Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

The backlash to marriage equality

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s been almost two weeks since a federal judge struck down Texas’ anti-gay marriage law. The sky hasn’t fallen, rivers continue to run downstream, dogs and cats are not cohabitating, and strangest of all, the Republican Party of Texas has not gone into full freakout mode. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a backlash coming, of course. The Observer gives us a preview.

To say the gay rights movement in the United States is experiencing a period of success is an understatement—even if the blowback to that success poses risks. Yet here in Texas, where you might expect more conflict about what remains a momentous social issue, you haven’t seen much yet beyond grandstanding. That’s partially a result of the fact that the Texas Legislature won’t meet again for another nine months. Texas groups agitated about the ruling haven’t had any space to float policy proposals or legislation.

But I was curious about what anti-gay marriage activists might have in store. So I called Jonathan Saenz, the president of Texas Values, the group which says it stands “for biblical, Judeo-Christian values by ensuring Texas is a state in which religious liberty flourishes, families prosper, and every human life is valued.”

Saenz, who responded to activists trying to strip anti-sodomy provisions out of Texas law last week by arguing that gay people only want gay rights because they’re gay, flatly denies the “homosexuals” are making any progress at all, and says his movement and Christians in the state won’t give up without a fight. What’s more, he left the door open to pushing for a bill, like the one recently vetoed in Arizona, that makes it legal for businesses to discriminate against gay people if serving them conflicts with a “deeply held religious belief.”

“This is the beginning of an epic battle,” Saenz told me. “There’s a strong likelihood that the Fifth Circuit [Court of Appeals] is going to overturn this decision. If Texas’ gay marriage laws are not constitutional, there’s no guarantee that the court won’t open up marriage to polygamy and polyandry.”

There’s definitely a chance the traditionally conservative Fifth Circuit overturns the Texas decision, but gay rights lawyers in Texas and elsewhere know these cases will be appealed and are laying the groundwork for the Supreme Court to take up the issue. That’s the reason U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia stayed his own ruling, as has happened in many states. It puts the ruling on hold until a higher court can weigh in. But even in that, Saenz sees encouragement.

The fact that Garcia stayed his ruling, Saenz says, “shows some hesitation on his part. I think the homosexual advocates were ready to go on down to the clerk’s office” and get married, he says cheerily, “and he put a stop to that.”

Link via Lone Star Q, who has another example of how obsessed Saenz is about this. I don’t know when the courts will take action again, but with Wendy Davis officially supporting same sex marriage while Greg Abbott files an appeal with the Fifth Circuit, there’s no escaping this issue, and the broader issue of equality, this election. I will be shocked if we don’t hear about some legislators and candidates proposing laws like the one that passed in Arizona before getting vetoed by the governor, and I will be shocked if the culture warriors of education don’t turn their gaze to the gay curriculum as they did a couple of years ago with social studies and its lack of sufficient-to-them deference to white people. Despite galloping advances in public opinion about gay rights and marriage equality, people often have a skewed view about how other people think, leading them to believe that the pro-equality side is a minority when in fact it is not. Things may be quiet on the surface now, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that the resentment and the resistance aren’t there.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Election 2014, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, gay marriage, gay rights, Jonathan Saenz, lawsuit, Texas, Texas Values, The Lege | Comments Off

How much will science advance in the courts?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s up to the CCA to decide.

Texas’ highest criminal court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case that could affect how evolving scientific evidence is used in courtrooms across the state.

For Neal H. Robbins, the high court’s decision will determine whether he gets another shot at arguing his innocence.

In 1999, a jury convicted Robbins of killing his girlfriend’s 17-month-old infant. A key witness in the case was Patricia Moore, a Harris County medical examiner who ruled the child’s death was homicide by asphyxiation.

But in 2007, after a different medical examiner reviewed the original findings and disagreed, Moore recanted her trial testimony. In a letter to the district attorney, she wrote that while the infant’s death remained “suspicious,” she had come to believe that “a cause and manner of death of ‘undetermined’ is best for this case,” rather than homicide.

Robbins appealed, but in 2011, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, denied a new trial by a vote of 5-4. In the majority opinion, Justice Larry Meyers wrote that despite her recantation, Moore’s original trial testimony had not been “proven false.”

Now, Robbins is hoping a new law passed by the Legislature in 2013 will cause the court to change course and give him another shot to prove his innocence. The law, Senate Bill 344, by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, allows courts to grant post-conviction relief in cases where scientific testimony that was essential to a conviction has been contradicted. A lower court judge has recommended that Robbins be granted a new trial, but the CCA will make the final call.

Scott Henson, who was quoted in the story, adds some context.

[I]t was the CCA’s ruling in exactly this case that caused prosecutors to back off and agree to the bill’s passage. The court’s ruling in Ex Parte Robbins made clear the CCA would allow convictions based on junk science to stand if the Legislature didn’t change the law. After Robbins, the Harris County DA’s office (which had been the only significant opposition) acquiesced and helped negotiate the final language that’s now in the statute. It would be ironic if Robbins did not now prevail, since this particular case was the one that pushed the bill over the finish line at the Lege.

This is the same new statute under which the San Antonio Four and Fran and Dan Keller were released – they’re now out on bail though the CCA hasn’t given final approval in those cases yet. Those junk science cases are considered more likely to be easily approved, while the Robbins case – which involves an ME who gave erroneous testimony and changed her opinion after she learned more science – is considered the first test case that will provide an indication how the CCA will interpret the new writ.

He has more links and information in his post, so go read it. It’s clear what the CCA needs to do in this case, it’s just a matter of them doing it. I’m not sure what else the Legislature could do if they don’t do their job here. Hair Balls has more.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Court of Criminal Appeals, forensics, Harris County, innocence, Innocence Project of Texas, John Whitmire, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

GOP primary turnout comparison

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

There’s been plenty of focus on Democratic turnout in this past primary, and while Republican turnout gets a nod in there, I haven’t seen it be the focus of any stories yet. In part, I suspect that’s because Wendy Davis and Bill White are a ready-made comparison, but Greg Abbott was essentially unopposed while Rick Perry had to claw his way to 50%, making a direct comparison between the two of them meaningless. Overall turnout was close enough that we can see how things went in each county for the two primaries, however. So with that in mind, I put the two county by county canvass reports for the Governor’s race into a spreadsheet and calculated the differences from 2010 to 2014. Here are the 20 counties in which GOP turnout dropped the most from 2010:


County     10Votes    Voters TurnOut  14Votes    Voters TurnOut   Diff  Ratio
=============================================================================
HARRIS     158,130 1,889,378   8.37%  135,717 2,006,270   6.76%  22,413  0.81
TRAVIS      50,427   586,882   8.59%   32,779   627,040   5.23%  17,648  0.61
TARRANT    108,605   924,682  11.75%   92,879   969,434   9.58%  15,726  0.82
DALLAS      97,058 1,129,814   8.59%   83,472 1,170,598   7.13%  13,586  0.83
COLLIN      56,934   413,772  13.76%   44,621   466,533   9.56%  12,313  0.70
WILLIAMSON  33,657   230,122  14.63%   24,150   259,878   9.29%   9,507  0.64
LUBBOCK     31,184   147,809  21.10%   22,497   153,165  14.69%   8,687  0.70
MCLENNAN    18,234   125,886  14.48%   11,076   125,559   8.82%   7,158  0.61
BRAZOS      16,549    86,359  19.16%   10,658    89,674  11.89%   5,891  0.62
EL PASO     15,386   375,128   4.10%    9,783   390,949   2.50%   5,603  0.61
WICHITA     13,703    78,977  17.35%    8,116    70,537  11.51%   5,587  0.66
BRAZORIA    23,175   168,097  13.79%   18,197   179,266  10.15%   4,978  0.74
DENTON      42,261   355,340  11.89%   37,657   388,608   9.69%   4,604  0.81
BEXAR       66,768   891,082   7.49%   62,395   915,839   6.81%   4,373  0.91
FORT BEND   32,101   300,777  10.67%   28,277   349,550   8.09%   3,824  0.76
GREGG       11,448    68,043  16.82%    7,771    66,539  11.68%   3,677  0.69
PARKER      15,407    72,005  21.40%   12,741    76,037  16.76%   2,666  0.78
NUECES      14,781   188,165   7.86%   12,399   184,789   6.71%   2,382  0.85
JOHNSON     13,470    79,862  16.87%   11,725    81,869  14.32%   1,745  0.85
WASHINGTON   6,076    21,635  28.08%    4,406    21,915  20.10%   1,670  0.72
TOM GREEN    9,944    61,983  16.04%    8,278    60,462  13.69%   1,666  0.85

“10Votes” and “14Votes” are the total votes cast in the Governor’s primary race for each year. We don’t get actual turnout figures from the SOS webpage – that is, we don’t know how many undervotes there were in this race – but the Governor’s race had the highest total each year and it’s the best we can do. “Voters” is the number of registered voters in that county each year, and “Diff” is the difference in turnout from 2010 to 2014. Overall, turnout declined by about 150,000 votes. “Ratio” is the ratio of 2014 turnout to 2010 turnout. I put that in because overall statewide turnout in 2014 was 86% of 2010 turnout, which is to say the Ratio for the state as a whole would be 0.86. This means that counties with a Ratio of less than 0.86 had a larger decline in turnout there than in the state as a whole.

With all that out of the say, it’s not a surprise that the counties that had the largest absolute drop in turnout included a lot of counties whose decline in turnout was greater than the decline in statewide turnout. For all the fuss about how Wendy Davis did in certain counties, perhaps someone might want to ask Dave Carney why so many people in places like Williamson, Collin, and Lubbock couldn’t be bothered to come out for Greg Abbott. All of the biggest counties are here, with Travis showing a notable decline in Republican participation, and only Bexar – which also had a number of hot local races, in particular in SD25 – bucking the trend by having a more gentle decline than the state overall. I’m not going to make too big a deal about this – I really don’t think primary turnout levels are predictive – but let’s do be consistent about this. Multiple Republicans spent tens of millions of dollars combined to push people to the polls. The whole Ted Nugent affair was at least partly about juicing turnout for Greg Abbott. For the first time since 2002 there will be mass turnover in statewide offices, and for the first time ever there were multiple high-profile statewide Republican primaries. And in the end, turnout declined by almost 15% from 2010. You’d think that might be worth mentioning.

Anyway. As there were counties where fewer Republicans showed up, so were there counties in which more of them came out. Here are the top 21 counties for turnout increases.


County     10Votes    Voters TurnOut  14Votes    Voters TurnOut   Diff  Ratio
=============================================================================
HIDALGO      5,015   290,097   1.73%    5,850   307,426   1.90%    -835  1.10
MILAM        1,667    14,101  11.82%    2,522    14,156  17.82%    -855  1.51
LAMAR        4,521    28,821  15.69%    5,421    28,754  18.85%    -900  1.20
TERRY          806     7,382  10.92%    1,717     7,055  24.34%    -911  2.23
HILL         4,711    21,893  21.52%    5,630    21,760  25.87%    -919  1.20
SHELBY       2,022    14,002  14.44%    2,972    14,287  20.80%    -950  1.44
STEPHENS       773     5,561  13.90%    1,849     5,506  33.58%  -1,076  2.42
TYLER        1,311    12,772  10.26%    2,495    13,014  19.17%  -1,184  1.87
ANDERSON     4,516    26,461  17.07%    5,739    26,394  21.74%  -1,223  1.27
SMITH       19,431   119,789  16.22%   20,875   123,615  16.89%  -1,444  1.04
PANOLA       1,947    15,643  12.45%    3,438    15,702  21.90%  -1,491  1.76
MONTGOMERY  40,690   243,027  16.74%   42,230   270,019  15.64%  -1,540  0.93
TRINITY        747    11,284   6.62%    2,308    10,853  21.27%  -1,561  3.21
JEFFERSON    8,933   144,112   6.20%   10,512   143,616   7.32%  -1,579  1.18
CASS         1,356    17,904   7.57%    3,418    18,911  18.07%  -2,062  2.39
HARDIN       5,281    33,991  15.54%    7,379    35,454  20.81%  -2,098  1.34
BOWIE        6,726    55,944  12.02%    9,005    55,988  16.08%  -2,279  1.34
HAYS         6,097    93,561   6.52%    8,515   100,715   8.45%  -2,418  1.30
GALVESTON   15,797   179,928   8.78%   18,420   185,850   9.91%  -2,623  1.13
ANGELINA     5,053    46,864  10.78%    8,447    48,789  17.31%  -3,394  1.61
ORANGE       4,445    49,664   8.95%    8,092    49,460  16.36%  -3,647  1.83

As this is from the same spreadsheet where I subtracted 2010 turnout from 2014 turnout, a negative number means 2014 was higher. Sorry for the confusion, I didn’t feel like redoing the formulas. I had this list go to 21 for the specific purpose of including Hidalgo County, which I noted was an exception for the Republicans among heavily Latino counties. Turnout was up for the GOP there, but it’s still pretty darned small in absolute terms. Montgomery is your Exhibit A for counties that had an absolute increase in turnout but a drop in the turnout rate due to an even bigger increase in the population of registered voters. The drop in turnout rate was still less than the drop in turnout rate statewide, however. Overall, these counties are pretty small – fifteen of them are smaller than Tom Green, the second-smallest county on the first list, and nine are smaller than Washington, the least populous county on that list. The gain in all 21 of these counties is less than the loss in just Harris and Collin. Again, you’d think this might merit a mention somewhere.

Finally, a look at the 20 counties with the smallest ratio of 2014 turnout to 2010 turnout:


County     10Votes    Voters TurnOut  14Votes    Voters TurnOut   Diff  Ratio
=============================================================================
FRIO           122     9,914   1.23%        0    10,142   0.00%    122   0.00
REEVES          44     6,170   0.71%        0     6,368   0.00%     44   0.00
ZAVALA          16     8,250   0.19%        0     8,623   0.00%     16   0.00
DIMMIT         124     7,215   1.72%       33     7,066   0.47%     91   0.27
REAGAN         634     1,872  33.87%      296     1,769  16.73%    338   0.49
KARNES         667     7,841   8.51%      332     7,740   4.29%    335   0.50
STARR           41    28,421   0.14%       24    29,809   0.08%     17   0.56
GLASSCOCK      389       741  52.50%      223       746  29.89%    166   0.57
BAILEY         835     3,624  23.04%      470     3,499  13.43%    365   0.58
GRIMES       2,700    14,171  19.05%    1,686    14,976  11.26%  1,014   0.59
DEWITT       2,443    11,827  20.66%    1,458    11,788  12.37%    985   0.60
MOORE        2,318     9,524  24.34%    1,339     9,120  14.68%    979   0.60
HOCKLEY      2,973    13,544  21.95%    1,784    13,409  13.30%  1,189   0.61
TRAVIS      50,427   586,882   8.59%   32,779   627,040   5.23% 17,648   0.61
MCLENNAN    18,234   125,886  14.48%   11,076   125,559   8.82%  7,158   0.61
EL PASO     15,386   375,128   4.10%    9,783   390,949   2.50%  5,603   0.61
CALDWELL     1,997    20,157   9.91%    1,233    20,357   6.06%    764   0.61
PRESIDIO        25     4,932   0.51%       16     5,149   0.31%      9   0.61
BRAZOS      16,549    86,359  19.16%   10,658    89,674  11.89%  5,891   0.62
GRAY         3,399    13,283  25.59%    2,076    13,007  15.96%  1,323   0.62

Where there are some small counties in the second table, there are some tiny ones in this table. I don’t really have anything to add here, I just figure that any list that includes Glasscock County is worth printing.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2010, Election 2014, Glasscock County, Governor, primaries, Republican Party, Texas, turnout | Comments Off

Equality is just too much work

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

It’s spring break, I have family in town, so I’m just going to outsource this to Team Wendy:

On equal pay, Texas GOP PAC sends a “busy” signal

Houston Chronicle // Siobhan O’Grady

Just one week after Greg Abbott, Texas’ attorney general and the GOP’s nominee for the state’s gubernatorial race, skirted around a question on equal pay, the executive director of the Lone Star State’s newest Republican PAC stumbled through her response to a similar question in a television interview on Sunday.

Red State Women Director: Texas Women Too ‘Busy’ For Equal Pay Law

Talking Points Memo // Catherine Thompson

Cari Cristman, the executive director of Red State Women PAC, was asked in an interview with Dallas TV station WFAA about Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) position on equal pay laws. Abbott, who is running for governor against state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), previously told the news station that existing law was sufficient to protect women’s pay.

Are Ladies Just Too Busy for the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?

Jezebel // Kelly Faircloth

Salon reports that this fascinating line of argument comes via Cari Christman, who heads Texas’s Red State Women PAC. Local ABC affiliate WFAA asked whether her organization believes Texas needs an equal pay act. This has become an issue in the state gubernatorial race, as Wendy Davis faces off against former attorney general Greg Abbott. In his last gig, he convinced the Texas Supreme Court that the Lily Ledbetter Act-which gives women longer to file gender discrimination claims after leaving a job-didn’t alter Texas’s statue of limitations.

Head of GOP PAC targeting women: GOP doesn’t support equal pay laws because “women are busy”

Salon // Katie McDonough

As Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post points out, Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis has been making Republican opponent Greg Abbott’s record on equal pay a focus of her campaign. As attorney general, Abbott successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court in a lawsuit brought by a female professor that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extended the statute of limitations in such cases, didn’t change Texas’ state statute of limitations.

Awkward: GOP women’s PAC leader says women too “busy” to need equal pay laws

Raw Story // David Edwards

During a Sunday interview with WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics, host Jason Whitely told RedState Women Executive Editor Cari Christman that Democrats had accused Republicans of “hitting the panic button” and launching the PAC in the final months before the 2014 elections after gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott was criticized for campaigning with Ted Nugent. Whitely also pointed out that Abbott had recently said that Texas did not need new laws to protect women against pay discrimination.

Red State Women leader says Texas doesn’t need equal pay law

Dallas Morning News // Christy Hoppe

Last week, on the same show, GOP nominee Greg Abbott declined to answer whether he also would have vetoed the equal pay act, called the Lilly Ledbetter Act, named after the federal version of the law. Three years ago, Abbott’s office successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court that federal equal pay protections do not apply in Texas. The 2012 decision determined that a female college professor did not have the right to sue because she discovered the alleged discriminatory pay more than 180 days after she was hired. The Lilly Ledbetter Act provides that a suit can be filed within 180 days of a woman discovering the pay discrepancy.

Head Of GOP Women’s PAC Flubs Equal Pay Question

Huffington Post // Laura Bassett

Democratic candidate Wendy Davis has been going after Abbott on equal pay in recent weeks. In addition to dodging the question of whether he supports equal pay, the Davis camp points out, he actively fought against it during his career as Texas Attorney General. Abbott successfully argued before the Texas Supreme Court in Prairie View A&M University vs. Chatha that federal equal pay protections did not apply in Texas, so a female college professor who was paid unfairly did not have the right to sue more than 180 days after the discrimination began.

So yeah. Not a good day for Team Abbott and their outreach to the women.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Governor, Greg Abbott, Lilly Ledbetter, Texas, Wendy Davis | Comments Off

What anti-gay bills?

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

From Lone Star Q:

Ken Paxton, the odds-on favorite to be Texas’ next attorney general, says he isn’t familiar with recent “license to discriminate” bills in Arizona, Kansas and other states even though he co-authored a similar measure in 2013.

Gay Realtor and LGBT activist Bob McCranie asked Paxton about his position on the anti-gay bills during a meeting of the Women’s Council of Realtors of Collin County on Wednesday.

[…]

It seems strange that Paxton doesn’t know anything about these bills, given that he authored a similar measure during the 2013 session. In fact, the bill by Paxton and fellow tea party Sen. Donna Campbell, called the Texas Religious Freedom Amendment, went a step further. It would have enshrined the right to discriminate against gays or any other group based on religious beliefs into the Texas Constitution. The bill was backed by anti-gay groups including the Liberty Institute and Texas Values, but it died amid opposition from groups like Equality Texas and concerns about unintended consequences. Namely, critics questioned whether the amendment would strengthen Westboro Baptist Church’s right to picket funerals or establish abortion as a religious right.

It makes you wonder whether Paxton even considered the ramifications of his own bill, or if he was just blindly marching behind the banner of “religious freedom” to score political points.

LSQ has a transcript and recording of the conversation, so go check it out. The bill in question is SJR4, which thankfully never made it out of committee. The critical bit from the text of the joint resolution is “The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest.” I think we all understand what that means. Well, all of us except Sen. Campbell – seriously, click that Texas Monthly link and get an appreciation of just how dim a bulb she is. In any event, Paxton needs to be pinned down on this. Sam Houston, please pick up this ball and run with it.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Attorney General, Constitution, constitutional amendments, Donna Campbell, Election 2014, gay rights, Ken Paxton, Senate, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Game room injunction lifted

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The temporary reprieve that Harris County ganerooms got from the courts has been lifted.

Houston and Harris County moved one step closer Friday in their quest to crack down on illegal game rooms after a judge threw out a restraining order which had blocked new regulations due to come into effect this month.

Game room owner Altaf Makanojiya, 31, had sought the restraining order and a permanent injunction against the new rules which his lawyers say are a “transparent attempt to outlaw game rooms.”

According to City Attorney, David Feldman, the judge flatly denied the injunction, just one week after the restraining order halting the new laws had been put in place.

Attorneys for the county confirm the ruling saying they believe the judge agreed with their claim that Makanojiya had no legal basis for his suit because his primary business is supplying poker machines, not operating game rooms.

First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard said his team are awaiting final clarification early next week but stated that if they are correct, the suit against them will now be dismissed entirely.

Even without a full dismissal, this means the new regulations go into immediate effect in Harris County with City officials looking to adopt them all across Houston as soon as paperwork can be finalzed.

“County to approve interlocal (agreement) in short order so enforcement within City can then begin,” Feldman said via text message.

See here for the background. Harris County was given extra powers by the Legislature last year to regulate game rooms, and Houston contracted with them do enforce the new regulations rather than amend their own ordinances. It will be interesting to see how well this experiment works.

Posted in Local politics | Tagged Commissioners Court, eight liners, gambling, Harris County, Harris County Attorney, Houston, The Lege | Comments Off

No love for Dan

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s one vote he won’t get.

“Oozing charm from every pore I oiled my way around the floor”

Whether incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst can make up for a big primary night loss to challenger Dan Patrick in a May runoff may depend on if he can successfully court the supporters of his two former opponents.

But in interviews on Tuesday, neither Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples nor Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, who earned a combined 30 percent of the vote in the March GOP primary for lieutenant governor, were ready to come out in favor of Dewhurst.

Staples said outright that he had decided not to give a nod in the race.

Patterson said he was still making up his mind about whether to endorse Dewhurst, but forcefully attacked Patrick, saying the Houston state senator would take the state backward as lieutenant governor.

“He will wholly be bad for Texas, bad for the Republican Party,” Patterson said of Patrick. “We have two choices, and I will categorically tell you I’m not voting for Dan Patrick either in the primary or the general election. I’ll vote Libertarian in November if I have to.”

I’ve noted before how Democrats are rooting for Patrick to win the runoff since he is viewed as being more beatable in November. Some people have expressed skepticism of this, partly on the belief that there are no ticket-splitters any more. I get that, but there are plenty of such people left in Texas. We saw a great example of it in 2010. Bill White received over 387,000 more votes than Democratic Lt. Governor candidate Linda Chavez-Thompson, while Rick Perry collected over 311,000 fewer votes than David Dewhurst. That’s nearly a 700,000 vote swing towards White. People often don’t realize how big the swing was towards White because the Republican tidal wave of 2010 was too big for it to matter, but in a more normal year, 700,000 votes is more than enough to make a difference.

Consider this scenario: Turnout in November is 4.9 million voters – a bit less than 2010, but more than any other off year. The average statewide Republican wins with a 57-43 margin, which I think we can agree is healthy enough to invite plenty of post-electoral scoffing at Battleground Texas and any thought of a blue state in the foreseeable future. Well, in this scenario a Bill White-sized swing is just about what it would take to tip an election, since the average vote tally would be 2.8 million to 2.1 million. If there’s any Republican candidate capable of inspiring that kind of disloyalty among his fellow Republicans, it’s Dan Patrick.

Maybe you think my scenario is too optimistic, maybe you think Leticia Van de Putte won’t have the resources to compete the way White did (you know you have the power to help with that, right?), or maybe you have some other reason to be skeptical. I’m just saying we’ve seen the kind of crossover voting needed to make a VdP win happen in very recent memory, so don’t say it can’t happen because it already has.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Bill White, Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Election 2010, Election 2014, Governor, Jerry Patterson, Leticia Van De Putte, Linda Chavez-Thompson, Lite Gov, Rick Perry, Texas, Todd Staples | 1 Comment

Residency is hard

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Fascinating story about residency and elections in Galveston.

Two of the three candidates for Galveston mayor are challenging the residency of front-runner Jim Yarbrough, the former county judge who was expected to coast to victory in the May municipal election.

An attorney for three-term Councilwoman Elizabeth Beeton and businessman Don Mafrige late Wednesday sent a five-page letter asking the Galveston city secretary to declare Yarbrough ineligible to be a candidate.

Mafrige, who financed the challenge, said it should not be viewed as a tactic to oust a popular candidate. “We didn’t take him out, he took himself out by not really being eligible to run,” Mafrige said.

Beeton said only another candidate can challenge a candidate’s residency.

Yarbrough disputed the challenge to his candidacy and said he would hire an attorney. “I’m glad they did it,” Yarbrough said. “We need to resolve the issue now before the election.”

[…]

The letter sent by attorney Mark Wawro on behalf of Beeton and Mafrige alleges that Yarbrough violated a section of the city charter that says a candidate must not claim a homestead exemption on property other than the candidate’s Galveston residence for at least a year before the May 10 election. Attached to the letter is a request by Yarbrough for a homestead exemption in Fayette County in March 2012 and a request to withdraw the exemption dated Sept. 8, 2013.

Yarbrough said that although he made his request in September for removal of the exemption, it was removed retroactively for the entire year and therefore enabled him to meet the charter provision requirements.

Jerad Nachvar has an in depth legal analysis of this that you should read. From my layman’s perspective, you’d think Galveston’s residential exemption standard would be fairly straightforward, but even that is subject to interpretation. I agree with Yarbrough that we ought to try to resolve this before the election – we know all too well what a mess it is to try and sort these issues out after the election – but it sure would be nice if there were a way to do that without having to go to court. I hope we get some clarity out of this.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Don Mafrige, Election 2014, Elizabeth Beeton, Galveston, Jim Yarbrough, lawsuit, Mayor | Comments Off

Perry’s No Jobs Tour continues

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

TrailBlazers takes the bait.

Corndog manufacturing is a growth industry

Rick Perry is on the road again. But then, he’s rarely off it these days.

This weekend, he’s in Western Kentucky at Murray State University to headline a Republican Party fundraiser.

Then, it’s off to California to talk to their businesses about uprooting and moving en mass to the Lone Star State.

The three-day trip to California is being paid for by Americans for Economic Freedom, a group Perry and his supporters helped establish. It emphasizes some of Perry’s fundamental tenets about helping create job growth, including low-taxes, low-wages and lawsuit limits.

The reported $300,000 radio and TV ad buy for the trip features Perry. It brags about 50 California companies moving to Texas over the past year or so and how Texas has surpassed Silicon Valley as the top exporter of tech products.

I’ve talked before about how the most notable thing about Rick Perry’s job stealing tours is how he never actually manages to steal any jobs while on them. This ad running in California – “running” is almost certainly an overstatement; given how it takes roughly a million dollars a week to run an effective TV advertising campaign for a statewide candidate in Texas, one can guess how many Californian eyeballs will actually view this latest piece of performance art from our Governor – may brag about “50 California companies moving to Texas over the past year or so”, yet Governor Perry’s press releases in that time frame makes no mention of any such relocations. You’d think if these company moves are worth bragging about in a TV ad, they’d have been worth mentioning in a press release or two. Maybe someone should ask him for the specifics. They might also ask about how miraculous things really are here. Or maybe we should all remember that the real point of all this is Rick Perry touting the virtues of Rick Perry. By that metric, it remains a success.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged advertising, California, Election 2016, Rick Perry, Texas, TexasOne | Comments Off

Once again, the cost of not expanding Medicaid

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Short answer: It’s a lot.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

A team of Harvard researchers recently released a deeply sobering study quantifying how many Americans stand to die needlessly in the unflinching states hellbent on denying Medicaid expansion, as provided by the Affordable Care Act. The study singles out Texas:

“In Texas, the largest state opting out of Medicaid expansion, 2,013,025 people who would otherwise have been insured will remain uninsured due to the opt-out decision. We estimate that Medicaid expansion in that state would have resulted in 184,192 fewer depression diagnoses, 62,610 fewer individuals suffering catastrophic medical expenditures, and between 1,840 and 3,035 fewer deaths.”

Crunching the numbers, the study suggests that Texas could bear almost 18 percent of a potential 17,104 unnecessary deaths nationwide. The figures are stark, damning, and presented with dispassionate and clinical precision—and yes, the study was quickly subjected to right-wing critics arguing the math.

You can read about the study here. The Observer story goes on to carp about the lack of media coverage of this issue, and while I agree that there ought to be a lot more written about it, at this point it pretty much has to be a campaign issue to be news. I hate to be one of those people telling the Wendy Davis campaign what to do – in part because I think most of the “advice” given to her has been in response to trivial matters, and in part because I doubt any of us armchair quarterbacks have any idea how to win statewide races – but I’d really like to see her jump all over this. I see no real downside for her in going big on economic populism, which includes Medicaid expansion and raising the minimum wage. The latter is broadly popular, including in Texas, and the former will put her on the side of most doctors and hospitals, as well as county officials. It fits with her overall message of breaking from the Rick Perry past that Greg Abbott represents and it will help drive turnout from the Democratic base, which is job one for her. We need to be talking about this, and that means we need Wendy Davis talking about it.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, health care, health insurance, Medicaid, Rick Perry, Texas, Wendy Davis | 1 Comment

Weekend link dump for March 16

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Spring break! For the kids, anyway.

Blair and Tootie, together again.

Wait, I thought drunk people placing ill-advised bets was Vegas’ entire business model?

We really are making huge advances in the fight against HIV.

Want to be a better boyfriend, or at least make your girlfriend think you’re a better boyfriend? There’s an app for that.

South Carolina takes official state-sanctioned homophobia to the next level.

“Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class.”

“For the umpteenth time, then: PowerPoint is a tool, nothing more and nothing less.”

Raising the minimum wage would save billions in SNAP costs.

“In fact, 30 states have banned same-sex marriage in their state constitutions, according to the Human Rights Campaign.”

“Sure, Democrats do plenty for the poor […] But virtually none of this really benefits the working or middle classes except at the margins.”

“But the overall picture is an electorate that is growing steadily more liberal on both social and economic policy, and whose views Republicans will eventually have to accommodate.”

That moment you realize your kid has the same twisted sense of humor you have.

Fix or repeal? Republicans can’t have both.

New frontiers in verbing nouns. Even I think that one is icky.

Millennials are environmentalists even if they tend not to use that label for themselves.

New manufacturing jobs in the US don’t look much like the ones we used to have.

Julia Ruth Stevens reminisces about her daddy, Babe Ruth.

The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves.

“Guys: The key to a healthy, happy, nurtured child is a parenting style that’s balanced, fair, educated, intuitive, loving, and realistic. Suggesting that we ban everything that may hint at a correlation with a negative influence or potentially hazardous outcome would mean we would have to BAN EVERYTHING.”

Happy 25th birthday, World Wide Web!

“Bigotry derived from religious principles is still bigotry.”

“I don’t really understand how any editorial by Condoleezza Rice on conflict in Ukraine can fail to directly address the failures of the Iraq War.”

“I really hope that this opens peoples’ minds that what you are wearing has absolutely nothing to do with whether you are assaulted.” Trigger warning for sexual assault, but very much worth your time to read.

And while we’re on that terrible subject, go read this, and be sure to click through to the responses.

RIP, Reubin Askew, former Governor of Florida.

“When you start off by basing your arguments around the work of Charles Murray you just lose your credibility from the start”. There’s more to that sentence, but honestly, what more is needed?

And speaking of awesome science-y things, go pre-order your What If book now.

“It’s a fascinating world we live in, where following the letter of the law is now considered “cheating” and “fraud” by Republicans (as long as you’re helping the disadvantaged, of course).”

A more accurate way to celebrate Pi Day.

RIP, Glenn Edward McDuffie, the sailor from Houston in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo of a kiss on V-J Day.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

ECPS: Abbott 49, Davis 42

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Via Texpatriate, the Emerson College Polling Society has a poll of the Texas gubernatorial race that shows Greg Abbott with a seven point lead.

According to a new survey conducted by the Emerson College Polling Society, Texas Attorney General Gregory Abbott (R) has a seven point lead over his Democratic opponent Wendy Davis (49% to 42%) in the upcoming gubernatorial election. The Polling Society is the first organization to look at the race since the March 6th primary. The survey was conducted from March 7th to March 12th, with a sample of 492 likely voters.

Abbott has a slight lead among independents and women, the two groups Democrats typically rely on in order to compete in the Lone Star State. Forty-two percent of independents currently support Abbott while 40 percent support Davis and 17 percent are undecided. Women voters are also more likely to vote for Abbott than Davis (46% to 42%).

Both candidates have wide support among their bases. Eighty-five percent of Republican say they will vote for Abbott while 8 percent prefer Davis. Similarly, Democrat voters support Davis overwhelmingly (84% to 9% for Abbott).

[…]

Data was collected on March 7th to 12th using an automated data collection system. The Texas sample consisted of 494 registered likely voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

No, I don’t know why it says 492 voters in one place and 494 in the other. Be that as it may, their polling page is here, their questions are here, and the crosstabs, which are a bit hard to figure out, are here (Excel file). I’ve never heard of this outfit before so I have no idea how reliable they are, but they nailed the 2013 Virginia Governor’s race (their final poll had Terry McAuliffe up by two; he won by 2.5 and the 2013 Massachusetts Senate race (they had Ed Markey up by 10, and he won by 10). That’s a lot better than some other polls I could name. According to their Facebook page, they plan to follow this race till the end, so it will be interesting to see how their results move over time and how they compare to other pollsters’ numbers. I hope they add questions about the Lt. Governor’s race as well.

Because their presentation of crosstab data is so weird, I’m not going to try to interpret it. It’s too early to make much of that anyway. I will note two other results of interest from this poll, however:

United States Senator and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz is viewed unfavorably in his home state– 43 percent view him favorably while 48 percent view him unfavorably. Cruz is particularly unpopular among women (39% favorable compared to 50% unfavorable).

55 percent of Texans are in favor of increasing the national minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, while 44 percent are against it. However, 68 percent of women are in favor of the increase, while men are evenly split on the issue 50-50 percent. An overwhelming majority of African-Americans were in support of this increase (88% in support, and 12% against).

Perhaps a little food for thought for the Davis campaign. Anyway, I’ve added this result to the sidebar. I hope we get a wide variety of pollsters weighing in on this race. If nothing else, it would be a nice change from the usually barren polling landscape we face, and it might remind some folks that there is more to life than the UT/Texas Trib poll.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, minimum wage, polls, Ted Cruz, Texas, Wendy Davis | 2 Comments

Ramon Romero

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Fort Worth Business Press profiles Rep.-elect Ramon Romero and his winning race against longtime incumbent Rep. Lon Burnam in HD90.

Rep. Ramon Romero

Ramon Romero Jr. describes himself as “that poor boy from Poly,” one of eight children of immigrant parents who grew up in working-class southeast Fort Worth, started his first business when he was 20 and ultimately became an up-by-the-bootstraps success story.

Now, at 40, Romero is poised to become the first Latino state representative from Tarrant County after carving out an 111-vote Democratic primary victory over the dean of Tarrant County’s legislative delegation, Rep. Lon Burnam, a 17-year House member who is known as one of the chamber’s liberal firebrands.

The victory was widely seen as a triumph for Texas Hispanics, who have propelled much of the state’s population growth over the past 15 years, as well as perhaps an inevitable transition in House District 90, an inner-city Fort Worth district where Latinos constitute nearly 76 percent of the population and almost 72 percent of the registered voters.

Burnam took office in 1997, succeeding legendary State Rep. Doyle Willis, who served in both the House and the Senate for a total 42 years to become the second longest serving member in the Legislature.

During his time in the House, Burnam developed a reputation for passionately defending the interests of his district but acknowledges that as an Anglo lawmaker, he was becoming increasingly vulnerable to the rapid-fire expansion of the Hispanic electorate.

Burnam survived his first serious challenge in 2012 against school board trustee Carlos Vasquez. But he was unable to withstand the assault from Romero, a well-known member of the community who was fresh from a runoff bid for the Fort Worth City Council in 2012 and had the backing of prominent Tarrant County Hispanic leaders, including Councilman Sal Espino and Justice of the Peace Sergio De Leon.

Romero’s biggest financial backer was wealthy Dallas lawyer Domingo Garcia, who ran unsuccessfully for the 33rd District congressional seat in 2012 and has been a vocal advocate for expanding Hispanic representation in Congress and the Legislature. He donated a total of $35,000 to Romero.

[…]

Romero grew up in the Polytechnic neighborhood, graduating from Polytechnic High School in 1992. He was barely in his 20s when he started a swimming pool construction company and later developed a stone distribution venture. Although he vaulted upward on the economic ladder, Romero says he has never wanted to leave the neighborhood where he grew up and looks forward to serving those he grew up with.

“People in District 90 related more to Ramon Romero than they did to Lon Burnam,” he said. He acknowledged that Burnam “worked for the district and definitely fought for the district” but said the lawmaker didn’t face and understand some the same challenges as those “who face them on a daily basis.”

Romero said he began eyeing a run for Burnam’s seat “almost immediately” after his unsuccessful council bid against Kelly Allen Gray, who wonthe District 8 council seat. He said he consulted Espino, who helped him analyze his chances of mounting a successful campaign.

A major element in his strategy was to develop a tri-ethnic coalition composed of whites, blacks and Hispanics, Romero said, dismissing post-election talk that the campaign was designed solely to propel an Hispanic into office.

“I could not have won this by the Hispanic vote alone,” he said. “It’s time we get past that conversation. It’s about the person that related to the community.”

Although Garcia’s financial support raised claims of outside influence and prompted talk that the Dallas attorney was trying to build a base for a future congressional run, Romero said Garcia took no role in the campaign other than to offer encouragement and to “support me financially when I needed it.”

“Domingo really had no role,” Romero said. “He didn’t come out to campaign. He simply gave me support.”

Burnam largely attributed his loss to the “demographic shift” in the district, saying “people mainly tend to vote based on their own personal identity.” He said he recognized the “obvious trend” and was even prepared to ultimately to support an Hispanic “replacement” to take over the seat.

“I would have been perfectly happy to stand aside in 2014 had we found what I consider the person who is truly representative of the value system of the district,” he said. “I don’t think Mr. Romero is.”

During the campaign, Burnam depicted Romero as a Republican-friendly “fake Democrat.” Romero flatly dismissed the assertion and said he has never voted Republican.”

First, let me again congratulate Rep.-elect Romero on his victory. I join many others in saying I’ll miss Rep. Burnam, but Romero earned his win and I wish him nothing but success. It’s fair to say, as one commenter on his Facebook page noted, that he has “giant shoes to fill” and “will be watched like a hawk by many skeptics”. One hopes the latter is true of all elected officials. I didn’t follow this race but I look forward to seeing what Rep.-elect Romero brings to the Legislature.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, HD90, Lon Burnam, Ramon Romero, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Still more from the Pratt files

Posted on March 16, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

What a mess.

Judge Denise Pratt

Embattled family court judge Denise Pratt, under investigation again this year by the Harris County District Attorney’s office, was removed from five more cases on Thursday by a visiting senior judge who criticized the freshman jurist’s recent decision to make a final ruling in a child custody case without hearing any testimony or evidence.

“It’s pretty fundamental for judges that, in order to rule, you must hear evidence,” retired Harris County Civil Judge Sharolyn Wood said during a hearing at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center. “I don’t know if that is due process under the Bill of Rights, but to me, it’s pretty durned important – OK? – that we in our system have judges that hear evidence before they rule.”

In the case in question, Pratt on Dec. 30 modified the terms of a temporary court order – to which both parties had agreed – without hearing any evidence, then finalized it by scratching out the word “temporary” with a pen and writing “final” above it. As a result, the case officially was closed and the 34-year-old mother effectively lost her right to visit her two children, something the opposing lawyer in the case acknowledged was not his client’s intention.

Houston lawyers Ed Chernoff and Anna Stool, who is representing the mother in the case, told Wood they recently had been interviewed by the district attorney’s office about the case as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Pratt and expressed concerns about the impact that could have on her impartiality.

[…]

In a video on her campaign website, Pratt, who is running for re-election this year and will appear on the ballot in a May 10 runoff election, explains that “things are handled a little differently in the 311th court than any other family court. When someone files for divorce who has children and they request a temporary restraining order that orders that the parents not have their children around their girlfriend, boyfriend, lover or paramour from 10 p.m to 8 a.m., we changed that to read, ‘You are not to have your children around your girlfriend, boyfriend, lover or paramour at all.’ Not only are the parents still married, the children are not ready.”

Stool, though, said Thursday that she made it clear during a meeting last year with Chernoff and Pratt in the judge’s chambers that the mother and her fiancé were engaged and planning to marry soon, which they since have. The former federal prosecutor said barring the fiancé from seeing the children after that “implies terrible wrongdoing on my client’s part and on her now-husband’s part. So, now we have a husband that she lives with in a home where the two children can’t go.”

The runoff is May 27, not May 10 – that’s the date of the SD04 special election. I’ve noted this particular case before, and you can go here for the full Pratt experience. You lawyers out there – this isn’t normal, right? Surely Pratt is an outlier among judges. I have to believe that. Normally one would expect an incumbent that could only muster 30% in a multi-candidate primary would be in trouble for the runoff, but Pratt stil has plenty of establishment support, so who knows what will happen in May. Just remember that Democrat Sherri Cothrun will oppose whoever comes out of that race. One way or another, you’ve got a chance to vote Pratt out.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Denise Pratt, District Attorney, Election 2014, Harris County, judicial races, primaries, runoff, Sherri Cothrun | 1 Comment

Saturday video break: All I Want

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Just because two songs have the same name it doesn’t mean they’re the same song. In theory there’s an unlimited number of possible song titles, but in practice there are a lot of reruns. Example #2 from my collection is “All I Want”. Here’s what Susanna Hoffs did with that song title:

Back in the day (and by “back in the day” I mean “back in the 80s, because what else would I mean?) I didn’t think much of the Bangles. They struck me as a disposable prefab pop group that disappeared after their first album. I was surprised to learn years later what a talented musician she is, both as a solo act and in tandem with Matthew Sweet. If you’re into covers, their three “Under The Covers” CDs are worth checking out. Now here’s Toad The Wet Sprocket doing a completely different song called “All I Want”:

I’m pretty sure I heard this song a bunch of times on the radio without ever knowing what its title was or who sang it. I don’t know why radio stations do that. Anyway, now I know. What songs did you hear on the radio for a long time before you found out what they were?

Posted in Music | Tagged same name different song, videos | 1 Comment

Add Tennessee to the list

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

A partial win, but the rest will follow.

A federal judge here granted a preliminary injunction Friday against the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in certain instances.

In October three same-sex couples filed a lawsuit asking the state to recognize their marriages that had been performed in states where gay marriage is legal. The four couples taking part in the suit were living and had been married in New York or California but had moved to Tennessee.

“At this point, all signs indicate that, in the eyes of the United States Constitution, the plaintiffs’ marriages will be placed on an equal footing with those of heterosexual couples and that proscriptions against same-sex marriage will soon become a footnote in the annals of American history,” Judge Aleta Trauger wrote in the order.

Friday’s U.S. District Court ruling applies only to these three couples.

Nashville lawyer Abby Rubenfeld, who represents the couples, cheered the legal win and said it was a good first step toward total equality for all same-sex married couples in Tennessee.

Buzzfeed has the opinion, which leaned heavily on the one in Kentucky that made the same ruling. The Tennessean has more about the lawsuit and the couples that were the plaintiffs. The next step is a lawsuit to overturn Tennessee’s anti-gay marriage amendment, and there’s been no trouble recruiting more plaintiffs for that. Another step forward for equality, and another step towards the inevitable at the national level.

Posted in National news | Tagged gay marriage, gay rights, lawsuit, Tennessee | Comments Off

The case for Kinky

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Trib sums up the reasons for voting for the Kinkster in the runoff.

Kinky Friedman

The race for agriculture commissioner is far down the list, both in terms of voter interest and the interest of people who write checks to political campaigns. It is the backwater of state politics, which makes it a great place for a candidate who is well known and doesn’t need the help of the financial people to get the attention of voters.

Miller and Merritt have never run statewide races. Friedman ran for governor in 2006 in a pack that included Republican Rick Perry, Democrat Chris Bell and Republican-turned-independent Carole Keeton Strayhorn (who has since divorced and changed her last name back to Rylander). Friedman finished fourth.

Let us argue the case on behalf of the Republican candidates.

One, Friedman got decimated in the 2006 race even though — and perhaps because — the voters knew who he was.

Two, it’s a Republican state, and the Democrats are unlikely to win, especially with a candidate who can be difficult to take seriously.

Three, Friedman’s idea of legalizing marijuana and making it a cash crop in Texas is out of the mainstream and cannot possibly be a winning issue in a Texas election.

The other side? He is better known than either Miller or Merritt. They, like Friedman himself, have been rejected by voters, and the deficiencies that made their opponents successful are there for new opponents — like Friedman — to exploit.

It will be hard for all of the candidates to raise money — an advantage for the best-known candidate, as long as it’s not a bank robber.

Marijuana — if it doesn’t turn off the voters — sets Friedman’s campaign apart. It’s something for voters who are not otherwise interested in the Texas Department of Agriculture to talk about. Public opinion is shifting; the governor recently talked about decriminalizing pot. Perry is not for legalization, but decriminalization is a long way from the zero-tolerance policies that were in vogue a few years ago.

We’ve covered this before. Other than the Trib’s mention that Kinky could highlight his differences with the state Democratic Party as a general campaign theme, there’s nothing new there. Either you buy into the idea of Kinky as a viable and potentially successful candidate, or you’d sooner French kiss an electric outlet. I can’t say either of these views are wrong, but if you vote in the runoff – and you should come out to vote for David Alameel, because Kesha Rogers must be stopped – then you’ll have to decide how you feel about this.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Ag Commissioner, David Alameel, Democratic primary, Election 2014, Jim Hogan, Kesha Rogers, Kinky Friedman, runoff, Senate, Sid Miller, Texas, Tommy Merritt | 2 Comments

HPD crime lab update

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The man who wrote the report detailing all of the HPD crime lab’s problems was back to give a progress report on how things look now.

Michael Bromwich

Houston police managers at the once-shuttered crime lab have failed to re-examine tests on DNA, blood and most other forensic evidence on a random basis to ensure the results are accurate, according to a follow-up report by the nationally known forensic expert hired to investigate the facility.

The crime lab, under Houston Police Department management, continues to outsource several integral testing services common for the lab, including a type of firearms testing that determines how far a gun was from a target when it was fired, Michael Bromwich’s report noted. That information is crucial in the investigation of officer-involved shootings.

But overall, Bromwich concluded, HPD has done a “responsible job” implementing many recommendations he made in 2007 following an extensive, two-year investigation after the lab was closed due to flawed testing procedures and practices.

“We were very encouraged with what we saw in our review of the crime lab,” Bromwich said this past week. “The most pronounced improvement was the quality of senior managers in the lab.”

Bromwich also said the city’s lab, at the police headquarters building at 1200 Travis, is not big enough for the current workload and needs a “significant” amount of additional space. City leaders said they have no plan to move the facility, although some on City Council favor merging operations with a new forensic center being built by Harris County.

[…]

Bromwich was hired by the board of the Houston Forensic Science Local Government Corp. , with the help of a $75,000 grant from a Houston foundation, to determine if changes his team suggested in 2007 have been implemented.

“There is still room for improvement … we think with the right resources devoted to it, and the right leadership, the lab can improve still more,” Bromwich said.

The TL;DR version of this story is “Much better now. Some things still need to be done. More money is needed to get those things done.” The original report is still here, if you’ve never looked at it or want to refresh your memory. Merging the HPD lab with the new Harris County facility would likely help resolve a number of the remaining issues from the Bromwich report. Mayor Parker has been adamant that she wants the Harris County lab to be fully independent of the District Attorney’s office before she will let that happen. I continue to believe there’s room for a solution to be worked out. I’d love to see it happen before her term in office ends.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged Annise Parker, crime lab, Harris County, Houston, Houston Forensic Science Local Government Corporation, HPD, John Whitmire, Michael Bromwich, Scott Hochberg | Comments Off

Dodson to be closed, Jones to be revamped

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

In the end, only one school was closed by HISD, but a lot of people are still upset about the whole thing.

During a rowdy meeting where police had to quiet shouting protestors, the Houston school board narrowly agreed Thursday to close Dodson Elementary but accepted a compromise plan that would turn the long-struggling Jones High into a specialty vocational school.

Many in the crowd focused their anger on Superintendent Terry Grier, calling for his firing, during the most raucous board meeting in years.

[…]

Grier’s initial closure proposal, unveiled four weeks ago, would have shut down five small schools. But [Juliet] Stipeche, using her power as board president, scaled the potential closure list to two schools after community members packed a series of public meetings to complain and a couple dozen people marched outside Grier’s condominium one weekend.

Grier had said closing Jones High and Dodson Elementary were his priorities, saying the district needed to use the facilities to house students from other schools due to be rebuilt under the 2012 voter-approved bond issue.

The idea of closing schools so they could serve as temporary “swing space” for other students didn’t sit well with many.

In the end, the school board agreed on a 5-4 vote to close Dodson Elementary, which enrolls about 445 students this year. The building likely will be used to house students from the district’s Energy Institute High School while it is rebuilt.

[…]

Under the compromise plan for Jones, passed on a 6-3 vote, the school would become a specialty campus focused on career readiness. It would be modeled after other “Futures Academy” programs that the district has started in other high schools, allowing students to work toward industry certification or associate’s degrees.

Students zoned to Jones would get priority in admissions, but the specialty school would be open to students across the district. The Jones students who don’t want to attend will be rezoned to Worthing and Sterling high schools. All are under-enrolled, with Jones falling to about 440 students this year.

The new Jones would not have athletics, a point of contention for some. Students could play for their zoned schools.

While many said they supported the compromise plan for Jones, James Douglas, a longtime officer for the NAACP of Houston, said he did not. He joined others in expressing frustration that Stipeche, the board president, limited speakers to one minute each because more than 80 had signed up to speak on the closures alone.

“I would say HISD is broken and you need to come up with some mechanism not just to hear the community, but really to listen what they have to say,” Douglas told the board. “And you can’t listen to what anyone has to say in one minute.”

See here, here, here, here, and here for the background. I’m sure this isn’t the end of the story, though it’s unclear to me what comes next. The one thing I do know, which hasn’t been mentioned in the coverage so far, is that I truly hope HISD will keep track of the Dodson and Jones students that are directly affected by this to see how their performance fares going forward, just as I have hoped that they will closely monitor the former North Forest students. Whatever the demographic case may be, if closing a school or significantly changing it turns out to have a negative effect on the existing students, it should make districts very reluctant to do that. Dodson is hardly the first school HISD has closed during Terry Grier’s tenure, and I have no idea if any of those students were tracked post-closure. It would be nice to know more about the data we already have, if in fact we do have it. Regardless, given the strong feedback this has generated, the least HISD can do is keep us informed about the consequences – good, bad, or indifferent – of their actions. Hair Balls has more.

Posted in School days | Tagged HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Juliet Stipeche, schools, Terry Grier | Comments Off

Friday random ten: My wild Irish Rose

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day, some Irish music.

1. Irish Rover – Flying Fish Sailors
2. Star Of The County Down – Gordian Knot
3. Molly Malone – Ceili’s Muse
4. Into The Mystic – Van Morrison
5. The Rocky Road To Dublin – The Chieftains
6. Back To Tyrone – SixMileBridge
7. Finnegan’s Wake – The Mollys
8. Some Day My Prince Will Come – Sinead O’Connor
9. Irish Dream – Eddie From Ohio
10. The Irish Ballad – Tom Lehrer

Slainte, y’all.

Posted in Music | Tagged Friday random ten, theme lists | Comments Off

The Dew is in it to win it

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Let the attack ads begin!

The Sad Dewhurst picture never gets old

Despite mounting pressure to throw in the towel, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst skipped a Wednesday deadline to take his name off the May 27 primary runoff ballot, instead committing himself to an expensive come-from-behind battle against challenger Dan Patrick for the next 12 weeks.

The 11-year-incumbent trailed Patrick, a Houston senator and radio talk show host, by 13 points in last week’s GOP election in a four-way race that included Agriculture Commission Todd Staples and Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.

“He is in it to win it,” Dewhurst spokesman Travis Considine said. “He is going to do what he does best – crisscrossing the state, talking to voters. A lot of money will be spent on TV.”

[…]

Tuesday, Patterson also told the Tribune he believed Dewhurst could win if voters learn more about Patrick. “The key is to define Dan Patrick for what he is,” Patterson said. “I suspect they (voters) are going to get to know him better.”

By the lack of news indicating otherwise, it appears Dan Branch has remained in the runoff for Attorney General as well. As I suggested before, the key for Dewhurst is that Patrick is a giant wanker and there’s plenty of material to use against him. I’d hammer on the fact that being such a choad makes Patrick less likely to win in November than Dewhurst would be. (I’d also advise him to never, ever reference Rick Astley in his messaging, even ironically.) I freely admit that I’m as unbiased a source for this kind of analysis as Mark Jones and Matt Mackowiak, so by all means take what I saw with however much salt you feel is needed. As long as Dewhurst is relentlessly attacking Patrick on TV – his consultant said that will begin sooner rather than later – it’s all good by me. Campos has more.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Dan Patrick, David Dewhurst, Election 2014, Lite Gov, primaries, Republican Party, runoff, Texas | 1 Comment

AG opinion sought on bag bans

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Whatever.

As proponents continue to tout the benefits of banning plastic bags, the debate over whether Texas cities like Austin actually have the ability to enact such ordinances has made its way to the attorney general’s office.

In a letter seeking an opinion from Attorney General Greg Abbott, state Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Canton, questioned whether the city bans are in compliance with the state’s health and safety laws.

“At least nine cities in Texas have enacted bans on plastic bags and adopted fees on replacement bags in recent years,” the letter stated. “This appears to be in contravention of state law.”

The letter, which was received last week by the attorney general’s office, asks the office to interpret a specific section of the Texas Health and Safety Code. The section states that a municipal district may not pass legislative restrictions or charge fees relating to the consumption of a “container or package” for waste management purposes.

“I can’t begin to tell you how many phone calls we received about the legality of the bans,” said Flynn, whose district does not have any communities that have imposed bag bans. Even though it doesn’t affect him directly, “there are a lot of people who are really inconvenienced by it,” he said.

One of the most vocal opponents of bag bans, the Texas Retailers Association, approached Flynn about writing the letter to the attorney general’s office.

“It sure looks to us that the plain meaning of the statute’s language is that the state meant to stop local governments from adopting ordinances that prohibit or restrict the use of these bags,” said Ronnie Volkening, the president and CEO of the retailers association. “If the state Legislature enacted that language, then the cities are in fact engaging in an activity that they should not.”

[…]

The push for an opinion from the attorney general’s office comes a year after the retailers group filed a lawsuit targeting Austin’s plastic bag ban last February. But the group dropped the lawsuit after Austin officials asked it to disclose information on the sales of plastic bags.

“They were asking for proprietary information that retailers will not disclose for sensitive reasons,” Volkening said, adding that it would be very expensive for the association to contest the request. “Rather than disclosing that information, we felt it was necessary to drop the suit.”

A copy of that now-dropped lawsuit is here. Rep. Flynn’s letter basically recapitulates its arguments. I assume that the cities that have adopted these bans have attorneys at their disposal who can interpret state law and advise their clients how likely they are to get their posteriors handed to them in court some day, so I presume there is a counterargument to be made here. If any lawyers would like to weigh in on that, I’d be delighted to hear it. Whether the timing of this request has anything to do with the developments in San Antonio or not I couldn’t say, but thanks to Rep. Flynn we can now say with confidence that it is possible to carry water in a plastic bag.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Attorney General, Austin, Dan Flynn, Greg Abbott, lawsuit, plastic bags, San Antonio, Texas, Texas Retailers Association | 1 Comment

Lyft has some stumbles

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Oops.

Lyft, known for its pink mustaches, has again been caught red-handed in Houston breaking a basic driving law.

A driver for the company, which pairs riders with drivers via smartphone app, picked up a Houston investigator Monday and was cited for operating an illegal taxi service because the passenger was charged for the ride. The vehicle used for the trip also had an expired Texas registration sticker, officials said Wednesday.

[…]

Two weeks ago, Lyft gave a passenger a ride to Katy, automatically triggering a charge to the rider’s credit card because the fare exceeded the $25 credit Lyft was giving all customers.

In both cases, the drivers were cited for operating without a taxi permit, providing a fee-based ride and operating an illegal taxi company. All three are misdemeanor charges. Separately, Lyft faces citations in both incidents for operating a taxi dispatch business without a permit.

The infractions that triggered the citations undermine the case that changing the city’s rules is in the best interest of Houston riders, Newport said.

See here for all the background. “Newport” is Chris Newport, chief of staff for the city’s regulatory affairs department. I have the press release this story quotes from; it’s reprinted beneath the fold. As I’ve said before, I fully expect that in the end the ordinances will be modified to allow Lyft and Uber and uberX into Houston. The story suggests the Council debate may happen by the end of the month, which is about when we were led to expect it to happen. But I don’t think Uber and Lyft have done themselves any favors – Lyft in particular – with their pre-ordinance update rollouts and their email badgering campaign. Sometimes a lighter touch is the better approach, you know?

UPDATE: I received two statements in my email from Lyft. The first deals with this story:

Safety is our top priority at Lyft, and is why we’ve gone above and beyond to set the industry standard for the most stringent safety requirements for drivers. We regret that this individual was approved to drive with an expired inspection sticker, as he met all the other safety requirements to join the Lyft platform, including current vehicle registration, passing Lyft’s 19-point vehicle inspection and no previous record of unsafe driving. In no way does this isolated error speak to the quality of Lyft’s background check, driving record check and other safety standards, all of which remain more strict than what’s currently required of taxis and limos in Houston.

The second is about insurance options:

Lyft Will Provide Protection Between Rides

Last month, Lyft introduced additional coverages including uninsured/underinsured motorist and collision coverages. We also worked closely with regulators, personal insurance carriers, and other industry leaders to found the Peer-to-Peer Ridesharing Insurance Coalition.

Historically, many personal insurance policies have had an exclusion while drivers are carrying passengers for compensation, because of greater liability created by having additional people in the car. In reviewing this exclusion language from the top insurance carriers, the vast majority of policies’ exclusions focus on the time period during which there is a passenger in the car.

Lyft’s liability policy was designed to cover the time when drivers have passengers in their cars, as well as the period when a driver is on the way to pick up a passenger. While we do expect personal carriers to cover the time period prior to carrying a passenger, in order to erase any uncertainty, Lyft will now provide additional protection. This new protection will provide backstop coverage to drivers when they are in match mode and are not providing rides. We will be rolling this out state-by-state in the days to come.

So there you have it.

Continue reading →

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Annise Parker, Christopher Newport, Houston, Houston City Council, Lyft, taxis, Uber | 1 Comment

Rename this!

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Whatever.

Just plain Astrodome, thanks

Reliant Park will soon be called NRG Park and Reliant Stadium NRG Stadium, after NRG Energy, the parent company of one of the largest electric retailers in the Houston area.

County sources say NRG, which acquired Reliant’s retail operations in 2009, is planning a rebranding effort that will involve swapping out every sign bearing the Reliant name.

A related item is expected to appear on the next meeting agenda of the board of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp., the agency that runs the county-owned park.

The long version of the story is here. They can name it whatever they want, but that doesn’t obligate anyone else to call it what they name it. The Astrodome is still the Astrodome, not the Reliant Astrodome and certainly not the NRG Astrodome. The building that now houses Joel Osteen’s church will always be The Summit. The airport north of the city is plain old Intercontinental, the big building near the Galleria with the waterwall is the Transco Tower, and that lawn you need to get off is mine. I’m glad we had this opportunity to clear this up. Link via Swamplot, and Hair Balls has more.

Posted in Other sports | Tagged Harris County, Harris County Sports & Convention Corp, Houston, Reliant Stadium | 2 Comments

Oh, Buc-ee’s

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Ugh.

Make your own beaver joke

Convenience-store chain Buc-ee’s Ltd. has garnered lots of attention for its clean restrooms. But this week, it’s the owners’ endorsement of tea party favorite Dan Patrick, who faces incumbent David Dewhurst in the Republican runoff for lieutenant governor, that’s drawn the spotlight.

Congressman Joaquin Castro has bashed Buc-ee’s owners over the endorsement and Monday called for a boycott of the stores.

In a tweet, the San Antonio Democrat said he wouldn’t gas up at Buc-ee’s “since they support a fear-mongering immigrant basher.”

Castro’s brother, Mayor Julián Castro, is expected to debate immigration reform with Patrick in April after the two traded barbs though social media.

But any antipathy toward Buc-ee’s puts its critics at odds with legions of Buc-ee’s fans.

They say they love the stores’ reasonable gas prices, squeaky-clean restrooms, foods from jerky to Beaver Nuggets and shelves of Texas kitsch.

[…]

Lake Jackson-based Buc-ee’s was founded in 1982 by Arch “Beaver” Aplin III and Don Wasek.

The company operates 28 stores, mostly in Southeast and Central Texas, its website says. More are planned.

Buc-ee’s Aplin and Wasek didn’t return phone calls seeking comment about the company’s long-range expansion plans or their political stance.

Campaign finance reports show the two have donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates over the past two decades, including a combined $11,100 to Gov. Rick Perry and $50,000 to Attorney General Greg Abbott on Jan. 21.

However, reports did not reflect a donation to Patrick, likely because candidates have not filed updated reports since the March 4 primary election.

Buc-ee’s general counsel Jeff Nadalo said in an email that Aplin and Wasek have contributed to Patrick’s campaign, but “as a company, Buc-ee’s doesn’t support political candidates” and the company’s doors “are open 24/7 to everyone.”

Attorney Nadalo reiterated that distinction between the owners (Buc-ee’s is not a publicly traded company) and the company to Bud Kennedy. As Stace notes, that would make them an exception to the “corporations are people, my friend” mantra. Well, they’re free to support the candidates of their choice, and other people are free to decide what that means to them. I think you’re on solid ground if you decide you’ll just use their famous bathrooms but not spend any money there. I must note there is some nuance in all this:

In his talk in Terrell, Aplin said Buc-ee’s normally pays 40 percent to 45 percent above the area’s industry average for similar jobs.

A cashier in Terrell will start at $11 to $11.50 an hour, he said. For the Texas City store, the company is hiring cashiers, food-service workers and maintenance workers at pay that ranges from $11 to $14 an hour, its website states. When Buc-ee’s opened a 67,000-square-foot store in New Braunfels in 2012, it was a plus for that community’s economy, a local official said.

“There is no doubt that it makes a difference, but being able to quantify that is difficult,” said Rusty Brockman, director of economic development for the Greater New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce. “But I can quantify it in this way: They brought a great name and a destination to New Braunfels — a business that is clean, progressive and run by a true entrepreneur. And they brought 225 jobs paying more than $12 an hour.”

It would be easier to demonize them if they treated their employees like dirt. And if you’re not feeling conflicted now, consider this:

Buc-ee’s co-owner Arch “Beaver” Aplin gave $12,000 to Democrat Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2004.

[…]

Jeff Nadalo, general counsel for Buc-ee’s, told Lone Star Q on Wednesday he isn’t sure why Aplin, who lives in Lake Jackson, where Buc-ee’s is headquartered, would contribute money to Obama — who has become public enemy No. 1 for Patrick and other Texas Republicans.

“Your guess would be as good as mine,” Nadalo said. “I know the media is portraying them [the Buc-ee’s owners] as staunch Republicans, but I couldn’t even tell you their political affiliation. I think they’re just smart business guys.”

[…]

Likewise, people have a right not to spend money at Buc-ee’s, but Nadalo said when it comes to LGBT issues, the company is supportive. For example, he said some customers recently complained about a transgender employee at the company’s Cypress location.

“I think the LGBT community would be pleased to hear that despite protests from customers, Buc-ee’s has treated her just like we would any other employee,” Nadalo said. “We’ve embraced her into our family. We did not fall prey to that rhetoric. The corporate social philosophy of the company has clearly been driven in a direction which is conducive to the LGBT objective.”

However, Nadalo confirmed the company doesn’t have an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination policy. He said the company’s current policy mirrors federal law, but added he’d be willing to take up the matter with the human resources department.

“I would certainly be happy to bring it to their attention that we’re perhaps not on paper espousing the objectives that some of our customers would like to see,” Nadalo said.

Asked about domestic partner benefits, Nadalo said the company doesn’t currently offer health insurance to employees, but plans to begin doing so soon.

“If we extend coverage to straight partners, we would extend it to gay partners,” he said.

They’ll have to offer health insurance to employees who work 30 hours a week under the Affordable Care Act, right? They don’t have to offer domestic partner benefits, but I hope they do, and I hope they follow through as Nadalo expects.

Anyway. I’m in the vicinity of a Buc-ee’s maybe twice a year, so any behavioral changes I make are not going to be noticed by anyone. We’ll probably still take potty breaks there, because the kids like the place. Let’s just say my feelings about the franchise are a lot more complicated now. Campos and Texas Leftist have more.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged Barack Obama, boycott, Buc-ee's, Dan Patrick, Election 2014, endorsements, health insurance, Joaquin Castro, Lite Gov, New Braunfels, Texas | 2 Comments

More Obamacare enrollments, still lots more needed

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

That’s pretty much the story.

It’s constitutional – deal with it

Texas enrollment in the online insurance marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act rose steadily in February but did not meet expectations set forth by the Obama administration, according to figures that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released Tuesday.

“As more Americans learn just how affordable marketplace insurance can be, more are signing up to get covered,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a call announcing the enrollment data. “We expect that even more will sign up as we approach the March 31 deadline.”

The data is the last to be released by HHS before open enrollment closes on March 31, offering a glimpse at the daunting task facing advocacy groups as they make their final push to sign people up for health coverage.

Texas ranked third behind California and Florida in total enrollments since the launch of healthcare.gov on Oct. 1. As of March 1, 295,000 Texans had selected a coverage plan in the federal marketplace, up from 207,500 the month before.

The number represents a small fraction of the uninsured in Texas, the state with the highest percentage of people without health coverage nationwide. In 2012, more than 6 million Texans, about 24 percent of the population, lacked health insurance, according to U.S. census data.

“That is very low,” said Arlene Wohlgemuth, director of the Center for Health Care Policy at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. “If the goal is to get uninsured people onto the exchange, they are such a long way from doing that.”

Wohlgemuth, of course, was the author of the bill in the 2003 Lege that initiated that disastrous privatization of HHSC, and her fingerprints were all over the bill that cut however many hundreds of thousands of kids off CHIP that same year. In other words, she’s a charter member of the Go Ahead And Die caucus, and as such has Cheney-levels of credibility on anything related to health care.

Be that as it may, the numbers are what they are. We’d like them to be higher, but there’s still time, and millions of people are getting covered regardless of what else happens. The good news is that there will be another open enrollment period in October for next year, and there shouldn’t be any technical problems like there were this time. It may take longer than it should have, but we’ll get there. A statement from the Texas Organizing Project is beneath the fold.

Continue reading →

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Arlene Wohlgemuth, health care, health insurance, insurance exchanges, Kathleen Sebelius, Medicaid, Texas, Texas Organizing Project | Comments Off

Last stand against school closures

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Last chance, too.

Community activists called Tuesday for HISD to spare two schools from closure in a last-ditch effort that included filing a federal civil-rights complaint alleging racial discrimination.

Charles X. White, president of the city’s South Park Super Neighborhood group, said he had asked federal authorities to investigate HISD’s proposal to close schools in mostly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

The Houston school board is set to vote Thursday on Superintendent Terry Grier’s scaled-back proposal to close Jones High School in the South Park neighborhood and Dodson Elementary near downtown. He first proposed closing five small schools.

[…]

Grier has said the Jones and Dodson buildings are needed to house students from other campuses being rebuilt under the district’s 2012 vote-approved bond issue.

After the new schools are built, Grier said, Jones could be reopened as a vocational school or one for gifted students. Dodson could be turned into a middle school with a specialized program.

Trustee Paula Harris, whose district includes Jones, said at a board meeting Monday that she supported reopening Jones with a new theme but called for it to happen next year – not years after using the space during rebuilding.

See here, here, here, and here for the background. A spokesperson for the Office of Civil Rights confirmed there was a complaint filed with them, but I’m sure we won’t hear anything further on that until some action is taken. A Chron op-ed from earlier in the week lays out a pretty good case against the district taking steps to close Jones and Dodson at this time:

In her Sunday op-ed “Low-performing schools drag down kids and districts” (Page B9), trustee Anna Eastman said HISD should close struggling schools and re-open them as charter/magnet schools. More specialty schools do not necessarily mean more access for children most in need. When HISD closed Third Ward’s Ryan Middle School last year and re-opened it as a magnet school, only 11 percent of the enrollment included neighborhood children.

Moreover, contrary to common expectations, research on 60 school districts shows that student performance actually declines following school closures. HISD has closed 19 schools since 2010, sending many students from exemplary to lower-performing schools. We know of no parent who would want that.

Grier defended the closure proposal with a November 2013 HISD report implying these schools have seen long-term enrollment declines. However, this ignores the district’s own research showing that enrollment changed less than 3 percent over the past 10 years at each elementary school targeted for closure – schools that met state standards every year.

Enrollment declines at Jones are due in part to HISD’s removal of its Vanguard “gifted” program and a revolving door of leadership. And when the expensive and controversial Apollo program was imposed on Jones – with its fixation on excessive test prep – families fled. Parents don’t want the school to close; they want HISD to clean up its mess and invest in quality programming.

As community opposition has grown, officials now say Jones and Dodson are needed as “swing space” – temporary buildings for schools during a rebuild. HISD policy does not authorize school closures for this purpose.

Here’s the Anna Eastman op-ed they reference. At this point, while HISD may have a good demographic argument for pursuing these closures, they seem to be weak on procedure and on community engagement about them. I’d like to see more done to address those issues before any further action is taken. There will be a rally by anti-closure forces outside the Hattie Mae White building tomorrow at 1:30 – see beneath the fold for details.

Continue reading →

Posted in School days | Tagged Anna Eastman, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Justice Department, lawsuit, schools, Terry Grier | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of March 10

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is always springing forward as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

Oh yeah, that other election

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

We’ve had the primary, and we’ll have the runoff in late May. In between, there’s the special election in SD04 to replace Tommy Williams.

Tommy Williams

Overshadowed by a heated primary season, a special election will be held on May 10 in Harris and four surrounding counties to determine the next state senator from District 4, a Republican stronghold that spans Jefferson and Chambers counties and portions of Harris, Montgomery and Galveston counties. Early voting begins April 28 and ends May 6.

The four candidates on the ballot, all Republican, are: Former District 4 Sen. Michael Galloway, a businessman who served one term from 1994 to 1998; two Montgomery County state representatives – freshman tea party favorite Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, and Rep. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, chairman of the House Republican caucus; and businessman Gordy Bunch, who serves as treasurer on The Woodlands Township board and as chairman of The Woodlands Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Willliams, R-The Woodlands, left the upper chamber last October after a decade in office to serve as the vice chancellor of federal and state relations for the Texas A&M University System.

[…]

With four credible candidates, University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said “a runoff is pretty much in the cards.”

A summertime election, guaranteed to have extremely low turnout, will benefit the candidate who voters believe is the most conservative, Rottinghaus said, an advantage he gives to Toth. The tea party favorite is known for unseating 10-year incumbent Republican Rob Eissler in 2012.

Although Creighton has a larger war chest and more experience in office, having won three House terms, Rottinghaus said some anti-establishment voters may be turned off by his caucus leadership position. That is because they may link him to House Speaker Joe Straus, who handily won his party nomination March 4 but frequently has to defend himself against charges he is too moderate.

Toth is seen as “kind of more an insurgent and, perhaps, more conservative than Creighton,” Rottinghaus said. “We are splitting hairs here, though, because I think they’re both probably equally conservative.”

[Rice PoliSci professor Mark] Jones, who has analyzed Toth’s and Creighton’s voting histories from the 2013 legislative session, said the two fell side-by-side on his ranking, which placed both of them solidly among the two dozen most conservative Republicans in the House.

While describing the race as “evenly matched” between the two men, who voluntarily resigned their House seats after entering the race, Jones gives the advantage to Creighton because of his money, more than $1 million, and experience.

Here are the January finance reports for each candidate:

Toth – $123K on hand
Creighton – $1 million on hand
Galloway – Less than $1K on hand
Bunch – $274K on hand, including $250K loan

They will have to file 30 day and 8 day reports as well.

As far as the race itself goes, it’s a measure of how degraded Republican politics have become that a person like me finds himself mourning the loss of a guy like Tommy Williams. Williams used to occupy a comfortable space on the right-hand end of the conservative spectrum, but his performance as Senate Finance Committee Chair showed him to be generally sane. When one considers that the top candidates to replace him are the secession sympathizer Creighton and the troglodyte Toth, one begins to see the appeal. Given that I know nothing about Galloway and Bunch, I’d probably have a slight preference for Creighton as the marginally less offensive alternative, but honestly it’s like being asked to pick my favorite Kardashian. Any way you look at it, you lose. I hope to live long enough to see the day when elections between Republicans can be about issues and solutions and not just a grunting contest among trolls, but that day isn’t here yet.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Brandon Creighton, Election 2014, Gordy Bunch, Michael Galloway, SD04, Senate, special election, Steve Toth, Texas, Tommy Williams | Comments Off

Enough with analyzing Democratic primary turnout already

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Seriously, enough of this.

Sen. Wendy Davis

Republicans saw a turnout of 11.4 percent of registered voters, or 1.5 million people, in 2010 when their primary featured the long-awaited clash between Gov. Rick Perry and then-U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The GOP primary for governor this year saw 9.8 percent turnout, or more than 1.3 million voters.

Democratic turnout was 5.2 percent, or 680,548 voters in 2010 when White, the former Houston mayor, faced a primary field of little-known opponents marked chiefly by hair-care magnate Farouk Shami’s willingness to shell out money to challenge him. This year, with Davis on the ballot after getting national attention last year for her filibuster against tighter abortion restrictions, it was 3.7 percent, under 550,000 voters, in the governor’s race.

“It definitely looks bad” for Democrats, said Mark P. Jones, Rice University political scientist. “There also wasn’t very much going on in 2010, yet more people voted in 2010 than voted in 2014. … Instead of moving towards turning Texas blue, they are moving back towards Texas as an even redder state.”

[…]

Jeff Rotkoff, adviser to Democratic megadonors Steve and Amber Mostyn of Houston, said Battleground Texas was never intended to turn out Democrats in a largely uncompetitive primary election. It’s designed to expand the electorate, he said.

“It’s like saying, ‘I bought this Ferrari, and I tried to take it off-road and I got stuck. It’s a terrible car,’ ” he said. “We’ll know on Nov. 5 whether it’s been successful or not.”

Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak said it would have been wise for Democrats to take the car for a primary spin.

“That’s just incompetence, if you’re not trying. Even broader than that, we know they were trying,” he said, citing Davis’ visits to South Texas. “They missed a huge opportunity to turn out a lot of old and new Democratic voters and get them enthused about their candidate and launch into the general election for governor effectively. … If they think they can skip the primary and have a stunning victory, that’s extremely naive.”

I’ve said what I’ve got to say about turnout and Davis’ performance, so let me say something about the naysayers that are quoted in this story. First, there’s Mark Jones, who you may recall was telling everyone to vote in the Republican primary since the Democratic primary didn’t matter anyway. And then there’s Matt Mackowiak, who as noted is a Republican consultant. That means – and try to stay with me here, because this is complicated – he wants Republican candidates to win. That means he’s probably not the most objective source of information for what Democratic candidates ought to be doing to win. Hard to believe, I know, but that’s my job, to tell you those hard truths. Maybe Davis should have spent a million or two to turn people out in the primary. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that would have been a good strategy. It’s also perfectly reasonable to think that she’d get more bang for her buck saving her money for later and to let local races drive turnout. There will be plenty of time to second guess that decision later. Can we move on now?

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Democratic primary, Election 2014, Governor, Greg Abbott, Texas, turnout, Wendy Davis | 1 Comment

San Antonio plastic bag ban update

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Here’s an update on the city of San Antonio’s effort to regulate plastic bag usage, which may include a ban. It’s written by San Antonio City Council member Cris Medina, who is the point person for the effort.

Late last year, after multiple conversations with members of the Citizen’s Environmental Advisory Committee (members are appointed by each City Council member and the Mayor), I became aware of the environmental hazards of single-use plastic bags.

For some time, I had seen plastic bags strewn about our parks, caught in trees, and on frequent occasions, I had picked up countless deteriorating plastic bags during community clean-up events. I was well aware of the eyesore that the 335 plastic bags each American uses per year (U.S. International Trade Commission) cause. What I soon came to learn was that single-use plastics are not biodegrading in our landfills. In fact, many of them are making their way into our waterways and wreaking havoc when wildlife ingest shards of bags.

I also learned about the manufacturing process of plastic bags, which requires an incredible amount of energy, often coming from the burning of fossil fuels. Creation, transport, and use of these bags just one time seems wasteful, wouldn’t you agree?

[…]

Recycling is an option, but it is not one that people often use. In 2012, the city’s Solid Waste Management Department initiated a pilot project which had two goals: reduce the number of single-use plastic bags sold at the point-of-sale with the following retailers: JC Penny, H-E-B, Walmart, Target and Walgreens; and increase recycling of single-use plastic bags. The department spent nearly $400,000 on a marketing campaign to convey and encourage implementation of these goals. A 30 percent increase in recycling at the collection bins provided by retailers on-site was accomplished, while no change in the number of single-use plastic bags was had at the point-of-sale. These results mirror results in other cities across the United States.

The reality is that the nearly 100 cities across the county have transitioned away from single-use plastic bags, yet those same cities saw very little increase in recycling curbside or otherwise. San Jose, California, found that only four percent of single-use plastic bags are recycled (City of San Jose, California). The moral of the story here is that while recycling is possible, it is an expensive investment and it is rarely used.

Recycling will be part of our transition. In August of this year, the city will contract with a new recycling vendor who has the proper equipment to sort single-use plastic bags from our blue collection bins.

Through proper handling, San Antonio citizens will be able to recycle single-use plastic bags and other plastic bags, like the ones your produce comes in, by balling multiple bags together and placing that combined apparatus into blue recycle bins. This is an exciting option for San Antonio.

The issue was first discussed last year, and came up again in February but was put off till this month. As we know, multiple cities have taken various approaches to dealing with plastic bags in the past couple of years in Texas. I’m not aware of any studies that have been done to gauge the effectiveness of each approach. I feel confident that Houston will deal with this sooner or later, and it would be nice to know more about how it has gone so far in other cities. One question that I haven’t seen answered anywhere and which is of interest to me as a dog owner is, what is the recommended way to deal with cleaning up after one’s dog if plastic bags are no longer widely available? I presume there’s something, but I haven’t come across it and I haven’t got the fortitude to Google for it right now. Anyone have personal experience with this?

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged plastic bags, pollution, recycling, San Antonio, Texas | 1 Comment

Street closings ahead

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

This ought to be interesting.

Three busy Houston streets will shut down to vehicular traffic on selected Sunday afternoons in an effort to see if car-bound residents will walk, bike and explore each block rather than simply drive through.

The program, called Open Streets, originated in Bogota, Colombia, more than 30 years ago and has been spreading fast across the United States in the past decade. The idea is to close streets to cars and open them to cyclists, skateboarders and pedestrians – anybody using their own brawn to move. So, no horses.

“You can bring your jump rope and you can bring your Hula Hoop,” said Regina Garcia, president of Bike Houston.

The pilot program announced Wednesday will begin April 6, when 2.5 miles of two connected streets, White Oak and Quitman, will be closed to automotive traffic between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. In May, a mile-long stretch of Westheimer in the Montrose area will be closed to vehicles. Two miles of Washington Avenue ending at Market Square Park downtown will be closed in June.

Officials said the project would encourage residents to exercise and explore Houston’s neighborhoods.

“It is a way to acquaint ourselves with what is around those streets in a way we don’t normally experience it going by car,” Mayor Annise Parker said.

In St. Louis, where the street closings have been popular, the city found nearly three-quarters of attendees spent money along the route.

[…]

Many businesses pushed for the closings, hoping to generate interest in the neighborhood around them, said Travis Adair, owner of Lucky’s, a bar along the White Oak closure route who worked with the city on the plan.

Though cars will be off-limits in the parking lot of his bar, Adair said he’s planning to have plenty of bike racks and other attractions to draw customers, including possibly a band.

See here for the Mayor’s press release and here for the Sunday Streets HTX webpage. Any time you try to do something that involves the people of Houston traveling by means other than a car, there’s going to be skepticism. I have no idea what to expect from this – I wonder what metrics the city has in mind to determine if this is a success or not – but White Oak is close to where we live, so I’m sure we’ll wander over and check it out. What do you think about this?

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Annise Parker, bicycles, Go Healthy Houston, Heights, Houston, pedestrians, Sunday Streets HTX, White Oak | Comments Off

Comparing Davis and White

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

In 2010, Bill White received 517,487 votes in the Democratic primary, for 76.0% of the vote. Wendy Davis just received 432,065 votes, for 79.1% of the total but 85,422 fewer votes than White. As is always the case, the change was not distributed uniformly. Davis picked up more votes than White in some counties, and lost votes against his total in others. Here are the top 20 counties for net vote increase by Davis:


County       Davis  Davis%   White  White%      D-W
===================================================
TARRANT     38,560  94.02%  19,857  85.53%   18,703
DALLAS      59,649  92.43%  43,430  80.37%   16,219
TRAVIS      43,414  95.75%  34,426  90.17%    8,988
COLLIN       9,030  95.65%   5,023  82.75%    4,007
BEXAR       35,578  85.39%  32,126  76.25%    3,452
DENTON       6,757  95.45%   3,968  85.54%    2,789
VAL VERDE    2,899  51.87%   1,638  59.28%    1,261
LUBBOCK      3,191  81.30%   2,283  53.62%      908
ELLIS        1,897  91.55%   1,389  86.01%      508
WILLIAMSON   6,849  95.44%   6,383  89.98%      466
GREGG        1,744  89.30%   1,344  78.60%      400
ROBERTSON    1,195  74.73%     806  78.25%      389
MAVERICK     2,067  54.67%   1,714  31.33%      353
ROCKWALL       912  94.21%     590  82.06%      322
DIMMIT       1,060  48.47%     810  49.69%      250
COMAL        1,516  92.10%   1,369  87.98%      147
JEFF DAVIS     268  65.37%     137  74.86%      131
ECTOR          907  68.71%     780  59.05%      127
WILBARGER      351  69.09%     237  83.16%      114
PARKER       1,273  93.33%   1,163  88.85%      110

While Davis had a higher percentage of the vote than White in 15 of these 20 counties, the main driver of her gains was higher turnout in the given counties. In particular, there was higher turnout in her home county of Tarrant, which you’d hope would be the case, with contested primaries in SD10 and CD33 also helping. As discussed before, busy county elections in Bexar, Dallas, and Travis helped push those totals up. For those who have been freaking out about the South Texas results, I would like to point out the significant increases in Collin and Denton counties, neither of which had even a single contested local race on the Democratic Party ballot. Not only was Democratic turnout up in these counties from 2010 (6,770 to 9,441 votes in Collin, 4,639 to 7,079 in Denton), it was down in the Republican primary (56,934 to 44,621 in Collin, 42,261 to 37,657 in Denton). Of course there were still a lot more R votes in these counties than D votes, but the goal isn’t to win them in November it’s to cut into the margin. Maybe this is worthy of a fraction of the attention paid to Wendy Davis’ percentages in South Texas.

That’s as good a segue to the counties in which she lost votes compared to White as any. There were only a handful of gainers for her beyond those 20 above. Most of the ones in which she lost votes were small amounts, largely due to the overall turnout decline. Here are the bottom 20 for Davis, the counties in which she lost the most votes from White’s 2010 totals:


County       Davis  Davis%   White  White%      W-D
===================================================
LAMAR          522  87.44%   1,743  87.24%    1,221
MATAGORDA      975  74.37%   2,234  83.83%    1,259
ZAPATA         535  34.92%   1,803  56.40%    1,268
LIBERTY        501  88.99%   2,030  88.84%    1,529
HARDIN         423  87.58%   1,953  78.03%    1,530
NUECES       5,411  70.38%   6,954  65.66%    1,543
CASS           514  79.57%   2,170  82.32%    1,656
MONTGOMERY   2,345  93.80%   4,056  90.43%    1,711
HAYS         2,954  94.35%   4,733  85.03%    1,779
TRINITY        327  85.83%   2,176  83.31%    1,849
ANGELINA       789  86.99%   2,768  88.15%    1,979
BRAZORIA     2,601  91.62%   4,683  90.44%    2,082
ORANGE       1,141  85.40%   3,562  81.81%    2,421
BOWIE          260  86.67%   3,349  79.44%    3,089
JEFFERSON    9,322  87.75%  12,600  75.92%    3,278
GALVESTON    3,969  91.71%   7,398  89.55%    3,429
HIDALGO     16,994  47.34%  21,353  60.04%    4,359
WEBB        10,446  44.18%  15,732  56.82%    5,286
FORT BEND    7,745  92.97%  13,272  90.59%    5,527
HARRIS      47,372  92.17%  89,378  90.02%   42,006

Harris County accounts for almost one half of her decline all by itself, not surprising given that turnout overall in Harris was down by about half. Note that Davis did better in vote percentage in Harris, as was the case in the big counties where she gained. White had to campaign for his primary win, and he did what he needed to in terms of driving turnout in his own backyard. Fort Bend, Galveston, Montgomery, Liberty, Brazoria, even Angelina Counties would be part of that same effect. Jefferson and Orange are less Democratic and less populated than they were in 2010. Hays County had no contested local primaries; I can’t tell what else may have gone on in 2010 because their crappy county elections page has no past election results on it at this time, but according to the Secretary of State page, then-Rep. Patrick Rose had a primary challenger in 2010, so that probably helped drive some turnout. As for Webb and Hidlago, you already know the story there. Note as I said before that White didn’t exactly kill it in those counties, and overall turnout was the same in 2014 in Hidalgo as it was in 2010; it was down from 27K to 23K in Webb.

Anyway. You can make of these numbers what you will. I just like to have them all in front of me whenever possible.

Posted in Election 2014 | Tagged Bill White, Collin County, Democratic primary, Denton County, Election 2010, Election 2014, Governor, Harris County, Tarrant County, Texas, turnout, Wendy Davis | 1 Comment

What should we do about hurricane preparedness?

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Charles Kuffner

Or, to put the question another way: Ike Dike, Ike Floodgate, something else, or nothing?

In 2009, months after Hurricane Ike devastated the upper Texas coast, Texas A&M-Galveston professor William Merrell unveiled a multibillion-dollar plan – to much skepticism – dubbed the “Ike Dike.”

The proposal calls for extending Galveston’s seawall 15 miles to the island’s West End, building a similar barrier along Bolivar Peninsula and installing massive Dutch-like floodgates at the entrance to Galveston Bay.

Snubbed by some for its price tag – an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion – and potentially detrimental environmental impact, the still-evolving concept since has gained many adherents who believe it would protect coastal communities and refineries near the Houston Ship Channel.

Five-and-a-half years after Ike, though, the true feasibility of Merrell’s proposal remains unknown. The same goes for a competing plan devised by Rice University that would guard the Bayou City’s industrial base – the largest petrochemical complex in the country – by placing a 600- to 800-foot wall across the 52-mile Ship Channel near the Fred Hartman Bridge or Morgan’s Point. The architects of the so-called “Centennial Gate” say the $1.5 billion project is more environmentally friendly than the Ike Dike and cheap enough to be funded without having to ask for federal help, meaning it could be built quicker.

Which way to go? Figuring that out is the aim of a new $4 million study by a six-county coalition that will assess both proposals, gather data and determine what – if any – storm surge remedies should be pursued to protect the Houston area from future hurricanes.

[…]

In the years since Ike, a cadre of local leaders, elected officials and academics have come to the conclusion that some kind of protective measures need to be taken, for safety, economic or environmental reasons.

That, however, is where any consensus ends, said Galveston County Judge Mark Henry, chairman of the district.

“Doing nothing has been the option used for the last several thousand years,” he said. “We don’t think it’s the best option.”

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, re-appointed to the district’s board of directors last month, remains a skeptic.

Industry has not pushed for any kind of protective structure, the county’s top elected official said at a recent Houston Chronicle editorial board meeting. He expressed doubts the state could secure federal funding for such a project under the current administration, noting President Barack Obama never made a post-Ike visit to Texas.

“For many reasons, I am skeptical of both the ‘Ike Dike’ and ‘Centennial Gate,’ ” Emmett wrote in a white paper this year, in part because “no other area has chosen to build such protective structures.”

I’ve blogged about this stuff multiple times – see here, here, and here for the Ike Dike; here and here for the Ike Floodgate. I have no idea what the right answer is. As insurance policies go, these are pretty expensive. Not nearly as expensive as a devastating storm, of course, but it’s hard to gauge the odds of a storm hitting in just the right place to do that kind of damage. I’ll be interested to see what this study says, but I doubt we’ll be any closer to deciding on a course of action, much less acting on it.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged Ed Emmett, Gulf Coast Community and Protection District, Harris County, Houston, Houston Ship Channel, Hurricane Ike, Ike Dike, Ike Floodgate, Rice University, SSPEED, Texas | Comments Off

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