the EPA, where in some cases the delays have been as long as two years.

“If it takes six months or a year to start a facility, well, then that’s a year you’re not going to be making any money,” said Bill Jamieson, director for air quality at the environmental consulting firm SWCA. “There’s no question that equity firms and large investors look at that as risk.”

[…]

Pamela Giblin, an Austin-based lawyer who represents many oil and chemical companies, said it would have been difficult for the state to follow rules that it had challenged in court. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Texas’ argument that the EPA’s greenhouse gas permitting program is illegal. “If they had taken up the program, there might have been some pressure then to abandon the arguments and to leave the litigation alone,” Giblin said.

If Texas wins the case, “they’re going to look really astute for having taken a firm position.”

But there is no guarantee that will happen. Supreme Court justices have declined to hear Texas’ argument that greenhouse gases should not be considered a danger to public health and welfare.

Jamieson said companies thrive on regulatory certainty, and fighting rules can be more costly than following them.

“It really comes down to politics as to why this was done the way it was done,” he said. “You can look back on a number of instances in the state of Texas where utilities have challenged some pretty significant EPA regulation, and they’ve spent a lot of money, and the end result is: they have the regulation.”

See here for more on the SCOTUS hearing of that appeal, including some links to more in depth analysis of it. And yes, the state’s long and exhaustive fight against the EPA has been nothing but politics. The industry has finally recognized that the cost of denying reality is more than they care to bear, but the state isn’t there yet. Hopefully, SCOTUS will make it clear to them one more time.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gases, lawsuit, SCOTUS, TCEQ, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Followup on that report about sexual assault in the Harris County jail

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Last month, I blogged about a report by the Justice Department that alleged a high rate of sexual assault in one of the Harris County jail buildings. Sheriff Adrian Garcia, who testified about the report ~~in Congress~~ to a panel of citizen correctional experts, was sharply critical of the study’s methodology. Click the link for the details, including the report and Sheriff Garcia’s written response, which was separate from his oral testimony. Shortly after that came out, I received this followup report, sent to me by the Sheriff’s department, which added some context to the original study. The main fact to note, which wasn’t in the original or in the media accounts of it, was that “In 2011, 902 allegations of sexual victimization (10%) were substantiated (i.e., determined to have occurred upon investigation).” If you look at this report, which is about sexual assaults reported by all adult correctional facilities in the US, there’s a graph that shows that while allegations of sexual assault have increased steadily since 2005, the number of substantiated complaints has been absolutely flat. That doesn’t mean that sexual assault isn’t up in correctional facilities nationwide – we don’t know anything about the quality of the investigations that followed the allegations – but it does show that good data are hard to come by, and that there was more to the story than what was originally presented. Read it all and see for yourself, then read this Observer story about the initial report, which includes a detailed response from the Sheriff’s office.

UPDATE: Two corrections made to the text.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Adrian Garcia, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, jails, Justice Department | Comments Off

Bexar County to offer “plus one” benefits

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good for them.

Without referencing same-sex couples, Bexar County on Tuesday agreed to extend health insurance benefits to the unmarried companions of county employees.

The “Plus One Qualifying Adult” policy adopted by Commissioners Court attempts to circumvent legal roadblocks that bar the county from offering benefits to workers’ domestic partners. Modeled after an approach used in the private sector and adopted last month by El Paso County, the commissioners’ resolution avoids the terms that have brought challengers in San Antonio and Dallas.

The unanimously-approved proposal, which drew no public opposition, requires proof of the couple’s “financial interdependence.” A qualifying adult must have lived with the county employee for at least a year and must continue doing so to remain eligible, the policy states.

County Manager David Smith said it’s unknown how many of the county’s 4,000 employees might qualify for the extended coverage, or how much the benefits might cost taxpayers, but in El Paso’s first month under its policy, only one employee applied.

An added individual, who must be at least 18 years of age, must offer proof the county worker and the second individual share “common financial obligations.” Evidence of that relationship would be a deed or mortgage; vehicle title or registration; joint bank or credit accounts; designation as primary beneficiary for life insurance or retirement benefits; or assignment of a durable power of attorney or health care power of attorney.

Excluded from the program — at least for now — are the worker’s parents; their parents’ other descendants; their grandparents’ other descendants; step relatives; and a worker’s renters, boarders, tenants or employees.

Commissioners agreed to revisit the possibility of dropping those exclusions to possibly allow a parent to take advantage of the benefits, which include medical, dental, vision and life insurance coverage.

Randy Bear at The Rivard Report had a preview of the Commissioners’ action, which includes the background on that AG opinion, and has has a report from the Commissioners Court meeting where the benefits were formally adopted. I can add a data point to this, thanks to an email forwarded to me by regular commenter Mainstream. He had sent an open records request to the city of Houston asking how many employees had applied for health benefits for their same-sex partners after Mayor Parker decreed that they were included under the wording of the 2001 charter amendment that restricted such benefits to “legally married” employees. The response he got was that six employees had done so, out of 19,809 total enrollments. So while Bexar is taking a broader and more inclusive path, I think it’s reasonable to assume their added cost will not be substantial. I applaud them for doing their part to increase access to health insurance, and I eagerly await Harris County following suit.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Annise Parker, Bexar County, Commissioners Court, Greg Abbott, health insurance, Houston, San Antonio, Texas | Comments Off

On succeeding Abbott as AG

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The next Attorney General will inherit a lot of Greg Abbott’s unfinished fights, some of which he instigated and some of which were thrust upon him by the Lege.

Still not Greg Abbott

Defending the constitutionality of the state’s controversial public school finance system before the Texas Supreme Court will be a tall order for the person elected to replace Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Three Republicans and one Democrat are running for the position.

Houston lawyer Sam Houston thinks there are problems with the way Texas funds its schools, but an attorney general is bound to defend the state law whether he or she agrees or disagrees.

“That’s the job,” Houston said in an interview.

And backing Abbott’s current defense of the school funding system are all three Republican attorney general candidates: State Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas; state Sen. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney; and Railroad Commission Chairman Barry Smitherman.

“All of the candidates are campaigning on the idea that they would carry forward the Abbott agenda on standing firm against federal overreach and the expansion of government,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University.

[…]

During his tenure, Abbott has used the position to champion socially conservative positions on gay marriage and abortion as well as to launch political attacks against the Obama administration and federal agencies.

His defense of the school finance system became campaign fodder for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who filibustered against the 2011 cuts in the Texas Senate. Abbott has responded that he was acting in his capacity as attorney general to defend state laws.

Houston, the lone Democrat in the race, said in an interview that he questions what advice Abbott gave to members of the Legislature during the 2013 session regarding the system’s constitutionality.

He’s also questioned the advice Abbott gave the Lege about redistricting. I don’t think that comment Prof. Jillson made above applies to Sam Houston, at least not in the same way. Being tasked with defending the state against litigation doesn’t preclude one from seeking a settlement if one reasonably concludes that the state’s position is a loser and it’s going to get its tuchus handed to it in court. There’s already an argument being made by the Lone Star Project that Abbott can and should be seeking a settlement in the school finance case. A much more contentious question will arise with the state’s defense of its Double Secret Illegal Anti-Gay Marriage law. The initial hearing to determine if there needs to be an injunction against it will be soon, but it’s very likely the appeals process will still be ongoing in 2015. The precedent exists for an Attorney General to decline to defend a state’s ban on same sex marriages. Houston may come under a lot of pressure if it’s his job to do that for Texas next year. The Supreme Court could possibly render that decision moot, but this is something to keep in mind going forward.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Attorney General, Barry Smitherman, Dan Branch, Election 2014, gay marriage, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Sam Houston, school finance, SCOTUS, Texas | Comments Off

Indictments in petition forgery case

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Whoa.

Four political campaign workers have been indicted by a Harris County Grand Jury in the wake of allegations of election fraud in a Harris County Justice of the Peace race, first reported by Local 2 News in January.

The suspects — two men and two women — were paid to gather signatures to place Republican candidate Leonila Olivares Salazar’s name on the ballot in the Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2, Place 2 race.

[…]

The indictments, handed down Monday, come about two weeks after Salazar’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Judge George Risner, sued to have her name withdrawn from the ballot.

As first reported by Local 2, Risner obtained signed statements from three of the suspects admitting they did not actually obtain the signatures listed on the petitions.

Risner said his investigation shows that 380 of 447 signatures submitted to put Salazar’s name on the ballot were forged.

The indictments name campaign workers 57-year-old Ralph Basil Garcia, 53-year-old Annette Irigoyen, 28-year-old Iris Irgoyen and 55-year-old David Basurto. All face felony charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and tampering with a governmental record.

See here for the background. As we know, a Beaumont judge is hearing the lawsuit to determine if Risner’s opponent Salazar should be declared ineligible for the ballot. He has announced that he’s waiting till the other folks that have been indicted have turned themselves in, so they are all available to testify. Meanwhile, the County Attorney is supposed to be doing its own investigation, but no word on that yet. Campos has more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2014, George Risner, Harris County Attorney, judicial races, Justice of the Peace, lawsuit, Leonila Olivares-Salazar, petitions | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of February 3

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance still has a dozen or so Republican responses to the SOTU it needs to get through as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

What’s at stake in the Democratic primaries

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve had my fun poking holes in Mark Jones’ ridiculous argument that we should all just vote in the Republican primary, but now it’s time to talk about the Democratic primary and why these races matter.

US Senate

David Alameel

On Monday and Tuesday I published interviews with Mike Fjetland and Maxey Scherr. I wish I could present an interview with David Alameel today, but as you can see I don’t have one. I made contact with his campaign manager, but after some initial back and forth I heard nothing for a couple of weeks, then got an email out of the blue late last week from another campaign staffer; after replying to him I heard nothing further. Team Alameel is welcome to contact me any time between now and Primary Day and I’ll do my best to accommodate his schedule, and run the interview the next weekday. Y’all have my email address and my cell number. I’m not going anywhere.

There are twenty-one candidates running for the Senate, including the incumbent, and five of them are Democrats. Two of them, Fjetland and Scherr, are clearly worthy of your consideration. I personally lean towards Scherr because I have a preference for younger candidates and I think there would be value in having three women at the top of the ticket, but both of them are honorable and will run respectable campaigns. One candidate, Harry Kim, is largely unknown to me and I daresay to most people reading this. He has a website now, though the content is generic to the point of being formless, his campaign Facebook page was last updated on January 7 when he uploaded a cover photo, and his campaign Twitter account has yet to tweet anything. I don’t think I’m asking too much of first time candidates operating on a shoestring to at least take advantage of the free tools that are available to them so those of us that will not otherwise get to interact with them can learn a little something about them.

One candidate should come with glaring spotlights and screaming klaxons, to warn everyone in her path to stay the hell away. I speak of course of the LaRouche nutball Kesha Rogers, who for the last two elections managed to get herself and her message of impeaching President Obama nominated in CD22. That’s mortifying to say the least, but in the end neither nomination had any effect on anything. Nominating her for the Senate – even allowing her to slip into the runoff – would make all of us a laughingstock on a national scale with the force to knock Chris Christie out of the news cycle and with the potential to administer real damage to Wendy Davis’ campaign. This is what we get with Kesha Rogers. She has thrived in the past on obscurity in low profile, low turnout elections. The only antidote to this is a sufficiently informed electorate. Make sure everyone you know knows about Kesha Rogers.

And then there’s Alameel, who despite plastering the entire Internet with his ads, remains an enigma. Forget my own inability to get an interview with him, I’ve yet to see a profile of him in some other news source. We all know that he made a lot of contributions to Republicans in years past but has been Democratic-only since 2008. We know there are questions about his commitment to reproductive rights, given past and possibly ongoing connections to a Catholic pro-life group. We know that despite these things, both Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte saw fit to endorse him. But we don’t know the answers to these questions, and until someone with a microphone or notebook gets to pose those questions to him, we won’t know any more than we do right now. The Davis and LVdP endorsements carry some weight, but without knowing more about him I can’t recommend even considering a vote for him at this time. If I get the opportunity to interview him, even if I just get the opportunity to read something written by someone who has had the opportunity to speak to him, I may change my mind about that. I’ll let you know if that happens.

Governor

We’re all voting for Wendy in the primary, right? I mean, whatever misgivings you may have about her campaign at this time aside, Ray Madrigal has done no campaigning that I can see, he has no online presence, and he offers zero odds of competing against Greg Abbott, let alone winning. The only real item of interest here is Davis’ vote share. If she fails to get above some arbitrary number – I don’t know what that arbitrary number is, but I do know that it will be decided after her vote total is in – there will be some number of stories written about Democratic “discontent” with her, or maybe just “trepidation” about her. The number of such stories is inversely proportional to her actual vote share, as it the number of “unnamed Democratic insiders/strategists” quoted in those stories. To paraphrase those DirecTV ads, don’t let there be lots of stories written about Democratic “discontent” – or “disenchantment”, there’s another good word – with Wendy Davis, with multiple quotes from “unnamed Democratic insiders/strategists”. Vote for her in the primary and do your part to head that off.

By the way, I do presume there is an arbitrary number for Greg Abbott as well. Partly because he has a gaggle of opponents, and partly because he’s not Wendy Davis, I presume his arbitrary number is lower than her arbitrary number. I also presume the tone of those stories, if they get to be written, will be more of surprise than an opportunity to pile on and air grievances. This is of course an untestable hypothesis – like I said, we don’t know what each candidate’s arbitrary numbers are – but however you want to slice it, I’d bet Abbott would get more slack for a lower-than-you-might-have-expected vote share than Davis would get. Assuming either of them gets less than one might expect, whatever that is.

Ag Commissioner

The stakes here are pretty basic: A well-known candidate that can generate his own press and who is running on a sexy issue but whom basically no one trusts to be a good Democrat, versus a highly qualified and much more acceptable to the base candidate who will be utterly ignored by the press. Dumb ideas aside, Mark Jones did at least characterize this race correctly. Kinky is clearly higher risk, but at least potentially higher upside. Hugh Fitzsimons is solid and trustworthy, but again will get absolutely no attention from the press save for a cursory campaign overview story some time in October. Which do you prefer? Again, I’m ignoring the third candidate, Jim Hogan, who does not appear to be doing much of anything. Maybe that’s foolish after Mark Thompson came out of nowhere to win the Railroad Commissioner nomination in 2008 over two more experienced candidates, but it’s what I’m doing.

Railroad Commissioner

No one is going to claim that this race will be on anyone’s radar, but there’s still a choice, and in my consideration it’s a clear choice. Dale Henry is by all accounts a well-qualified candidate, having been the Democratic nominee for RRC in 2006 and 2012. He’s also, to put it gently, old school in his campaign style and methods. Steve Brown is young, dynamic, an outsider for an agency that could use a fresh perspective, a modern campaigner who will work hard for himself and the top of the ticket, and has a future even if all he gets out of this election is the experience of running statewide. I think he’s the obvious call to make, but in a low profile campaign anything can happen. But if you’re paying attention and you want a better slate overall, you’ll be sure to vote for Steve Brown.

Local races

Here’s where Mark Jones’ idea really makes no sense. Pretty much every county where Democrats are strong features important primaries. We already know about Harris County, where the need to nominate Kim Ogg outweighs Jones’ suggestion all by itself. Travis County is electing a County Judge, as is El Paso County, which also features three hot legislative races. Bexar County has races for County Judge, County Clerk, District Attorney, District Clerk, and a slew of District Court judges. Dallas County has a power struggle between current DA Craig Watkins and Party Chair Darlene Ewing, with the former running his own slate of candidates, including one against Ewing. Tarrant County will be key to Rep. Mark Veasey’s re-election. And those are just the big counties.

Bottom line: We have some important, consequential decisions to make beginning on February 18. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Bexar County, Dallas County, David Alameel, Democratic primary, El Paso, Election 2014, Governor, Harris County, Harry Kim, Hugh Fitzsimons, Jim Hogan, Kim Ogg, Kinky Friedman, Maxey Scherr, Mike Fjetland, Railroad Commission, Ray Madrigal, Senate, Steve Brown, Tarrant County, Texas, Travis County, Wendy Davis | 1 Comment

Abbott outraises Davis on 30 day report

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Would have been nice to have done better.

Sen. Wendy Davis

Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott outraised Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis by more than 3-to-1 in the first three weeks in January in the race for governor, according to figures reported by each campaign Monday.

The $3.1 million-plus that Abbott raised from Jan. 1 through Jan. 23, the period covered by campaign finance reports due Monday, gave him $29.4 million in cash on hand for the race against Davis.

Davis, of Fort Worth, raised $912,996 over the same period, counting two of her committees and a joint effort with Battleground Texas, which is dedicated to making Texas competitive for Democrats. She reported she has $10.2 million in cash on hand.

The comparison could take off some of the shine from the big money that Davis hauled in during the last six months of 2013 when, counting the same three fundraising committees, she took in $12.2 million compared with $11.5 million for Abbott, long a top fundraiser.

“With the previous announcement, she got a lot of positive attention because she had raised more than people expected and had more relative to Abbott than anyone expected,” said University of Texas-Pan American political scientist Jerry Polinard. “This is another way (for Abbott) of reminding people, ‘Wait a minute, we are still in a very red state. I’ve got more money.'”

It’s also a way for the media to rehash its stories about Davis from the past two weeks, since apparently there isn’t anything else to report on. Candidates in contested primaries have to make 30 day and 8 day reports; candidates like Leticia Van de Putte, who are unopposed in the primary, get to go till July before their next reporting deadline. At this pace, Davis would raise about $10 million for the rest of the year, which ain’t nothing but which would only get her a bit more than halfway to her stated goal of $40 million. The great thing about having a large donor base, as she does, is that you can go back to them and ask for more. Maybe not so quickly, however. As for Abbott, it sure is nice to have a bunch of panicky zillionaires in your corner; hr took in more from five deep-pocketed benefactors than Davis did overall. I’m sure that was the message they meant to send.

On a side note, we find that Greg Abbott received even more contributions than we first thought from payday lenders last year. My guess is he’s taken in more in the current report. Maybe someone can check that when the reports are posted. Like I said, nice to have some deep pockets you can reach into. Campos has more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2014, fundraising, Governor, Greg Abbott, payday lenders, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

School districts deal with ACA paperwork

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The headline for this story says that Texas school districts are “struggling” to deal with requirements of the Affordable Care Act, but there’s not much evidence of actual struggles in the story itself.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Texas school districts are scrambling to meet an Affordable Care Act provision that requires them to offer health insurance to thousands of substitute teachers, bus drivers and other workers who clock at least 30 hours a week.

While many of these workers are already eligible for health insurance, tracking compliance is proving cumbersome for administrators. Compared with traditional employers, school systems rely on more variable-hour workers and follow an unusual calendar.

“It’s kind of a nightmare. It’s extremely complex,” said Holly Murphy, senior attorney for the Texas Association of School Boards, who is touring the state to address school administrators’ questions about the new requirement.

How districts choose to handle the mandate could spell either good or bad news for employees. Some school systems may cap part-time employees’ hours, while others appear to be creating new full-time positions to ease the demand from hourly workers. Both options should make the bookkeeping aspect of compliance prior to the Jan. 1 deadline simpler, officials said.

The Fort Bend Independent School District posted job openings for 74 educational assistants – one at each campus – who will essentially be full-time substitutes eligible for benefits. Those positions should help take pressure off the district’s pool of 1,000 part-time substitutes, administrators said, although the district would still face the increased cost of providing benefits to more employees.

“We basically solved the issue around the Affordable Care Act,” said Kermit Spears, chief human resources officer at Fort Bend ISD.

Groups of suburban and rural school districts are considering creating co-ops that could share and provide benefits for full-time substitutes, Murphy said.

[…]

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said limiting hours isn’t in the spirit of the law and wouldn’t even be an option in the Houston ISD, which already struggles with substitute shortages.

“That’s the sort of shoddy behavior we were worried about,” she said.

She applauded the Houston ISD’s move to begin offering this month a basic $5-a-month health insurance plan to employees earning under $25,000 a year.

“HISD did very early compliance,” Fallon said. “We have paraprofessionals and clerks and food service and custodial (employees) who can afford insurance for the first time, and we got told instantly it was the Affordable Care Act that did this.”

Sounds more like “School districts have a variety of options for meeting the requirements that workers’ hours are documented and that everyone who works at least 30 hours per week receives a health insurance plan” to me. Limiting some workers to a maximum of 29 hours per week, which a number of unscrupulous businesses in food service and similar industries have tried to avoid offering health insurance at all, is an option for school districts as well. The vast majority of these employees are already eligible for health insurance under the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, so the situation is very different here. School districts will have to do some more paperwork to be in compliance with the ACA, but if anyone is equipped to deal with paperwork it’s school districts, and the net effect will be that more employees wind up with health insurance. I’m okay with that.

Posted in School days | Tagged Fort Bend ISD, Gayle Fallon, health insurance, HISD, schools, TASB, Texas, Texas AFT | Comments Off

On, Wisconsin

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From the ACLU of Wisconsin:

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin and the law firm of Mayer Brown filed a federal lawsuit today on behalf of four same-sex couples who wish to marry in Wisconsin or are seeking recognition for their legal out-of-state marriages.

The plaintiffs include Roy Badger and Garth Wangemann of Milwaukee, who have been together 37 years. Three years ago Wangemann had much of his right lung removed after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Following the operation, a complication occurred and he was put into a medically induced coma for nearly a month. His progress was uncertain, and Wangemann’s father attempted to override Badger’s power of attorney to have his son taken off life support. Before that could happen, Wangemann recovered.

“What upset me the most was that after all of our time together, our relationship was not fully recognized by my family and there was a real danger that my wish to give Roy the ability to make decisions about my care could be stripped away,” Wangemann said. “Thankfully, our wishes held in this case. But without the protections that come with marriage, the consequences can literally be a matter of life or death.”

Other plaintiffs in the case are Carol Schumacher and Virginia Wolf of Eau Claire; Charvonne Kemp and Marie Carlson of Milwaukee; and Judi Trampf and Katy Heyning of Madison. Read their stories.

Wisconsin’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples prevents them from securing the hundreds of protections that state law provides to married couples. Wisconsin law subjects same-sex couples to an additional harm that is unique among states that deny same-sex couples the freedom to marry. The only way for Wisconsin couples to get the federal protections that come with marriage is for them to go out of state to marry. But Wisconsin law says that may be a crime punishable by nine months in jail and a $10,000 fine.

Among the plaintiff couples, Schumacher and Wolf were legally married in another state, raising the possibility of prosecution back at home. The lawsuit challenges the overall ban as well as the application of this criminal law to same-sex couples who are forced to choose between being denied federal protections and the risk of criminal prosecution.

“These families simply want the security and recognition that only marriage provides,” said Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. “They have built their lives and raised children here. It is wrong for the state to treat these loving and committed couples as second-class citizens, and it is cruel to place them in a catch-22 where they can’t even travel elsewhere to obtain federal protections without their marriage being labeled a crime.”

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin. The plaintiffs allege that the state’s constitutional marriage ban sends a message that lesbians, gay men, and their children are viewed as second-class citizens who are undeserving of the legal sanction, respect, protections, and support that heterosexuals and their families are able to enjoy through marriage.

Criminalizing out of state marriages is a nasty little twist. I’m surprised there wasn’t a lawsuit sooner.

Meanwhile, the Virginia case was heard yesterday.

The ban on same-sex marriage is just like an old Virginia law that made interracial marriages illegal, and it’s time for Virginia to stop discriminating against gays and lesbians, a state attorney told a federal judge Tuesday.

But lawyers who support the ban said if the law is to change, it should be done by the legislature. They also argue that there has never been a fundamental right to same-sex marriage.

“We have marriage laws in society because we have children, not because we have adults,” said attorney David Nimocks of the religious group Alliance Defending Freedom.

The case is the first one in the South to reach oral arguments before a federal judge. Recently elected Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring announced Jan. 23 that he would not defend the state in the lawsuit because he believed it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In overturning bans in Utah and Oklahoma, federal judges have also said those laws violate the 14th amendment.

Virginia Solicitor General Stuart Raphael told the judge Virginia had frequently been on the wrong side of history, citing the state’s ban on interracial marriages, its defense of segregation as well as its opposition to allowing female students into the Virginia Military Institute.

Raphael said supporters of the ban have failed to prove how allowing gay marriage would make opposite sex couples less likely to marry.

“That’s the Achilles heel in the argument,” he said.

[…]

U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen said she would rule soon. If Wright Allen finds Virginia’s law unconstitutional, Raphael asked her to issue a stay so that nobody can get married until the case is heard on appeal.

He said the state wanted to avoid the situation Utah found itself in after marriages were briefly allowed to occur there before a stay was issued.

With Herring’s office deciding to side with the plaintiffs, the job of defending the law fell to the legal team of Norfolk’s Circuit Court clerk.

Attorney David Oakley said the court should respect the legislative process that created the law. If the law is to be changed, it should be done through the legislature, he said.

In addition, an attorney for the religious group Alliance Defending Freedom argued on behalf of the Prince William County’s clerk, which was allowed to intervene in the case. The clerk asked to intervene because of worries the attorney general’s office wouldn’t do an adequate job defending the law.

And there was some action in Utah as well.

The state of Utah offered a tailored defense of its ban on same-sex marriage in a brief filed late Monday evening with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing its laws are all about the long-term interests of children.

Utah has chosen a definition of marriage that is “principally a child-centered institution, one focused first and foremost on the welfare of children rather than the emotional interests of adults,” the state said. “And by reinforcing that understanding, the state gently encourages parents to routinely sacrifice their own interests to the legitimate needs and interests of their children.”

That definition is not designed to demean other family structures “any more than giving an ‘A’ to some students demeans others,” the state said.

But redefining marriage in “genderless” terms likely would result in lower reproductive rates and fewer children being raised in the ideal environment provided by biological, opposite-sex parents, the state said.

[…]

Attorneys for the three same-sex couples who are challenging Utah’s ban have until Feb. 25 to file a response, and the state’s final filing must be submitted by March 4.

Oral arguments are scheduled for April 10 in Denver. The three-judge panel that will hear the case — as well as an appeal from the state of Oklahoma involving a similar ban — will be picked 10 days before the hearing.

You can see the full brief here. I’m pretty sure these are the same basic arguments that were made in the Prop 8 case in California. There may be some differences, but I’m not a lawyer so this is just my impression. I am sure we’ll hear more of the same when Texas’ case gets heard.

Posted in National news | Tagged ACLU, DOMA, gay marriage, gay rights, lawsuit, Oklahoma, SCOTUS, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin | Comments Off

Interview with Maxey Scherr

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Maxey Scherr

As previously noted, there’s a huge gaggle of candidates running for Senate this year – eight Republicans, counting incumbent John Cornyn; five Democrats, four (!) independents, three Libertarians, and a Green, who may or may not be in a pear tree. The first Democrat in the race and the subject of today’s interview is Maxey Scherr. Scherr is a Texas Tech graduate and attorney from El Paso. Though this is her first campaign for office, she and her family have long been involved in Democratic politics. Her campaign so far has been as much about Ted Cruz as it has been about John Cornyn, and that was one of many things we discussed.

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, interviews, Maxey Scherr, Senate, Texas | Comments Off

Pay no attention to Mark Jones

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This is a really bad idea.

I’m the One True Conservative!

At least for the time being, the Republican primary is the decisive election for the governance of Texas.

In contrast, the most pressing issue facing Houston-area Democratic primary voters will be whether they prefer safe mainstream candidates or provocative and potentially damaging outsiders as the party’s long-shot nominees for U.S. senator and agriculture commissioner, and as the Democratic candidate for Harris County district attorney.

Opinion polls reveal that in recent years, a large majority of the Texans who vote in the GOP primary elections are very conservative. At the same time, many of the most conservative advocacy organizations have become increasingly sophisticated in monitoring and evaluating politicians and aggressive in backing candidates they support and in attacking those they oppose. For better or worse, the days of some elected officials being able to successfully maintain separate and distinct Austin and district personas appear to be numbered.

This political context has created strong incentives for GOP candidates to avoid allowing any credible rival to move to their right. In turn, the goal of not being ideologically outflanked often generates a centrifugal force that pulls the candidates further and further to the right. Only in Texas do candidates feel it necessary to vehemently deny claims that they are moderate, pragmatic or reasonable.

The GOP lieutenant governor and attorney general primaries, in which candidates are trying to outflank each other with issues popular with the base GOP constituency such as illegal immigration and abortion, are prime examples of this phenomenon.

For every action, there’s a reaction, and some Texas Republicans are now trying to pull the party back to the center-right. These pragmatic center-right conservatives view their “movement” conservative brethren, commonly called the tea party, as excessively ideological and obstructionist. They fear the latter’s rhetoric and actions jeopardize the state’s continued economic success as well as the Republican Party’s long-term dominance in the Lone Star State.

[…]

Texans who wish to take a side in this GOP civil war, or who simply want to have a greater say in the direction of public policy in Texas during the latter half of the decade, should seriously consider participating by voting early, by mail or on Election Day in the March 4 and May 27 (runoff) Republican primaries.

In the competitive statewide races, including those for lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller and agriculture commissioner, there exist notable differences among the candidates in terms of their ideological position, policy profile and vision for the future of the Texas GOP. Similar differences exist in a myriad of contests at the legislative district and local levels. Of course, in many races, to uncover these differences, you have to wipe away the near-identical “strong conservative” body paint the candidates have covered themselves with. But once you review each candidate’s record, the individuals and groups supporting them and their platform, you will find in most instances that they are not all peas from the same pod.

Where to even begin with this?

1. To say that “some Texas Republicans are now trying to pull the party back to the center-right” is a giant copout. Who are they, what are they doing, and what influence do they have? The fact that Jones doesn’t cite even a single name or organization is telling. Sure, there is some pushback going on in some local races – see, for example, the primary challenge to first term teabagger extraordinaire Rep. Jonathan Stickland in HD92, or the fight for Harris County GOP Chair – but if there’s something like this happening at the statewide level, it’s not apparent to me.

2. I’ll stipulate that there are candidates for Lite Guv and Attorney General – one in each race – that have a track record of mostly pragmatic, non-crazy governance. Both of them are running as fast as they can away from those records, since they correctly recognize that their records are obstacles to overcome in their current races. Note also that Jones did not name the candidates he had in mind. I’ll venture a guess that one reason he didn’t name names is because he knows what would happen if he did: Every other candidate in those races would pounce on his proclamation that so-and-so is secretly a moderate and would govern as one if elected, and the candidates themselves would then be forced to respond by making statements along the lines of “I am not a moderate! I eat moderates for breakfast and gnaw on their bones for a late night snack!” As for the Comptroller’s race, I have no idea who he thinks the undercover moderate is. The three main contenders are a Senator best known for sponsoring the draconian anti-abortion bill HB2, a member of the House that Jones’ own metrics identified as one of the more conservative members last session, and a gadfly whose main claim to fame is running to the right of Rick Perry in the 2010 GOP primary for Governor. Boy, I can just feel the center-right goodness emanating from these races.

3. Believing that a candidate with a moderate/pragmatic/non-crazy past record but who is campaigning for another office as a fire-breathing Cruz-worshipping One True Conservative will revert back to his old ways once elected is just breathtakingly naive on its face. Perhaps Mark Jones also believed that Mitt Romney would have acted as if he were back to being Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney if he had been elected President. Here’s the thing: Voters don’t actually like it when a candidate they’ve elected who promised to do certain things then goes and does the exact opposite of what they said they’d do while campaigning. Just as legislators can’t pretend to be one thing in Austin and another in their home district, candidates can’t pretend to be one thing on the trail and another at the Capitol. We have the Internet now. It’s impossible to maintain two personas any more. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but as Mark Jones himself noted, it is how it is these days.

4. But let’s take Mark Jones at his word for a moment that we Democrats who foolishly think we have our own candidates to choose should go ahead and support the Secretly Moderate and Pragmatic Republicans in the Lite Guv and AG races. How do you think these candidates will react if we help propel them to victory? Will they react by saying “Boy, I sure am glad all these voters saw through my charade of being a raving loony conservative so I can go back to being the moderate pragmatic that I’ve spent the past six to twelve months vehemently denying that I am”? Or will they react by saying “I thank all those voters who recognized me as the One True Conservative in this race, and I will reward your faith in me by governing as the One True Conservative I have promised to be for you”? When one is rewarded for a certain type of behavior, one tends to continue behaving in that fashion. I don’t know about Mark Jones, but if I were to catch my dog pissing on the rug, I’d yell at him to stop doing that right now. I wouldn’t go and give him a Milk Bone on the theory that he’d always been a well-behaved dog up till now and I’m sure he intends to going back to being a good dog again once he’s finished proving his canine bona fides to the cat.

5. Finally, we Democrats do have important decisions to make in our own primary. Wendy Davis does have an opponent, after all. Whoever we nominate for US Senate will be a massive underdog, but taking our eye off the ball and letting Kesha Rogers even slip into a runoff would be a disaster of Biblical proportions, one that really would do damage to Wendy Davis’ campaign. The Ag Commissioner race does matter, and Dems have a choice between two very different candidates, each with a plausible case to make for their candidacy. (I’m ignoring Jim Hogan, who doesn’t appear to be campaigning.) The Railroad Commissioner race matters. Locally, not everyone is in SD15, but you’d better believe that race is a big deal. We have to decide who we want to run against County Clerk Stan Stanart, and anyone who follows elections closely knows how important that is. And of course, unless we want to concede the DA race to Devon Anderson, it’s vitally important that everyone with any inclination to vote Democratic get out there and support Kim Ogg. If you want to vote in the GOP primary, Mark Jones, knock yourself out. Beyond that, please keep your brilliant ideas about how the rest of us should vote to yourself.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Attorney General, Comptroller, Democratic primary, District Attorney, Election 2014, Harris County, Harris County Clerk, HD92, Jonathan Stickland, Kim Ogg, Lite Gov, primaries, Republican Party, SD15, Senate, Stan Stanart, Texas, The Lege | 5 Comments

EPA and TCEQ settle lawsuits over flex permits

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

One less court fight for us and the feds.

The EPA and Texas on Wednesday said they have reached a deal over state permits for industrial air pollution, ending a four-year fight that to some had become a symbol of regulatory overreach by the federal government.

The agreement comes after the federal agency initially rejected Texas’ permitting system, which allows some operating flexibility to oil refiners, chemical makers and others to meet emissions limits.

Despite the EPA’s earlier reservations, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s permit system appears largely unchanged – leaving environmentalists disappointed.

Ilan Levin, an Austin-based attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, said the system has the same potential loopholes as before. “The flexible permit program has a long history of abuse, and a lot of the damage is already done,” he said.

But Bryan Shaw, the TCEQ’s chairman, said the agreement shows that the federal government “now understands why the program is legal and effective.”

The EPA invalidated the flex permit system in 2010, and later that year threatened crackdowns on plants that didn’t meet federal standard. All of the flex-permitted plants agreed to abide by federal standards in 2011, but in 2012 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals – yes, them again – ruled that the EPA had overstepped its authority. The EPA chose not to appeal that ruing, and this settlement is the conclusion of that litigation. The Sierra Club statement on this agreement sums it all up nicely.

“The history of TCEQ’s flexible permitting program in Texas has been almost 20 years of confusion and litigation. As TCEQ itself has acknowledged, every single former holder of flexible permits has now received new standard permits, without a single plant closure or loss of a single Texas job, contrary to the heated rhetoric we got from Chairman Shaw and Governor Perry several years ago.

“Moving forward, if TCEQ stays true to the wording of the new program and only issues flexible permits to truly minor facilities, we don’t foresee major problems.

“However, if our large refineries and chemical plants once again try to hide their emissions with unenforceable flexible permits, we’ll have another 20 years of confusion and litigation.”

Scheleen Walker
Director, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter

The details always matter. Having the right people at the TCEQ, people who will care about those details, matters as well. TCEQ members are appointed by the Governor. Consider that yet another reason to vote for Wendy Davis this November.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged air quality, Clean Air Act, Election 2014, Environmental Protection Agency, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Governor, lawsuit, pollution, Rick Perry, TCEQ, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

The historic Astrodome

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Not sure what effect this will have.

Not historic but still standing

The National Park Service has added the Astrodome, the world’s first domed stadium, to the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for tax breaks to aid in its rehabilitation but offering no real protection from the wrecking ball.

Historical preservationists, who successfully pushed for the Dome’s inclusion on the National Register, pledged Friday to continue their battle to save the Houston icon by asking the state to declare it an antiquities landmark – a designation that could limit Harris County’s power to alter or demolish the 49-year-old structure without a permit from the Texas Historical Commission.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett responded through a spokesman that he would “oppose anything that would tie the hands of officials elected by Harris County taxpayers, who own the Dome.”

The National Register’s decision Thursday to add the Astrodome, which opened in 1965, makes it eligible for inclusion on the state list. The historical commission normally takes six months to rule on such nominations, but once the process starts, a site is protected until a decision is reached. In recent years, said Gregory Smith, the agency’s national register coordinator, commissioners annually have granted fewer than six landmark designations to buildings.

[…]

Nominating the Astrodome for the national register were Cynthia Neely, owner of Black Gold Productions, a Houston film company, and Ted Powell, a LaPorte retired chemical engineer who led the fight to save and restore the Hurricane Ike-damaged Sylvan Beach pavilion.

Through the efforts of Friends of Sylvan Beach Park & Pavilion, the 1950s-era building was saved from demolition and restored in a $4.9 million project funded largely by federal hurricane recovery funds.

Neely and Powell confirmed Friday that they plan to push for the protective antiquities landmark designation.

The issue as always is whether someone – Harris County or a private investor – is willing to put up the money to Do Something with the Dome. Being added to the Register makes the Dome eligible for various tax breaks, but I don’t know how much effect, if any, that may have on the financial calculations for this. I suppose designating the Dome as a nationally historic structure might add to the pressure to not demolish it, but that doesn’t move it forward otherwise. But hey, every little bit helps.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Astrodome, Cynthia Neely, Ed Emmett, Harris County, Houston, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, preservation, Ted Powell, Texas Historical Commission | 1 Comment

Interview with Mike Fjetland

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Michael Fjetland

As the Trib recently noted, there are twenty-one candidates for US Senate this year in Texas – eight Republicans, counting incumbent John Cornyn; five Democrats, four (!) independents, three Libertarians, and a Green, who may or may not be in a pear tree. We’re interested in the Democratic hopefuls here, and I’ll have interviews with two of them this week. First up is Mike Fjetland, a business man, attorney, and international relations expert. Fjetland is the most experienced candidate among the Democrats, having run multiple campaigns against Tom DeLay in CD22, in the Republican primary and as an independent. We covered a lot of ground in the interview:

You can see all of my interviews as well as finance reports and other information on candidates on my 2014 Election page.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, interviews, Mike Fjetland, Senate, Texas | 3 Comments

How extreme is too extreme?

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The GOP candidates for Lite Guv are doing their best to test the hypothesis that having an R next to your name is all you need to get elected statewide in Texas, regardless of your stated positions on issues.

Lord Voldemort approves this message

The Republican candidates for lieutenant governor do not seem worried about Democratic challengers and independent voters, or particularly concerned about whether their public conversations and debates fuel the Democrats’ election-year motif of a war on women.

If they were, they would not be talking like this. You would not have seen what you saw during the debate early this week as they all raced to the conservative end of the pool, hoping to win the hearts of the Republican voters they will face in the primary election in March.

Instead, you would have seen a quartet of Republicans trying to win a primary without blowing their chances of winning over the more moderate voters who will come out in November.

If this election goes the way of other recent Republican primaries, the candidates’ first encounter will be with a small and conservative bunch. Fewer than two of every 25 Texans will be voting in the primary. General elections draw larger turnouts with different voters. The Democrats will be there, of course, along with political moderates, independents and the sometimes-engaged voters who might be drawn out by a noisy race for governor.

Judging from their responses, the Republican candidates are thinking about the first cohort and not the second. All believe, with varied degrees of enthusiasm, that creationism should be taught in public schools. All four, talking about a recent case in Fort Worth that got national attention, said state law should be rewritten to override a family’s desire to remove life support from a clinically dead woman until her child can be delivered. And each underscored his position on the issues by saying that abortions should not be allowed except when the life of the mother is in danger; that is a break from a more conventional Republican position that would allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest.

Indeed, an earlier Trib story showed just how out of touch these positions on abortion are with even their own voters.

Though it’s hard to envision given the tone of the Texas Republican Party’s primary contests so far, the GOP candidates for lieutenant governor lurched even farther right in Monday night’s debate in their collective rejection of access to abortion in instances of rape.

While defenders of abortion rights might be tempted to dismiss the candidates’ support for childbirth after rape as another sign of alleged misogyny in the Texas GOP, a plurality of Republicans surveyed in the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll have consistently supported permitting abortion in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the woman’s life — 41 percent in the October 2013 poll, and this after a summer of highly partisan public conflict over abortion legislation.

In that same survey, only 16 percent of Republicans (compared with 12 percent of Texans overall) said that abortion should never be permitted. This was on the low end of the typical GOP embrace of the prohibitionist position, which has fluctuated between 14 and 27 percent over the life of the poll, with the usual reading in the low 20s.

Allowing abortion only in the case of rape, incest or threat to the woman’s life has consistently been the most common GOP position, typically supported by just over 40 percent of Republicans. Support for the most permissive position on abortion was 19 percent among Republican voters in the October 2013 poll, also in a range consistent with previous results.

Overall, 78 percent of Texas Republicans believed that there were some situations in which abortion should be accessible. Each and every candidate dismissed even the most restrictive version of this position in Monday night’s debate. (Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst seemed to suggest he would have concerns about the life of the mother if she were his wife in such a situation, though he was unclear how these feelings translate into his policy position.)

The belief that pregnant rape victims should be required to bring their pregnancies to term, evident on the debate stage, seems to be more about positioning in the Republican primary than a careful reading of public opinion. And while the Tea Party remains the easy scapegoat for the GOP’s rightward push, in this case at least, our polling shows that only 13 percent of Tea Party Republicans support a complete prohibition on the procedure.

They’re pandering to a minority of a minority within their own party. I only wish someone had asked them during the debate if they’d support the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions and women who receive them. I mean, if it’s murder and all, why wouldn’t they? Clearly, there’s still space for them to move further to the right on this.

The bigger question is whether November voters are paying attention. The Observer has video of the debate in case you have the stomach for it. Jacquielynn Floyd was watching.

Monday’s televised four-candidate debate — which I bravely tied myself to a chair to watch in its entirety — seemed less like a political forum than a tribal pageant to be crowned the Truest Conservative in All the Land.

Voters hoping to be illuminated on the issues facing Texas were surely disappointed in what they got from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and his three GOP challengers: Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and state Sen. Dan Patrick.

Their joint performance brought to mind a flock of talking myna birds — or perhaps a single monster parrot with four heads — that kept shouting out the same disjointed phrases: “Conservative leader!” “Secure the border!” “Protect life!”

All four of these candidates voiced wholehearted agreement that the corpse of a legally dead pregnant woman, Marlise Muñoz, should have been forced to continue incubating a malformed fetus — despite her own stated wishes, the pleas of her family and ultimately the decision of a state district court judge.

Each in turn agreed that creationism, an anti-science, biblical literalist explanation for the origin of life, should be routine curriculum for all Texas students — even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching it in public schools violates the Constitution.

They declared in perfect four-part harmony that rape victims or girls molested by their own fathers should be forced to carry pregnancies to term.

They spoke darkly about the dire threat posed by alien hordes pouring across our undefended border — and they didn’t mean Canadians.

To a lot of people, this all transcends so-called extremism. It’s crazy talk.

Funny how respect for the Constitution only extends to things they agree with, isn’t it? Lisa Falkenberg was also watching.

As I watched that debate among four Republican lieutenant governor candidates earlier this week, I couldn’t help but wonder: How on Earth did we get here? And at this rate, where in the hell are we going?

Actually, the first question isn’t a mystery. We’re here because relatively few Texans vote, thereby surrendering the political fate of our great state to the whim of Republican primary voters who make up only 5 to 7 percent of the voting-age population.

The farther right that sliver of the electorate slides, the farther out to la-la land the candidates have to go to reach them. So you get what we had in Dallas the other night.

The candidates – Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, all but the last from Houston – provided political theater at its best, policy at its worst. They seem to operate in a kind of alternate universe where pragmatism is a sin, moderation is a slur and the word “conservative,” which used to stand for fiscal responsibility, personal freedom and limited government, is farce.

It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Take the horrifying case of Erick Muñoz, the anguished father and husband who had to fight a Fort Worth hospital in court after it refused to remove his 14-week-pregnant, brain-dead wife from machines that kept her lungs and heart going.

The hospital cited a state law that denies life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient; the husband cited his wife’s wishes never to be kept breathing by machines.

The fetus itself had been deprived of oxygen after the mother’s collapse and family attorneys said the child suffered severe deformities, fluid on the brain and possible heart problems. So-called pro-lifers talk about fetal pain. This seemed more like fetal torture. It compounded the agony of Muñoz, his toddler son, and the rest of the family. That agony went on for two months before a mercifully sane judge finally ended it this week, ruling what had been obvious to many from the beginning: Marlise Muñoz was already dead.

That fact didn’t seem to matter to the Texas lieutenant governor candidates. Only Patterson even acknowledged it. Everybody seemed to agree the judge erred and the fetus should have been kept alive at all costs.

“If I had been in that judge’s shoes, I would have ruled differently,” Dewhurst said. Thank the Lord he wasn’t.

But he could be re-elected Lt. Governor, and if he’s not it will be at least in part because these extreme voters he’s desperately trying to please didn’t think he was extreme enough. The Texas Democratic Party cheekily congratulated Sen. Leticia Van de Putte for winning the debate by virtue of not being one of the crazy people on stage, but she can’t win if people don’t pay attention. Sen. Van de Putte won’t drive us into the ditch like these guys are promising to do. We need to do our part.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged abortion, creationism, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Election 2014, Jerry Patterson, Leticia Van De Putte, Lite Gov, polls, rape, Texas, Todd Staples | Comments Off

Get ready for the taxis and Uber debate

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s the first challenge for the new Council.

City officials, armed with a new study showing weaknesses in the local system, are inching toward regulatory changes that would open Houston’s cab industry to new players, such as Uber, which enables customers to schedule trips with a smartphone application, bypassing much of a traditional taxi company’s bureaucracy.

Such companies can’t operate now under city codes, which are focused on making sure limos and private cars do not directly compete with cabs.

“We need a pretty comprehensive restructuring of our taxicab regulations to get in line with what’s the city’s role in making sure passengers have the safest and best choice available to them,” said Chris Newport, spokesman for the Houston Administration & Regulatory Affairs Department.

The city-commissioned study, by the Tennessee Transportation and Logistics Foundation’s director, Ray Mundy, suggests Houston serves certain ride-seekers well. Getting a ride to and from the city’s airports, for example, is easy.

What’s unclear is the city’s ability to handle more intercity routes because many cabs rely solely on taxi stands and major trips. Further, the study found some Houstonians have a negative impression of cab rides because of poor service by drivers. Many riders also find the litany of cab colors and company names confusing.

[…]

City staff, based on the report, recommended elimination of a $70 base fare on all private trips and a requirement that trips must be arranged 30 minutes prior to departure.

To pave the way for companies like Uber while ensuring safe trips, Houston officials would also establish insurance liability requirements for dispatch companies that cover the drivers. Drivers in the company’s Uber Black service would be independent contractors, not employed by Uber, but part of a partnership with the company that connects them with interested riders.

Under the city staff recommendations, the insurance would apply whether the car was carrying a customer or en route to pick one up. The insurance coverage could potentially be extended to all times the vehicle is in use, according to a city memo issued Friday.

Here’s the memo to the Mayor’s office from Tina Paez, the Director of Administration & Regulatory Affairs, with a review of the study and the recommendations for Council. A brief glimpse, from the Conclusions section:

The City of Houston has an interest in strictly regulating the taxi industry because it serves a vital public interest and ordinary market forces have proven themselves incapable of delivering reliable service at reasonable prices in the absence of regulation. This framework is supported by theory, empirical fact, and both local and State law.

We recommend moving forward with a phased approach to amending the vehicle-for-hire ordinance to address new entrants and technologies in the market, as well as address the taxicab issues identified in the taxicab study. Addressing the taxicab issues will involve major changes to the existing regulatory structure; thus, we recommend the taxicab changes to the ordinance occur in the second phase of the Chapter 46 amendments, after substantial stakeholder input is solicited and incorporated.

In the interest of public safety, the new entrants and emerging technologies can and should be addressed in the shorter term, in Phase I of the Chapter 46 amendments. In this phase we can expand the existing mobile dispatch provisions in our ordinance to ensure public safety standards are explicitly outlined, and we can update those provisions in the ordinance that may have become outdated due to the emerging technologies – such as the 30-minute reservation requirement for a limousine trip. With the advent of smartphone applications that can dispatch vehicles-for-hire at the press of a button, a 30-minute waiting period is no longer reasonable. Several regulatory authorities around the country have reconsidered this requirement and have replaced it with a definition for “prearranged” that instead speaks to the intent of the passenger, i.e. in order for the passenger to request a ride he/she must download the application and agree to the service agreement with the transportation provider, including providing a credit card. This shows clear intent by the passenger to prearrange a trip. Further, these trips cannot be hailed. All passenger information must be provided in advance.

Emphasis in the original. The memo goes on to identify Uber and Lyft as the main firms poised to enter the Houston market and the changes they say they need to be made. I’ve done a bit of blogging about Uber before, and I continue to believe there’s room in the market for companies like them and the existing cab industry. I think they’re coming whether we or the cab companies like it or not, and I’d rather the city took the approach of adjusting its existing regulatory structure in a way that everyone can at least live with rather than do nothing and wait for someone to file a lawsuit or for the newcomers to enter the market as rogues. As it happens, a couple of weeks ago I was having lunch in the tunnels downtown and I ran into Joshua Sanders having a meeting with representatives from Lyft, who were preparing to make their initial pitch to Council. Like I said, it’s coming.

I believe that if done well, the potential is there for the car-for-hire industry in Houston to expand and serve a larger audience with better service and a broader array of options. Frankly, if this happens it will be a boon for those who advocate for more density and a less car-centric culture in at least the inner-urban parts of Houston. It’s a lot easier to go carless or be a one-car household if you know there’s a convenient and affordable ride readily available when you need it. Having said all this, while there’s a lot of justified focus on the customer experience here, we need to keep in mind the needs of the drivers, especially those that will be serving as “independent operators” and thus will have less clout than full-time employees of a company would have. The Roosevelt Institute has some well-timed thoughts on this subject, which I would encourage Council members to read. Let’s make sure everybody’s interests are being represented and considered as we go forward with this.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Department of Administration and Regulatory Affairs, Houston, Houston City Council, limousines, Lyft, taxis, Uber | 9 Comments

HISD schools searching for new nicknames

Posted on February 3, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Good luck to them.

The process of determining new school nicknames – a task that elicits passion from generations and has triggered countless “Are you serious” suggestions and even more heartfelt recommendations – is underway at four Houston ISD campuses.

Lamar and Westbury high schools and Hamilton and Welch middle schools had their previous nicknames banned by the HISD board earlier this month, and they are expected to finalize new nicknames by March.

“We’ve already talked with the student council and the students, and they’re very serious about this,” said Lamar Principal James McSwain, who has been flooded by suggestions for the new nickname. “They understand that we were the Redskins for 76 years, and at the end of 76 years, people feel very passionately.

“What you want is – after 76 more years – people to feel as passionately about the mascot that you choose as the one that we had.”

As you know, I’ve been following this issue closely. Some people are unhappy that HISD instituted this policy, and some people will be unhappy with the new names and mascots that get chosen. That’s life, and it won’t be long till it’s all forgotten. This was the right thing for HISD to do, and I hope the students and alumni of these schools view it as an opportunity.

On a related note, I commend you to read this fascinating story of the history of the Washington NFL team’s nickname, and the ongoing fight to get them to change it. One tidbit from the story stood out to me:

Students, parents, and Native Americans alike successfully argued for name changes in school districts and states across the country. A number of state boards of education have conducted a system-wide reviews of every Native American mascot in use in their schools. Miami University in Ohio, named after the Miami tribe, changed its name from Redskins to Redhawks in 1997. High schools across the country made similar changes, dumping “Redskins” and other names in favor of new monikers. In 2005, the NCAA passed a bylaw prohibiting schools from wearing any logo it deemed “hostile” or “abusive” toward Native Americans on uniforms during postseason play. Schools with such mascots wouldn’t be allowed to bring them to postseason games. As a result, the University of Illinois, with much consternation, dropped its iconic Chief Illiniwek mascot, who for years performed faux-Native dances at basketball and football games. Other schools followed.

In 1970, more than 3,000 high school, college, and professional sports teams had Native American nicknames or mascots. Today, fewer than 1,000 remain.

That’s a lot of progress in the last 40-some years. Still a ways to go, but substantial progress. I wouldn’t want to be the last school or the last school district to sport one of these offensive nicknames or mascots. Deal with it now and let someone else earn that dubious honor.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged high school, HISD, Houston, Lamar High School, NCAA | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for February 2

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

We’re not reading as much as we used to, but there are some promising signs.

“So why aren’t these CEOs clamoring for economic policies that might actually address this?” I’ll give you three guesses.

From the couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy department.

On the reboot of the Carl Sagan TV show Cosmos, now with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Would this mean that all currently married couples in Oklahoma would need to get a divorce?

There’s no such thing as unanimous acclaim. Whatever it is, someone somewhere won’t like it.

“How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages”.

Meet Ceres, the last frontier of our solar system.

RIP, Morrie Turner, creator of the Wee Pals comic strip and the first nationally syndicated African-American comic strip artist.

“See, the more black people a place has, the more divided it tends to be along racial and economic lines. The more divided it is, the more sprawl there is. And the more sprawl there is, the less higher-income people are willing to invest in things like public transit.”

Amazon’s production of a Harry Bosch TV show would be enough to get me to subscribe to their streaming service.

RIP, Luis Avalos, best known (by me, anyway) for his role on The Electric Company.

Greta Susteren thinks Erick Erickson is a jerk. Right-thinking people everywhere say “Duh!” Erickson then goes on the prove her point, as if we needed further evidence.

“You might think that a bar fight is most commonly started between two guys fighting over a woman. That’s not so, at least not in my experience. Ejection seems to be a more precipitating event.”

RIP, Pete Seeger, legendary folk singer.

Good move, MLB. Pitchers could use a little protection out there.

The folks at NOM don’t much like heterosexual marriage, either.

The bat shard that Roger Clemens threw at Mike Piazza during the 2000 World Series is now up for auction. In case you were looking a present for that special someone.

“It’s time to recognize that income inequality is a sustainability issue, too.”

“It’s like an episode of The Goldbergs, but with less Jeff Garlin screaming in his underwear and more references to technologies and hairstyles gone by.”

Maybe milk isn’t as good for you as the dairy industry would like you to believe.

“Allowing a woman’s boss to call the shots about her access to birth control should be inconceivable to all Americans in this day and age, and takes us back to a place in history when women had no voice or choice.”

“Post offices could deliver [simple financial] services at a 90 percent discount, saving the average underserved household over $2,000 a year and still providing the USPS with $8.9 billion in new annual profits, significantly improving its troubled balance sheet.”

RIP, Don Luis Cruz, known in Houston as the “Violin Man”.

Darryl Strawberry is making sense.

“Medicare Payments for Vacuum Erection Systems Are More Than Twice As Much As the Amounts Paid For the Same or Similar Devices By Non-Medicare Payers.” I dare you not to click on that.

The ten worst Super Bowl halftime shows. Hard to argue with any of them.

Maybe we should just create one Super Bowl city and be done with it.

It’s generally better to help one’s constituents than to use them as political props.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

The coverage gap

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

As you may know, the intent of the Affordable Care Act was to get people below a certain income level onto Medicaid, with people at or above that income level receiving subsidized health insurance via the exchanges. Unfortunately, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion mandate was unconstitutional, it meant that in states that refused to expand Medicaid people who fell below that income level but above the income level for Medicaid eligibility as things were would be left out of coverage – too poor to receive insurance subsidies, not poor enough for Medicaid. More than one million Texas adults fall into that coverage gap. Here’s a story about one of them.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Damaged discs in Irma Aguilar’s neck make it hard to raise her arms, something she must do repeatedly when stacking boxes at the pizza restaurant where she earns $9 an hour as an assistant manager.

Sometimes, her untreated high blood pressure makes her so dizzy she has to grab onto something to prevent a fall.

And she struggles with anxiety, a heart-pounding fear that can strike at any time, but especially at night, when she lies in bed and wonders how she’s going to make ends meet.

Without insurance, she worries about how she will find the money to treat her health problems, which threaten her livelihood and the well-being of her family.

[…]

Aguilar’s four children are covered by Medicaid, which provides free or reduced-cost health care. But Aguilar makes too much money – $19,200 a year – to qualify. Texas’ Medicaid eligibility requirements are among the tightest in the nation, and Aguilar has to be nearly destitute to meet them – making no more than $4,200 a year as head of a family of five.

Emphasis mine. What that means is that if you make more than two dollars an hour working fulltime, you make too much money as the head of a family of five to qualify for Medicaid in Texas. Think about that for a minute.

Still left out of Medicaid, Aguilar hoped to get insurance under the ACA, but to qualify for a tax credit to help her pay for it, she would need to earn more than she does – at least $27,570 a year. Only those earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level are eligible for the subsidies. Aguilar is at 70 percent.

This puts her in the gap, with neither Medicaid nor affordable health insurance.

If she could get a subsidy, Aguilar would have shelled out about $46 a month for a midlevel health plan. Without one, the cost would have zoomed to more than $200 a month, a price that puts health insurance out of her reach.

“I have to scrape by as it is,” Aguilar said. “By the time I pay rent, lights and water, there’s not much left over. Sometimes, I don’t eat so my kids can eat.”

[…]

As Texas rejected the extra Medicaid money, state lawmakers committed more resources to health care in the past session, said Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

The Legislature set aside $100 million in added money for primary care services for women and an additional $332 million for mental health services, she wrote in an email.

“We’ve also developed a strong network of health centers across the state that provides low-income citizens with access to both preventive care and treatment for medical issues,” she said.

Such clinics depend on a mix of revenue – Medicaid, private insurance and patient fees – to enable them to provide care to those who lack insurance.

But those front-line providers don’t have enough money and resources to care for all the uninsured, including those in the coverage gap, said José Camacho, head of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers.

Nor can health centers provide a broad range of services, making them a too-porous safety net, others say.

“They’re no substitute for not having coverage,” said Anne Dunkelberg, a policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Texans. “They can’t provide specialty treatment or trauma care. If you’ve been hurt in a car wreck or have a broken bone or cancer, if you need a CT scan, you’re going to be out of luck. Health centers are wonderful for primary care, but they’re not a substitute for comprehensive care.”

Ms. Aguilar has chronic conditions, as noted above, so these health centers likely wouldn’t be of much good to her anyway, assuming she could afford their fees. Even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to afford any medications they might prescribe. So she’s pretty much SOL. I personally think that Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ted Cruz, and everyone else responsible for Texas’ horrible lack of health insurance for so many of its residents should be made to personally explain to Ms. Aguilar and her kids why they don’t want her to be able to get health care. Not that I think it would have any effect on them, but maybe if they had to explain it to all one million plus Texans that they have excluded from coverage it might eventually wear them down.

I do know one way that Ms. Aguilar and the million others like her could get helped, and that’s by electing Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte this November. No guarantee that they’d be able to overcome legislative resistance, of course, but there was some sentiment for expansion in 2011, and at least they wouldn’t be adding to that resistance. And if the Lege still can’t stand the idea of expanding Medicaid, there’s another way they could help Ms. Aguilar and many others like her: Raise the minimum wage. If Ms. Aguilar earned a bit more than $13 an hour, then her fulltime salary would make it to that magic $27,500 level – which is to say, exactly at the federally defined poverty line – and she’d qualify for insurance subsidies on the exchange. Either way would be fine by me.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged CPPP, health care, health insurance, HHSC, insurance exchanges, Medicaid, minimum wage, poverty, Rick Perry, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

More on TxDOT and high speed rail

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

First come the studies and the public hearings. Then we wait and see what happens.

What a weird map of Texas

The Texas Transportation Commission is expected to vote Thursday at its monthly meeting on the creation of a high-speed rail commission focused on the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Separately, TxDOT is holding a series of public meetings around Texas and Oklahoma, starting this week, to hear comments on a study looking at the feasibility of high-speed rail projects between Oklahoma City and South Texas.

Texas Transportation Commissioner Victor Vandergriff stressed that the two initiatives should not be interpreted as a decision by TxDOT to develop any high-speed rail projects in Texas.

“We have not yet discussed a broader charge with respect to transportation policy and funding,” Vandergriff said Friday in Dallas at the Southwestern Rail Conference, which was hosted by Texas Rail Advocates. “The Legislature sets our course for that.”

The new high-speed rail commission will advise state transportation officials on “the development of intercity rail corridors, new transportation policies, and funding and procurement strategies as they relate to the implementation of proposed high-speed rail connecting the Dallas and Fort Worth areas,” according to TxDOT’s agenda for the meeting.

“It is a limited purpose and scope assignment,” Vandergriff said. “It is not an indication that there is any funding for high-speed rail.”

[…]

TxDOT launched its Texas-Oklahoma Passenger Rail Study last year to take a wide-angle look at the impact of potential rail service projects between Oklahoma City and the Texas-Mexico border. This month, TxDOT officials announced plans to expand the scope of the study south, to Monterrey, Mexico, to account for interest in building a high-speed rail line between Monterrey and San Antonio.

See here and here for the most recent entries in this saga. The schedule for TxDOT’s public meetings on the Texas-Oklahoma prject is here. As for the Houston-Dallas privately funded project, Chron transportation reporter Dug Begley has more on what they’re saying. Texas Central High-Speed Railway is expected to file some federal documents in April that will tell us more about their plans, including their preferred route. I’ll be keeping an eye out for that.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Dallas, high speed rail, Houston, Monterrey, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Texas, Texas Central High-Speed Railway, TxDOT | 1 Comment

Too old for death

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating story about Texas’ oldest inmate on death row. He’s been there for 36 years.

Two weeks after he turned 40, Jack Harry Smith showed no signs of letting middle age slow him down. So on the first Saturday in January, he put on a ski mask, grabbed his pistol and a buddy, and went charging into a Pasadena convenience store.

As career criminals go, Smith never had been newsworthy nor successful. That changed by the time he ran out the front door of Corky’s Corner, and it wasn’t because of the small sack of cash in his hand.

Behind him lay the body of Roy Deputter, the store’s bookkeeper who lived in a trailer behind the store and had rushed inside with a gun when he heard the commotion. Before him loomed capital murder charges.

Smith’s lawyer says his client recalls little of the event. Prosecutors and lawmen typically are skeptical of convenient memory loss, but there’s a good chance he is telling the truth. On the day that Smith earned his ticket to death row, Jimmy Carter was threatening to slap a tariff on imported steel, Egypt and Israel were closing in on a historic peace accord, and the Dallas Cowboys were on the verge of their second Super Bowl title.

Which is another way of saying that Smith is old. By the standards of Texas’ death row, in fact, he is ancient. No one lasts that long in the nation’s most aggressive capital punishment state, certainly not a three-time loser who has spent most of his life behind bars. This isn’t California, which sends many people to death row but rarely executes them. The only inmates to escape the death chamber are those spared by appeals courts or those so mentally ill they are not competent for execution. And there are but a handful of those.

Smith is not one of them, and by rights he should not be alive. Yet he has beaten the odds and lingered on since 1978 – through six presidential administrations, countless Middle East negotiations and too many Super Bowls to remember. Tragedy has stalked his case for years and put his appeal on hold again and again. Now he is 76 and there’s no end in sight, at least not one imposed by the courts.

By “tragedy”, they mean that the original judge in the case and two of Smith’s lawyers died while his appeals were in process. That all helped delay the process, in addition to the usual slow pace of the system; the average inmate spends a bit more than ten years on death row before the sentence is carried out. At this point, the Attorney General’s office is officially pursuing matters, though the Harris County DA’s office could still be involved. Smith’s co-defendant was paroled a decade ago, and if his death sentence were to be commuted, he’d be paroled as well, though he has no family left and thus has no one to go home to. It’s hard to see what would be gained by continuing all the legal machinations. The best resolution, for some value of “best”, anyway, is probably to leave things as they are and let nature take its course.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Attorney General, death penalty, Harris County, Jack Harry Smith, parole, Texas | Comments Off

Endorsement watch: Fitzsimons for Ag Commissioner

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron recommends Hugh Fitzsimons as the best choice for Ag Commissioner in the Democratic primary.

Hugh Fitzsimons

A 59-year-old San Antonio native and third-generation rancher, Fitzsimons produces honey and raises grass-fed organic bison on his ranch in Dimmit County. One of the top reasons he’s running for office, though, is water.

Before running for agriculture commissioner’s four-year term, Fitzsimons served on the Wintergarden Water Conservation District. That experience becomes apparent when he discusses ways for Texans to conserve water, balancing the needs of cities, farmers and fracking.

As part of a solution, he says he’ll work to promote water recycling in the fracking process and irrigation systems that prevent evaporation.

He is also the only Democrat to receive the endorsement of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, a national organization dedicated to supporting independent family farmers.

And while many other candidates speak only in hyperbole about immigration, Fitzsimons speaks with compassion. Instead of horror stories about death along the border, he talks about the time he kayaked down the Rio Grande.

If you care about the future of the Texas Democratic Party, vote for Fitzsimons. If you’re tempted to vote for Kinky, make a donation to the Drug Policy Alliance instead.

The Chron also endorsed Eric Opiela on the Republican side, with a kudo for J. Allen Carnes and a brickbat for former Rep. Sid Miller. They wrote about twice as much for the Dem primary endorsement, beginning with two paragraphs of potshots at Kinky Friedman and his pro-pot campaign. Their objection was more about Kinky and his past history of being more showman than statesman in his campaigns, which I can certainly understand, than it was about marijuana policy. I’ve got interviews with Kinky and Fitzsimons set to run next week, and I’ll have more to say about this primary in a future post. On the merits, this is an unassailable recommendation, and if you aren’t acquainted with Hugh Fitzsimons yet, you really should get to know him.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, Democratic primary, Election 2014, endorsements, Eric Opiela, Hugh Fitzsimons, J. Allen Carnes, Kinky Friedman, marijuana, Sid Miller, Texas | 1 Comment

Saturday video break: Everyone’s a Captain Kirk

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

How is it that I’d never actually seen the video for “99 Red Balloons” before?

One of life’s little mysteries, I suppose. And may I just say…leather pants. God, I miss the 80s sometimes.

I also got to wondering if there were any decent cover versions of this. Here’s Goldfinger:

That’s pretty good. Here’s another, by Bella Ferraro, of the Australian version of “The X-Factor”:

Eh. She has a good set of pipes, but they chopped the hell out of the song. I’m not the only one who hates it when radio stations do that, am I?

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

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