Interview with Richard Cantu

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Richard Cantu

I have one late-breaking interview for At Large #3 before I bring you some interviews for other items in this election. Richard Cantu is another familiar name, having been elected to serve on the HCDE Board of Trustees in 2018. cantu is a public service veteran, having worked in management and executive level positions at the City of Houston (Parks and Recreation Department and Mayor’s Office), and having served such roles as the Director of the Mayor’s Citizens’ Assistance Office and as the Deputy Executive Director of the East Aldine Management District. He has also been a program and community center director at BakerRipley and a lot more – just go read his bio for the highlights. I interviewed him for the 2018 Democratic primary for HCDE Trustee, which you can listen to here, and you can listen to this interview here:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat
Donnell Cooper
Twila Carter
Casey Curry
James Joseph
Mary Nan Huffman

This week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Loving County update

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The country’s smallest county has the biggest election contest lawsuits.

Most people can tell you where they live. But here in the least-populated county in the United States, “Where is your home?” can be a trick question laced with dark political meaning. And it has landed a significant percentage of the adult population of Loving County in court.

Again.

The sticking point is a political math brainteaser: While Loving County’s U.S. Census population runs around 65, it has approximately 110 registered voters. The inflated roll is due mainly to former residents who have moved away — in some cases decades ago — but who continue to claim the dusty community on the New Mexico border as home for voting purposes.

Some have what appear to be their primary residences just over the county line. Yet others inhabit well-established households hundreds of miles away. Several have little tie to the place other than marrying into longtime local families.

They “have a voter card,” Sheriff Chris Busse told NBC News. “But the only time you see them is when it’s time to vote or at the annual Christmas party.”

Those who’ve physically departed but electorally linger say they simply want to vote where their heart lies, and that they intend to return … someday. Yet to candidates on the losing end of elections, the practice can also look an awful lot like a clique of families threading a legal loophole to keep their kin in power. Over the years lawsuits alleging out-of-town voters skewed the outcome of a political race have been a regular occurrence.

The November 2022 election alone produced three challenges. Candidates for district clerk and county commissioner races came up short by 12 and 6 votes respectively. The unsuccessful justice of the peace candidate, Amber King, tied then lost by 2 votes in a runoff.

All quickly sued, claiming illegal voters had tilted the elections in favor of legacy families such as the powerful Jones clan. “The problem,” said Susan Hays, an attorney representing the losing candidates, “is the Jones family can’t find enough people to vote for them who actually live here. So they manufacture voters” from out-of-town family and friends.

[…]

For Hays, a West Texas native who last year run unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for agricultural commissioner, cataloguing the domestic lives of Loving County residents has become an arcane legal subspecialty — “not something I planned,” she said.

This is her second election challenge case here. The first, in 2007, reversed a county commissioner’s race and purged more than two dozen out-of-county voters, including several “residents” who’d been granted 2-acre “homes” on a candidate’s ranch just prior to the election.

Hays has compiled a detailed dossier on nearly every resident. She can construct multi-generational family trees from memory and knows not only where people live but also where their couches are placed and what their bed quilts look like. She is often aware of their health problems and finances, their alliances and gossip. She is aware it sounds creepy.

Since November she has been excavating the personal living arrangements of 26 Loving County voters who the losing 2022 candidates claim improperly cost them seats. She has amassed land records and deeds, interior and exterior photos of (allegedly) lightly used houses, as well as testimony from an electricity expert to describe what low kilowatt usage might suggest about whether a house is being used as a residence.

She has a map of Texas showing the not-so-close locations – Amarillo, Lubbock, Fort Worth — where her process-servers tracked down so-called Loving County residents who voted in Mentone. Almost all are extended members of three legacy clans. She pointed out that many claim as local addresses properties sold to them by, or still owned by the Jones family.

“What they all have in common is they claim residence in Loving County so they can vote in support of family,” she said, starting off the trial. “As if voting in the county were some landed gentry birthright.”

Each of the contested voters was hauled up to the witness stand and quizzed on how many days they spend in Mentone, if their trucks run, what medical care they need, where their church-home is, when that room was re-carpeted and that bedstand purchased.

Across the way (each day the courtroom divided up the middle by family, like an angry wedding), Davis and his legal team responded that, despite keeping houses elsewhere, the far-flung voters actually spend an electorally defensible amount of time in Mentone, the place they still recall in sepia tones and consider their true home.

There’s a whole lot more there, so read the rest. Our entry to the wild world of Loving County came via its (allegedly) cattle-rustlin’ County Judge, Skeet Jones, whose family is at the center of all this. That NBC News story, which I noted in passing in that last post of mine above, back when I was just fixated on the alleged cow-stealing, is a must read for some background on Loving County and its bizarre voter-to-population ratio.

Again, go read the whole thing, it’s an epic tale and I will once again invoke the “deserves a prestige podcast” designation. The root of all this is Texas’ notoriously vague and unenforceable residency laws, coupled with the fact that thanks to the recent oil boom, Loving County has way more money than it knows what to do with. (Item: Their Commissioners Court is considering the construction of a $9 million fire station, despite the fact that Loving County has all of two volunteer firefighters.) The trial documented in this story took longer than the Harris County election contest lawsuit; as with the latter, we await a ruling, which will likely be appealed. I feel like I should gather a dozen or so friends, declare our intent to move to Mentone, and see if we can register to vote in Loving. Who knows, maybe I can get elected County Judge.

Posted in Election 2022, Legal matters, The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Metro moves forward with its bike plan

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Really interested to see what this looks like.

Metro’s board of directors voted Thursday to negotiate a contract with a Canadian company to launch Houston’s second bike-share program, but left unclear how – or whether – the two bicycle rental operations might work together to provide a sustainable alternative to automobile transportation.

[…]

Metro’s board voted to authorize its staff to negotiate a three-year contract, with options for an additional two years, worth up to $10.5 million with Quebec-based PBSC Urban Solutions to develop and operate a new bike-share program.

Metro officials previously had offered no clear indication whether the agency would work with Houston Bike Share as it rolls out its program, beyond suggesting both operations could exist in some fashion. Thursday was no different.

[…]

Houston Bike Share Chairman Neeraj Tandon attended Thursday’s Metro board meeting, and offered his support for Metro’s plan. He also offered BCycle’s existing infrastructure and more than a decade of expertise helping get Metro’s plan off the ground.

“Houston Bike Share wants to phase out as Metro phases in,” Tandon said.

Houston’s chief transportation planner, David Fields, pointed out the two systems had different equipment and software. Still, he said, opportunities exist to use current bike-share infrastructure to build out the future of the service in the city.

“We’re certainly going to work with both systems, especially where connections to transit, which is Metro’s focus, would make the most sense,” FIelds said. Metro currently is working with a consultant to plan how its bike-share system will be rolled out.

BikeHouston Executive Director Joe Cutrufo said he was encouraged by the city council and the Metro board votes, calling the decisions “a clear statement on where Houston is on car-free mobility.”

“In order to make sure the Metro system is a success, there needs to be continuity and bike-share doesn’t go away at any point,” Cutrufo said. “Metro needs to coordinate with and learn from Houston Bike Share and their experience running bike-share for over a decade.”

See here and here for some background. Metro’s program should be up and running by the summer of 2024, and B-Cycle should still be operating by then. We’ll see how or if the two intersect. The Chron, which notes that Metro still has to determine where the kiosks will be, has more.

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Weekend link dump for October 1

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“[Clarence] Thomas has attended at least two Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a political network that has brought multiple cases before the Supreme Court.”

“Here’s a rule of thumb: If you have to market the meaning of survey results to make those results seem newsworthy, then they’re probably not.”

“If you fancy getting your hands on Bob Ross‘ first-ever TV painting, you’re in luck. Well, that’s if you have a cool $9.8 million to spare.”

“The upshot of all this is that Danish AI will likely have a strong bias toward horses and horse adjacent topics.”

“I think Donald Trump was the gateway drug that has drawn a lot of otherwise pretty standard Republicans to the Democratic Party over the last eight or nine years. And a Never Trump Republican in 2016, two or three cycles later, turns into a pretty conventional Democrat up and down the ballot.” It’s more nuanced than that, and a great read overall. And right here in Houston the old CD07 and HD134 are prime examples of these voters.

“A seven-year, 3.9-billion-mile journey ended Sunday when NASA landed a time capsule in the Utah desert. This capsule contained rocks and dust snatched from asteroid Bennu, a floating pile of rubble formed by remnants of the early solar system. Scientists believe the OSIRIS-REx mission collected half a pound of material, which makes it the largest asteroid sample ever brought back to Earth and the first through a U.S. mission.”

RIP, Terry Kirkman, frontman and co-founder of the 60s group the Association, best known for songs like “Windy”, “Cherish”, and “Along Comes Mary”.

The wingnuts are so mad about Travis Kelce, even before the whole thing with Taylor Swift. But the attention he’s gotten from that has made them so very, very mad.

Former MLBer Erik Pappas is my new sports hero.

RIP, David McCallum, veteran actor best known for The Man From U.N.C.L.E and NCIS.

“Once again, none of these stories is about drag queens.”

“Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer over accessing and sharing of his personal data”. Why is a public menace like Rudy Giuliani allowed to be out on the streets?

“The Supreme Court Just Rejected Alabama’s Attempt to Deny Representation to Black Voters. Again.”

RIP, Brooks Robinson, Hall of Fame third baseman and legendary defensive wizard for the Baltimore Orioles.

“A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved..”

“The agreement to finally end the 148-day-long Hollywood writers strike includes landmark rules governing the use of AI in Hollywood projects.”

“The mounting existential threats Trump faces fuel his escalating threats of violence, authoritarian crackdowns and extra-constitutional actions if he is returned to power.”

RIP, Michael Gambon, actor best known for playing Dumbledore in the last six Harry Potter movies.

Wishing Tim Wakefield all the best. And though it should go without saying, screw Curt Schilling.

RIP, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, groundbreaking politician.

“One of the last living witnesses to the fatal drive-by shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas was charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon Friday in the 1996 killing, a long-awaited breakthrough in a case that has frustrated investigators and fascinated the public ever since the hip-hop icon was gunned down 27 years ago.”

Netflix has officially shipped its last DVD.

“That brings us to today and Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was facing seven charges in the Fulton County case, including a RICO violation and conspiring to steal sensitive election data in Coffee County. This afternoon, with little advance notice, Hall pled guilty to five misdemeanors, will serve five years of probation, pay a $5,000 fine, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. It’s the sort of deal that is so beneficial to a defendant that it suggests prosecutors believe his cooperation is valuable enough to merit the bargain.”

“At every point this was about the House Republican caucus’s demand to get some new goodies in exchange for not shutting down the government. The only slight ambiguity there is that for some House hardliners the shutdown itself clearly was the goodie. For the House hardliners it was goodies or a shutdown. There was no getting out of that binary choice because Kevin McCarthy refused any solution that relied on Democratic votes. Then sometime [Saturday] he decided to allow a vote on a clean resolution relying on Democratic votes. It passed and that was it. That change was really all that happened.”

“Needless drama, posturing in place of governing, doing damage to institutions and norms for the sake of it. It’s old hat for Republicans now. It’s been tiresome for the rest of us for a long time.”

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 1 Comment

The young activists of today

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Keep track of these names, or better yet get to know them.

Olivia Julianna typed “#johnnyboywhitmire” into TikTok’s search bar. To her delight, her five videos critiquing Texas state senator and Houston mayoral hopeful John Whitmire had garnered a combined 350,000 views in a matter of months.

She clicked on one of her uploads.

“If you’re new here, and you’re wondering ‘Olivia, why are you so pressed about this Houston mayoral election,’ let me tell you why,” the 20-year-old activist influencer said in the clip. She then explained that the choice between the race’s two front-runners – Whitmire and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee – could help determine the future of Texas’ progressive movement.

This year’s mayoral race has thrust Houston’s emerging progressive voices into the political limelight. While both Jackson Lee and Whitmire have deep Democratic roots and boast endorsements from major liberal groups, the congresswoman is seen by many as the more progressive candidate, drawing support from young activists like Julianna.

Once on the sidelines, Houston’s progressive groups are gaining traction, experts and advocates say. However, they caution it may be years – if ever – before this segment of Houston voters can meaningfully influence city elections, where older and whiter residents traditionally dominate turnout.

“The city is definitely becoming more progressive and trending much more blue, but you haven’t seen our local politics manifest in the same way,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“Organizing in a big city like Houston is slow, and it means years of groundwork that may or may not pay off,” he added.

[…]

In recent years, new social justice groups have sprouted up in Houston, joining the ranks of established organizations like the Texas Organizing Project and the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation.

Driven primarily by left-leaning activists, these new groups aim to tackle a range of issues – from flood protection and environmental justice to racial equity and police reform. Ben Hirsch of West Street Recovery, a nonprofit focusing on community resilience, said these initiatives emerged because traditional solutions failed.

“These groups aren’t coming out of Marxist reading circles,” Hirsch said. “They came from being frustrated with the lived experience of being in Houston.”

West Street Recovery was founded during Hurricane Harvey when a group of friends, disheartened by the official disaster response, took to their inflatable kayaks to assist neighbors.

What began as a spontaneous act six years ago has now transformed into a professional nonprofit that has worked with over 400 volunteers to carry out home repairs and help residents prepare for future disasters.

There’s a lot more to this story, so go read the rest. We have spoken before about how Houston municipal elections are dominated by older voters. We have also talked about the significant increase in registered voters in Houston and how turnout in even-year elections has taken a step function up both locally and nationally. Some amount of that is driven by younger voters, who have been a significant bloc of support for more progressive Democratic candidates. All of this is to say that while past performance will strongly inform how one views this election, one should not be closed to the factors that could result in something different happening.

So while I believe we will see greater turnout, at least in absolute terms, than what we are used to seeing, thanks to the increase in registered voters, we could also see a boost in younger voters, and we could see a shift in support for candidates based on younger voters’ preferences. Or maybe we won’t, or maybe any changes will be too small to have any effect. We’ll know more soon enough. But even if we basically get the same old same old this election, that doesn’t undermine the premise of this story. Let’s not forget, every veteran political actor was once a young hotshot. Losing campaigns inform future efforts. Not every new face mentioned in this story will be a force in our politics in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time – some will move, some will change focus, some will change profession – but some of them will, and this election will be a part of their story, however the election turns out.

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From the “Idiots file dumb lawsuit” department

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I hesitate to give this any attention, but I feel it needs to be noted.

Judge Lina Hidalgo

Five people filed a lawsuit with Harris County District Court on Friday to remove Judge Lina Hidalgo from office, days before she is scheduled to return after two months of leave for inpatient mental health treatment.

The petition claims Hidalgo is not able to do her work as Harris County Judge because of health concerns. The lawsuit was filed by David B. Wilson, Thomas Andrew Thrash, Melinda M. Morris, Thomas A. Bazan and Tommy B. Slocum, Jr., which was first posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by the Texan reporter Holly Hansen. Under state law, a petition to remove a county official can be filed by anyone who “lives and has lived for at least six months” in that county.

“The petition is meritless and an absolute joke,” said Brandon Marshall, Harris County Judge’s Office spokesperson. “It repeatedly misspelled several words. Judge Hidalgo is looking forward to returning to the office on Monday.”

[…]

The petitioners claim Hidalgo is “unfit or unable to promptly and properly discharge her official duties because of serious physical or mental defect that did not exist at the time of the election.” Petitioners also claim Hidalgo’s absence from three consecutive meetings while on leave means that she has “abandoned the office.”

“Judge Hildalgo (sic) has abandoned the office of the Harris County Judge,” the petition states, claiming that she is “required to vote on agenda items.”

[…]

Operations have continued to run in Hidalgo’s absence, said Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who has filled in while she is on leave.

“The election deniers are at their losing ways again, doing everything in their power to undermine the will of the voters,” Ellis said Friday in a statement. “These are not serious people and should be treated accordingly.”

Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia called the petition “another dumb political stunt by election-denying Harris County MAGA extremists.”

“Legally this has a less-than-zero chance of success, starting with the fact that the petitioners cite a Texas Government Code Section that does not exist,” Garcia said in a statement Friday.

Yes, that’s once-again HCC Trustee Dave Wilson, whose decades-long track record of being a total shitheel remains untouched. I have better things to do on a Saturday than to look up the law in question and do a few minutes’ research to see how precedented an elected official missing an equivalent amount of time has happened in the past, and you have better things to do on a Sunday than to read about them. Suffice it to say that this is a toddler’s cry for attention from immature and dyspeptic people who have no useful function in society, and let’s get on with our lives.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Endorsement watch: For Letitia Plummer

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I guess we’re rolling these out one at a time, and in no particular order.

CM Letitia Plummer

When some politicians shift their positions on high-profile issues, they get tagged with the dreaded “flip-flopper” label. So when At-Large Position 4 Councilmember Letitia Plummer changed her mind — twice — on the city’s use of ShotSpotter technology in certain high-crime Houston neighborhoods, it may have looked to some like a lawmaker changing her tune on a controversial program just in time for reelection.

Plummer, though, explained to the editorial board recently that data drives a lot of her decision-making, even if it doesn’t always align neatly with her personal political views.

[…]

Plummer’s willingness to keep an open mind in a political climate where many elected leaders are content to operate in silos and echo chambers is a refreshing trait. She is both an independent advocate for the city and willing to be a check on the mayor. Plummer deserves a second term.

It’s difficult for council members to stand out in a city where the mayor has the final say on the agenda. But when Mayor Sylvester Turner put forth a proposal for a $5 million voluntary relocation fund for Fifth Ward residents living near a contaminated rail yard that may cause cancer, Plummer was the only councilmember willing to risk irking the mayor by “tagging” the vote and put it on hold for another week. Plummer said she wanted to make sure the affected community understood exactly what was at stake before she signed off on the plan.

Shortly after tagging the vote, Plummer met with Fifth Ward residents and advised them to be cautious about accepting buyouts. While she ultimately voted to approve the relocation fund, she is also advocating for the city to place radon testing and extraction devices inside Fifth Ward homes until the Environmental Protection Agency releases more test results on the contaminated soil next year.

“One thing I pride myself in is being an independent voice,” Plummer said. “Based on the science, (Fifth Ward) is not in immediate risk, but we do need to look at the homes.”

The open-minded stuff was about ShotSpotter, which certainly merited skepticism. You can listen to my interview with CM Plummer here. I like her just fine, I thought she brought good ideas to the table on police reform, and her three opponents are two nobodies and nostalgia act Roy Morales. I got a good laugh out of the Chron saying they were impressed by one of the nobodies saying that he would “pore over the city’s finances to find inefficiencies and waste”, which has to be one of the emptiest platitudes in politics. I’m sure he also enjoys long walks on the beach and spending time with his family. Anyway, listen to the interview and vote for CM Plummer.

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SCOTx rules whistleblowers’ lawsuit can proceed

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

A crook any way you look

The Texas Supreme Court has sided with former top deputies of Attorney General Ken Paxton and cleared the way for their whistleblower lawsuit to move forward.

The all-Republican Supreme Court on Friday rejected Paxton’s request to dismiss the lawsuit after the case had been on pause pending a possible settlement with the whistleblowers. The decisions came four days after the whistleblowers asked the court to reinstate the case — and about two weeks after Paxton was acquitted in his impeachment trial before the Texas Senate.

The lawsuit will return to a Travis County trial court.

“We are looking forward to obtaining a trial setting and to preparing this case for trial as soon as possible,” the whistleblowers’ lawyers said in a statement.

The Supreme Court provided no explanation for its decision Friday, noting only that Paxton’s petition for review was denied with Justice Evan Young not participating.

The case reached the Texas Supreme Court in early 2022, after a state appeals court and the trial judge rejected pretrial attempts by Paxton’s agency to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Texas Whistleblower Act protects state workers from retaliation by other employees for reporting potential crimes to law enforcement. Paxton has argued his agency acted properly because it has the right to fire employees “at will” and because the whistleblower law does not apply to Paxton because he is an elected official, not a “public employee.”

“Like the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and members of this Court, he is an elected officer, chosen by the people of Texas to exercise sovereign authority on their behalf,” Paxton’s office said in its petition for review to the Supreme Court.

A bit of history here: The whistleblowers filed their lawsuit in November 2020, shortly after the election. In March 2021, the Travis County district court rejected Paxton’s motion to dismiss, and in October 2021 the Third Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, which allowed the case to proceed. Paxton appealed that to the Supreme Court in January 2022, getting a boost from his buddies Greg Abbott and future impeachment trial judge Dan Patrick in April 2022. The settlement agreement was announced in February 2023, and as noted the whistleblowers went back to SCOTx to ask for a ruling on the appeal this past Monday. I think you’re familiar with what happened in between those last two events.

So now we go back to Travis County and have a trial on the merits of the complaint. I expect there will be a hearing in the next week or two to set a schedule, and we’ll go from there. If this does go all the way to a verdict – another settlement is always possible, of course – then it will be appealed, with SCOTx eventually getting to have the final word. As you know, I think Paxton’s defense is hogwash, but it’s not my opinion that matters. Someday, perhaps, another Legislature may get the question of whether or not to approve a budget item to pay for a judgment won by the whistleblowers. That’s far enough out and with enough complex variables in its path as to not be worth worrying about, but given how we got here I at least had to mention it. So settle in for another long courtroom battle with Ken Paxton as the main character. Someday, too, we will see the end of all this. The Chron, Reform Austin, and the Press have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

New criminal courts coming online

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Three new felony courts with a $9.2 million budget are expected to open next week, in what officials say is the final stretch in tackling a backlog of criminal cases that have piled up over the past six years.

The Legislature-approved courts — the 486th, 487th and the 488th District Court — will start their dockets Monday in the criminal courthouse to whittle down the number of felony cases that backed up after Hurricane Harvey and during the pandemic. The introduction of one other court at 1201 Franklin has helped reduce the pending cases to levels not seen since March 2020, when the pandemic shuttered the courts and forced proceedings to continue online or socially distanced. The jail population also increased during the pandemic.

To start, nearly 4,000 cases from the existing 23 felony courts will be picked at random and divided among the new dockets, said Amanda Cain, spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the District Courts.

The existing courts tackled an average of 1,460 cases in August — a 38% decrease since the pandemic’s peak in July 2021, county records show.

[…]

The number of pending cases began declining in July 2021, around when Harris County’s first new court in decades — the 482nd District Court — opened its doors. The new court was heralded as a step in reducing the backlog and an attempt to catch up with the county’s population growth since the creation of the 351st District Court in 1984, when an estimated 2,757,361 residents called Harris County home.

The U.S. Census Bureau counted 4,731,145 people in the county in 2020.

Judge Latosha Lewis Payne, administrative judge over the civil and criminal courts, expects the new courts to make a dent “immediately.”

“Harris County has experienced staggering growth over the last four decades,” Payne said in a statement. “Next week, the Harris County criminal district courts will be more able to address the needs of victims and the due process rights of defendants.”

The creation of the courts stem from House Bill 3474, which allowed for the creation of the courts and for the county spend millions to staff the new courts with prosecutors, coordinators, clerks, bailiffs and judges.

A cast of rotating jurists will handle the new courts until Gov. Greg Abbot announces who will temporarily oversee those benches, said Susan Brown, judge for the Eleventh Administrative Judicial Region of Texas.

A short-list of lawyers who may run for those new courts in 2024 is already making the rounds among courthouse insiders.

See here and here for some background. Getting three new courts will be very nice and should definitely have a positive effect, but we had been talking about getting six new courts. Maybe we can get some more in 2025. Like the story says, Harris County has grown a lot since the previous court was added in 1984.

I can also confirm that there is a lot of interest in those three new courts – probably a half dozen or so candidates showed up at the most recent Harris County Democratic Party’s CEC meeting to introduce themselves to the precinct chairs. All three eventual nominees will get to run against Greg Abbott-appointed incumbents, which is surely more appealing that primarying someone. You can look forward to the judicial Q&As for them after the filing deadline.

Posted in Crime and Punishment, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Sarah Stogner to run for RRC again

Posted on September 30, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

But not as a Republican. This could be interesting.

Sarah Stogner

Sarah Stogner announced Saturday at The Texas Tribune Festival that she is mounting her second campaign for the Texas Railroad Commission — this time, leaving the Republican Party to run as a third-party candidate.

Stogner, a 39-year-old oil and gas attorney, made headlines in 2022 with a campaign announcement video that featured her semi-nude on top of an oil pumpjack. Her underdog campaign picked up enough momentum — and a $2 million donation from a West Texas rancher — to propel Stogner into a Republican runoff with incumbent Wayne Christian.

Christian, who Stogner accused of corruption during the campaign, won that race with 65% of the vote. In the general election, Stogner endorsed Democratic nominee Luke Warford, who Christian defeated with more than 55% of the vote.

On Saturday Stogner said she plans to run under the banner of the Forward Party, a centrist political party co-founded by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Stogner is the first announced statewide candidate aligned with the party.

Corruption within the Texas GOP led her to join the Forward Party, Stogner said.

“I posted on social media about the acquittal of [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton. Since I called out the corruption, some people responded that I must be a Democrat,” Stogner said. “How sad is that? Like, there’s nothing conservative about corruption.”

New political parties need a certain number of qualified voters’ signatures to qualify for inclusion on a Texas ballot. If she makes the ballot, Stogner will challenge current Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick next fall. Members of the three-person commission serve staggered, six-year terms, the longest term of any statewide elected position.

See here for more about Stogner’s well-publicized primary campaign, and here for more about Stogner’s endorsement of Luke Warford. I have to admit, I’d forgotten that the Forward Party was still a thing. I just haven’t seen much news about it lately, and the last thing I remember seeing was some blathering about it by the unescapable Bill King.

We’ll see if Stogner, who I believe is well-intentioned, or anyone else that might want to carry the Forward Party banner is able to collect the signatures needed to get on the ballot. A recent federal court ruling may make it easier for them, though the Forward Party was not involved in that suit. On the one hand, the net effect of her getting onto the ballot may make it easier for the Democratic nominee to win, since Stogner may end up taking more votes that would have gone to incumbent Christie Craddick and thus lower the threshold needed to win, perhaps to under fifty percent. On the other hand, the Dems in these further downballot races have tended to lag the top of the ticket, with more voter dropoff and third-party voting being the culprits. That’s a branding problem, which might be lessened in a Presidential year context but which could certainly use an infusion of campaign cash and voter outreach to fight it off. I lean slightly towards this helping the Dem nominee, but it’s not a slam dunk by any means. Reform Austin has more.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sarah Stogner to run for RRC again

Interview with CM Mary Nan Huffman

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

CM Mary Nan Huffman

I had not planned to do an interview for District G this cycle – I only have so much time and capacity, and as of the July reporting deadline, incumbent CM Mary Nan Huffman did not have an opponent. And then tank owner and Paxton defender Tony Buzbee declared his candidacy, and that made me want to get to know the incumbent better. Huffman won a special election in January 2022 to replace Greg Travis, who stepped down for an unsuccessful run for the Legislature; I need to double-check, but I believe this means that CM Huffman could run again in 2027 if she wins this November. Huffman is a former Montgomery County prosecutor who serves as an attorney for the Houston Police Officers Union, and she was the Republican candidate for Harris County District Attorney in 2020. Like many Houstonians, she and her family were flooded out by Hurricane Harvey. Here’s the interview:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat
Donnell Cooper
Twila Carter
Casey Curry
James Joseph

This week was mostly about At Large #3. Next week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things (and there will be one more At Large #3 interview) before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Cruise cars are out on our streets

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

From Axios.

A driverless Cruise car sits in traffic on Austin Street in downtown Houston on Friday, Sept. 22, 2023. Photo: Jay R. Jordan/Axios

Cruise is testing autonomous vehicles without safety drivers in Houston ahead of a planned expansion into commercial nighttime service by the end of the year.

Driving the news: A spokesperson for the autonomous vehicle company confirmed to Axios Tuesday it is offering driverless ride-hailing service to employees and their friends and family, one of the final steps in its testing process before full commercial service.

The company had not previously publicly announced this driver-free phase of testing.

Why it matters: Like other cities with driverless Cruise vehicles, including Austin, Houston is already seeing traffic issues arise as a result.

For example: Several unoccupied Cruise vehicles disrupted traffic when they stopped at the Montrose Boulevard and Hawthorne Street intersection around 8pm Tuesday after a traffic light malfunctioned.

Houston police responded to the scene and directed traffic around the cars. A witness told Axios that officers on the scene tried tapping on the Cruise car’s window to get it to move, to no avail.

What they’re saying: “Our vehicles were stopped at an intersection where the lights were not cycling and showed all red,” a Cruise spokesperson told Axios in a statement.

“While some vehicles took a little time to safely navigate the intersection, all vehicles were able to clear the intersection autonomously. Safety is embedded in everything we do, and our vehicles are designed to adhere to traffic signals and follow rules of the road.”

[…]

“I don’t think this is much compared to the recent Austin incidents,” Simon Newton, a neighbor who witnessed Tuesday’s Montrose incident, tells Axios. “But not a good start.”

In Austin, residents and first responders have reported a Cruise car rolling into a building, as well as vehicles bumping into parked cars and causing traffic delays.

See here and here for more on Cruise in Houston, and here and here for more on how things have gone so far in other cities. The Chron adds a bit of detail.

As of Wednesday morning, autonomous Cruise cars in Montrose could be seen ferrying passengers along Westheimer Road. A General Motors subsidiary, the company began offering a rider wait list for prospective Houston passengers back in May, and is currently using employee riders and “select Friends and Family” to test its fleet in the area. For locals like Newton, the prospect of a prolific driverless car network in the area carries as much allure as it does uncertainty.

“I think drunk driving is a big problem,” Newton said. “I think there’s a future where driver-less stuff helps. But I’m also concerned that we’re part of an experiment. I don’t know if this stuff is ready for prime time yet.”

We are definitely part of an experiment. I don’t recall seeing any indication of when Cruise was planning to launch in Houston, but whatever it was supposed to be it’s here now. Keep your eyes open out there.

On a completely unrelated note, every time I see a story about Cruise, I get this David Gilmour song in my head:

This is not a bad thing, I like the song, it just has nothing to do with driverless cars. Draw your own conclusions about what it says about my state of mind.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Endorsement watch: For the hospital bond

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good call.

It’s unacceptable for a public hospital whose mission is to save lives to instead endanger them due to aging infrastructure that’s been neglected for too long.

The pipe break was the second of three in 2020. Just weeks before, hallways in the second-floor obstetric triage and ultrasound unit turned into streams 2-3 inches deep. Stairwells became waterfalls. Without enough isolation valves to stop the water flow in sections where the pipes had burst, the entire hospital’s water lines came to a standstill. The series of internal disasters left behind yawning ceilings, ruined equipment and peeling walls.

It took nearly two years and $13 million for the hospital to fully recover, even as it juggled routine staffing and capacity shortages that became particularly acute during the pandemic. Even now, on the screens at a command center in LBJ, the stats for LBJ and its sister hospital, Ben Taub, are stark: on a relatively calm Friday afternoon, the needle on the occupancy gauge for both was already all the way to the right — at 98 and 97%.

Plans for an expansion have been in the works for years and in the upcoming election, voters will be asked to fund them.

We think the ask is not only fair but overdue.

LBJ operates “virtually at the seams,” Dr. Kimberly Monday, associate professor of neurology at UTHealth Houston’s McGovern Medical School and former chair of the Harris Health board, said in a public comment recently. “And Ben Taub is not much better.”

Harris Health System runs more than 30 clinics and ambulatory care centers as well as LBJ and Ben Taub. In a city where nearly 1 in 4 people are uninsured, the two safety-net hospitals are critical. Each year, the system provides more than $2 billion worth of health care to nearly 300,000 unique patients, and it has earned national recognition for its treatment of stroke and trauma, as well as for its preventive care “food farmacies.”

Harris Health has long planned to expand services to accommodate the county’s growing population, which has doubled in size since LBJ and Ben Taub opened in their current locations three decades ago. However, the system’s budget is limited by its reliance on property taxes and Medicaid reimbursements.

Last year, after a bitterly partisan budget impasse in Commissioners Court led the county to default to a no new revenue rate, Harris Health was forced to scrap plans for an expansion and make drastic cuts just to maintain its operation, with a projected $43 million deficit. Though the system has so far gotten by without running a deficit, Harris Health CEO and President Esmaeil Porsa told the Chronicle he’s not optimistic it will stay that way.

A $2.5 billion bond on your ballot this November would help Harris Health make much-needed improvements. The majority of the money — $1.6 billion — would go toward building a new LBJ hospital with a Level I trauma center, which provides the most comprehensive care for injuries, near the existing LBJ north of Kashmere Gardens. That would make it the county’s third Level I adult trauma center and the first outside of the Texas Medical Center.

According to Porsa, the need for trauma care in that northeast corridor is high, as the existing LBJ hospital is currently the busiest Level III trauma center in the state, with over 80,000 annual patient visits.

The new building would expand the number of inpatient beds in that area from 215 to 390, with room to add another 60, and allow for the beds to be used for interchangeable needs. It would also add capacity for patients under observation, and include a helicopter landing pad. That extra capacity will help accommodate patients from the existing LBJ so the hospital can undergo $433 million in renovations and expand inpatient and outpatient care, including psychiatric services, which it currently isn’t able to provide. That’s despite mental health care being the primary need of many repeat patients who show up for emergency care.

See here for some background, and take a minute to once again shake your fist at the one current and one former Republican Commissioner that forced all these problems to linger for their personal political goals. I don’t have anything to add to this but I will have an interview for you next week to discuss this issue in more depth.

On another matter, the Chron counsels a No vote on State Proposition 1.

The Legislature stepped in this year with some new laws to make it harder for local jurisdictions to infringe on certain agricultural practices or for property owners to mount nuisance complaints against producers.

Many agricultural groups supported the changes, including the cattle association and the Texas Farm Bureau. Others were concerned the bills went too far.

Here in Houston, Plant It Forward Farms shows that it’s possible for agriculture and urban living to coexist: “We have not experienced any sort of issues with the city of Houston,” said Liz Vallette, president of the urban farming group that works with independent growers and helps refugees establish their own farming businesses. Occasionally, she said, a management district might complain about the piles of compost material stashed in trash bags, but that’s a quick fix.

Houston is notoriously low regulation in many areas, of course, and other cities might not be as accommodating.

“There is a need to rein in cities, there is no question about that,” Judith McGeary said during a Senate committee hearing. But, the attorney and farmer with the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance pointed out, “It’s important to recognize how strong the Right to Farm law already is.”

How strong? Consider Ehler v. LVDVD, filed in 2003. The Ehlers of El Paso County sued their next-door neighbors, a dairy farm that, during heavy rain, flooded their property with manure. But because the dairy operation had existed for at least one year, the court sided with the farm.

The recent statutory changes helped firm up that legal precedent, as well as upping the burden of proof for cases not covered by the Right to Farm statute first passed in 1981.

The rub, though, is that laws can easily be undone. So, voters will be asked in November to give the Right to Farm laws extra protection by enshrining them in the Texas Constitution. The new language would protect a broad array of operations, including timber, horticulture and wildlife management as well as ranching and farming. The amendment still ensures the state can protect animals and crops from danger. But while the amendment doesn’t preclude regulation, it does specify that those regulations have to meet a relatively high legal threshold: “clear and convincing evidence” that they protect the public from “imminent danger.”

We think that’s a step too far. Balancing the needs of a state as big as Texas is a complicated endeavor. We agree that agriculture is essential to our state, not just economically but because we all eat.

But what’s best for cities and farmers today might not be best in 50 years. What’s the point in tying future leaders’ hands with a constitutional amendment that can be changed only by a vote of at least two-thirds of each chamber and voter approval of a subsequent ballot measure.

I seem to recall making a similar argument about the Double Secret Illegal anti-same sex marriage amendment of 2005. That one eventually got undone by other means, which I doubt would be an issue for the right to farm. Anyway, see here for more on the state propositions, and make note of this one.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Dispatches from Dallas, September 29 edition

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

This is a weekly feature produced by my friend Ginger. Let us know what you think.

This week, in news from Dallas-Fort Worth, the mayor of Dallas has jumped parties, quelle surprise. Also, some local follow-up on the Paxton impeachment, an actual report on the Dallas ransomware attack from this spring, a local media lawsuit ends up settled (thanks Biden! no, really), Dallas wins a DARPA-H hub, education news, public transit news, Operation Kindness and #EmptyTheShelters in October, Deep Ellum anniversary exhibits, Lorenzo the tortoise goes home safely, and more.

This week’s post was brought to you by the music of Depeche Mode, whom I will be seeing on Sunday. They still put on an excellent show and I commend their tour to you if you can get tickets.

In a move that surprised absolutely nobody who’s been paying attention, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he was switching parties and becoming a Republican in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (Local coverage: DMN; Observer; Dallas Free Press; plus Star-Telegram opinion; Texas Tribune; Texas Public Radio). You can read all those or you can decide there’s too much there and either celebrate that Dallas now has a Republican mayor or, well, not mourn but acknowledge the truth of the oft-quoted Rep. John Bryant tweet: “Switching parties? I didn’t know he was a Democrat.”

As Rep. Bryant notes, it’s not like Johnson has been acting like a Democrat for a while. Despite having spent time as a Democrat in the state House, he’s definitely been on the conservative end of Dallas politics for a while. His recent mayoral campaign (more on that later) was tilted toward the Park Cities/north Dallas crowd. He’s been at odds with liberal members of the city council, he couldn’t get the city manager fired, and he lost the recent battle over the city budget. As Gromer Jeffers, the DMN’s local politics writer, points out, Johnson is betting on the resurgence of Republicans motivated by money rather than culture wars by the time he leaves office in 2027 and is ready to run for higher office in 2028.

I’ll tell you upfront that you can take this to the bank for the subscription fees you paid our host, but I don’t understand this bet. Maybe he’s been hanging out so much in the Park Cities that he believes their BS, but there’s not a lot of room for Dallas-style Republicans in politics right now and that won’t change between now and 2027. The MAGA types control the primaries. Sure, Republicans have been eating their own for years now, and with Ken Paxton’s acquittal, the infighting is only going to get more vicious. Where that leaves room for Johnson in a statewide primary when Joe Straus is staying home is beyond me. If I saw a path forward for Johnson, it would be a Dallas-area House seat, but which one? Is he thinking he can take CD 32 back from whoever succeeds Colin Allred? Or is he thinking he can pry Jasmine Crockett out of CD 30? Or Marc Veasey out of CD 33? With the state of the gerrymandered Congressional districts he’ll have a hard time unseating a Democratic incumbent; beating an incumbent in a Republican primary looks impossible.

Leaving politics with Mayor of Dallas as your highest office is hardly shameful. Maybe he just plans to write a book and go on the rubber chicken/well-done steak-with-ketchup talk circuit, or take some of that sweet think-tank and lobby money. Or maybe he wants to sit on a bunch of boards that wouldn’t have him as a Democrat. That sounds more realistic than betting your career on a post-MAGA return of business Republicans in 2028 when we don’t know how 2024 is going to turn out.

Speaking of that mayoral job: the local Democratic Party is testing the water for a recall with a web petition for him to resign. Full disclosure: I signed it because I’m curious to see what action items they’ll send me. The Dems aren’t pushing for an actual recall, probably because the bar for signatures to start a recall is high (15% of eligible voters in the last election). I haven’t investigated the web site someone put up so I can’t say who’s behind it, but it’s not that hard to buy a URL, slap up some graphics, and make an Instagram account.

Realistically, we’re stuck with Johnson for another three years. He’ll be the same lousy mayor he’s always been when he actually shows up. He’ll just have an R after his name instead of a D along with the Ls.

In other news:

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Interview with James Joseph

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

James Joseph

One more interview in At Large #3, then I’ll have a bonus interview for you tomorrow. Today we speak with James Joseph, a native Houstonian, Fifth Ward resident, and newly minted PhD. A public relations consultant with a long background in community organizing, Joseph was a candidate for At Large #4 in 2019. There’s not a lot more biographical information about him on his website, so here’s his LinkedIn page, and I’m going to go to the interview from here. Here it is:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat
Donnell Cooper
Twila Carter
Casey Curry

This week is mostly about At Large #3, and next week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Interview with James Joseph

Two book ban updates

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Bad news.

A state law banning “sexually explicit” books from Texas schools will now go into effect, after an appeals court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling.

The three-judge panel did not offer any reasoning. Their decision is temporary until the full court can hear and decide on the merits of the case, which is likely to happen next month.

[…]

A panel of three judges, two of whom were appointed by former President George Bush and one of whom was appointed last year by President Joe Biden, ordered an administrative stay of the previous order, effectively allowing the book-rating law to go into effect.

If stores are found to be out of compliance they could be barred from doing business with schools, which smaller, independent stores have said would highly damaging. Bookstores around the state have also warned that a requirement in the bill for stores to retroactively analyze all books they’ve sold to schools by next spring is not workable.

See here for the previous entry. Law Dork was on this on Monday. The Fifth Circuit’s gonna do what the Fifth Circuit’s gonna do, and that’s just how it is.

Good news, via the best headline I’ve seen in awhile: “Butts allowed back in Katy ISD library books after board clarifies book banning policy”.

After an unprecedented round of book banning in Katy ISD led to the removal of several elementary library books depicting cartoon rear ends, the board of trustees on Monday scaled back the conditions under which a book may be banned.

The board unanimously approved a new update to the policy that in August was changed to add “nudity” as a reason for removal. Prior to the August change, elementary level books had never been banned in district history.

The district has now amended the policy to clarify that only “explicit frontal nudity” is grounds for a book’s removal.

[…]

The Monday revision was requested by board members Dawn Champagne and Rebecca Fox, both of whom initially voted in support of the policy.

While the district has yet to comment on why the new books were banned, many of the books, including David Shannon’s award-winning children’s book, “No David!” contain an image of a cartoon buttocks.

“The board’s intent was never to remove well-known cartoon-like children’s books just because they showed a little drawing of a little boy’s rear-end,” said board president Victor Perez.

Perez previously said the 14 newly banned books were removed by a committee, not the board.

Champagne stated that she did not think it was fair to hold librarians responsible for the book removals.

“I don’t blame the librarians for following the new policy the way that it was written about nudity and implied nudity, which obviously led to some of our most beloved children’s books to be removed,” Champagne said. “I’m also personally sorry that I did not pay better attention to the implications of the wording in the policy that we voted on a couple of months ago.”

See here for the background. I’m equally impressed by Victor Lopez’s blame-shifting and Dawn Champagne’s willingness to own the problem. Now let’s see if any of the libraries that felt compelled to pull those books are willing to restock them.

Posted in Books, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Two book ban updates

City Council approves B-Cycle lifeline

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

I approve of this as a stopgap, but a real plan needs to be in place.

Houston’s floundering bike sharing system has a little more life, after city officials approved $500,000 to keep the system operational, at least until a new system for checking out bicycles is in place.

“There are a lot of people who use the service and we don’t want them to lose the service,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said.

City Council approved the money Wednesday from Houston’s general fund, aimed at giving the nonprofit Houston Bike Share a few more months of funding to keep roughly 60 kiosks and the bikes held there operational. Houston’s planning department will work with the nonprofit to decide how the money will be spent and formalize an agreement with the nonprofit.

Four council members – Mike Knox, Michael Kubosh, Amy Peck and Mary Nan Huffman – opposed committing the money.

“In my view we are investing in a failing corporation,” Knox said.

[…]

Turner said a portion of the agreement will be the nonprofit and planning department discussing next steps, especially related to the 90 stations now inoperable around the city and how best to “decommission,” stations if necessary.

For now, officials are balancing how to keep some bikes available while holding out hope some locations can be salvaged in some way.

“I don’t want to give up on the idea of a corporate sponsor for these,” Councilwoman Sallie Alcorn said, while conceding the closed, plastic-wrapped stations pose a challenge.

“They are kind of a sad statement,” she said.

See here and here for more on the state of B-Cycle. As noted in the story, Metro will be introducing its bike share program, which could eventually intersect with whatever B-Cycle still is, if it makes it that long. I do approve of the city’s actions here, but it can’t do this on its own. I hope there are other options out there. We have a limited amount of time to find out.

Also, I disagree with CM Knox. By any reasonable metric, B-Cycle wasn’t a failure – there was plenty of demand for their services. That demand exceeded their ability to provide and fund those services, which is a bad thing to happen but not an indicator of failure. I suspect that in a slightly different economic climate, there would not be any trouble finding sponsors. The question is whether this injection can buy them enough time to do that.

On that score, Houston Landing adds some detail.

In all, City Council approved $540,430 – $500,000 from the city’s general fund and $40,430 from council members Abbie Kamin and Robert Gallegos for stations in their respective districts. It should be enough to keep the existing network operating for about a year, [Houston Bike Share Chairman Neeraj] Tandon said this week. Houston BCycle’s network has shrunk in the past 12 months, from more than 150 stations to around 60. Houston Bike Share has shed staffing and increased prices to keep the program operational.

“We will work out the terms, and I will assign this to Margaret Wallace Brown, the director of planning, to negotiate with planning on the best way to stand up these 60 stations that currently exist as Metro works to stand up its own program,” Turner said Wednesday.

[…]

“I think (Metro’s) plan is great,” Tandon said. “It’s a plan that we were looking at doing if only we had the ability to ask for $10 million and have someone vote on it the next week.”

During Metro’s presentation, officials mentioned Houston BCycle, but showed little interest in folding in the existing operations into the agency’s plan, saying it would cost millions to update and repair its equipment.

As a result, Houston could be set up to have two separate bike-share programs with no interconnectivity.

Tandon said the rollout of Metro’s bike-share system could be beneficial to Houston Bike Share if planned correctly. He defined success by the amount of bike-share coverage the city has, and he sees opportunities to share the work that already has been done.

One idea is to hand off some of BCycle’s existing sites to Metro. Houston BCycle has more than 100 stations near Metro transit stations and stops.

Depending on Metro’s plan, Tandon said BCycle could hand off 20 stations a year, matching the agency’s yearly expansion plan.

He said he would like to see Houston Bike Share and Houston BCycle’s staff folded into Metro’s operation, providing expertise and keeping local jobs in the Second Ward.

“Yes, it’s feasible,” Tandon said, while admitting, “It’s going to take a level of communication we haven’t seen yet.”

A year should be plenty of time to either get B-Cycle set up on better footing or smoothly transition it to its end state, whether as part of Metro’s network or being shut down. Now I’m really looking forward to seeing what Metro produces.

Posted in Local politics, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on City Council approves B-Cycle lifeline

Texas blog roundup for the week of September 25

Posted on September 28, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance is rooting for as much Republican division post-impeachment as possible as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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Interview with Casey Curry

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Casey Curry

Moving on in At Large #3, we come to another candidate with an interesting former job, longtime TV meteorologist Casey Curry. After a decade of weather reporting on the local news, Curry is now working in philanthropy and communications. She serves on the board of directors of the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce, volunteers with The Women’s Fund for Health Education and Resiliency, and is a fixture in the local animal rescue community. Here’s the interview:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat
Donnell Cooper
Twila Carter

This week is mostly about At Large #3, and next week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Drag ban officially ruled unconstitutional

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

Obviously a pervert

Texas cannot enforce a new law that restricts some public drag shows, a federal judge said Tuesday in declaring the legislation unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner found Senate Bill 12 “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech.” The struck-down law prohibited any performers from dancing suggestively or wearing certain prosthetics in front of children.

Hittner ruled that language discriminated based on viewpoint and is unconstitutionally overbroad and vague.

“The Court sees no way to read the provisions of SB 12 without concluding that a large amount of constitutionally-protected conduct can and will be wrapped up in the enforcement of SB 12,” the ruling reads. “It is not unreasonable to read SB 12 and conclude that activities such as cheerleading, dancing, live theater, and other common public occurrences could possibly become a civil or criminal violation.”

While SB 12 was originally billed as legislation that would prevent children from seeing drag shows, the final version did not directly reference people dressing as the opposite gender.

However, Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott made it clear that drag shows were the bill’s target — comments and history that Hittner wrote “the court cannot ignore.”

See here, here, and here for the background. I didn’t see a link to the ruling but I’m sure one can find it. I assume this will be appealed, and that will give the Fifth Circuit the opportunity to choose violence, but that’s a concern for another day. Given the number of state laws that are currently being challenged in the courts, plus the unhinged feral wilding of district court judges like Matthew Kacsmaryk, it seems inevitable that this question will eventually land before SCOTUS. Hold onto your hats until then. Houston Landing and the Austin Chronicle have more.

UPDATE: Here’s the opinion, via Law Dork doing his usual deep dive.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Lots of people will not get that latest COVID shot

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Sadly not a big surprise. We could move this at the margins, but not as long as any part of government is in Republican control.

Pfizer via AP

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends new covid-19 booster vaccines for all — but many who need them most won’t get them. About 75% of people in the United States appear to have skipped last year’s bivalent booster, and nothing suggests uptake will be better this time around.

“Urging people to get boosters has really only worked for Democrats, college graduates, and people making over $90,000 a year,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at Yale University. “Those are the same people who will get this booster because it’s not like we’re doing anything differently to confront the inequities in place.”

As the effects of vaccines offered in 2021 have diminished over time, boosters have been shown to strongly protect people against severe covid and death, and more modestly prevent infection. They can have a dramatic impact on those most likely to die from covid, such as older adults and immunocompromised people. Public health experts say re-upping vaccination is also important for those in group housing, like prisons and nursing homes, where the virus can move swiftly between people in close quarters. A boost in protection is also needed to offset the persistent disparities in the toll of covid between racial and ethnic groups.

However, the intensive outreach efforts that successfully led to decent vaccination rates in 2021 have largely ended, along with mandates and the urgency of the moment. Data now suggests that the people getting booster doses are often not those most at risk, which means the toll of covid in the U.S. may not be dramatically reduced by this round of vaccines. Hospitalizations and deaths due to covid have risen in recent weeks, and covid remains a leading cause of death, with roughly 7,300 people dying of the disease in the past three months.

Tyler Winkelman, a health services researcher at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, said outreach of the intensity of 2021 is needed again. Back then, throngs of people were hired to tailor communication and education to various communities, and to administer vaccines in churches, homeless encampments, and stadiums. “We can still save lives if we are thoughtful about how we roll out the vaccines.”

Complicating matters, this is the first round of covid vaccines not fully covered by the federal government. Private and public health insurers will get them to members at no cost, but the situation for some 25 million-30 million uninsured adults — predominantly low-income people and people of color — is in flux. On Sept. 14, the CDC announced a kickoff of plans to temporarily provide vaccines for the uninsured, at least partly through $1.1 billion left over in pandemic emergency funds through the Bridge Access Program.

See here for some background. Cost is definitely an issue for many people, and there just won’t be the rollout of boosters in places like nursing homes and jails like there should be. Doing those things would require an appropriation of funds from the federal government, and I think we all know what that will mean. Some local and state governments can fill in some of the gap. The rest of us are on our own. And I would be extremely remiss if I didn’t mention that a lot of Republicans will not get the next COVID shot because a lot of Republican politicians are lying about COVID vaccinations for gross political reasons. Like I said, we are on our own. Get your shots and get your loved ones to get them. Wear a mask in indoor spaces as needed, too. And get a flu shot while you’re at it, flu season isn’t looking great either.

Posted in National news, Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Interview with Twila Carter

Posted on September 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Twila Carter

Continuing on with At Large #3, today we meet Twila Carter, who among other things has had one of the best jobs of anyone I’ve interviewed: For over a decade, she served as Senior Vice President of Community Relations of the Houston Astros and Executive Director of the Astros Foundation, raising over $60 million in that time for various causes. Carter has served as Vice Chair for the Texas Council on Family Violence and Family Time Crisis and Counseling Center and on the board of Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse. She also serves on the Advisory Board for the Houston Area Women’s Center. I will admit that I started by asking her about the Astros Foundation gig in the interview:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat
Donnell Cooper

This week is mostly about At Large #3, and next week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

The whistleblowers say they aren’t going away

Posted on September 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Glad to hear it.

A crook any way you look

In a Monday filing to the Texas Supreme Court, the whistleblowers [Blake Brickman, David Maxwell, Mark Penley and Ryan Vassar] argued that Paxton has failed to uphold key parts of the settlement agreement, including the $3.3 million payment and a promise to apologize for calling them “rogue employees” after they were fired. Thus, they argued, the court should lift an abatement that was put in place during mediation, and return the case to the court’s active docket.

Doing so, they said at a Monday press conference, would allow them to do what the House impeachment managers could not — including examining financial documents and putting Paxton, Paul, Paxton’s girlfriend Laura Olson and Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton under oath.

And they vowed that their trial would be free of the political influence that they said affected the outcome of Paxton’s trial in the Texas Senate. In a shot at Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Brickman said their lawsuit wouldn’t feature a judge who received $3 million from pro-Paxton groups ahead of the trial.

Brickman also called Paxton’s claim that he was the victim of a political witch hunt “ludicrous,” noting that he was reported by sterling conservatives to the FBI while it was under former President Donald Trump.

At a Monday press conference, the whistleblowers also denied claims that they, rather than Paxton, were the ones who sought to settle the lawsuit last year. In a Monday letter that was sent to Texas Senators and provided to reporters, a lawyer for one of the whistleblowers pushed back on those claims and provided a timeline that he said directly refutes “misinformation” from Patrick and others about who initiated the settlement talks.

“The fact is that [the Office of the Attorney General] initiated discussions that led to the abatement and the Attorney General’s request for funding, “ wrote Joseph Knight, who represents Vassar.

As I said at the time the settlement agreement was first announced, before all of the madness that was subsequently unleashed, it was a shame this one would not go to trial because there was surely a lot of dirt to be had by it. Maybe now we’ll finally get that, in a not-biased courtroom and without Paxton and others being able to hide behind Dan Patrick. I can dream, can’t I?

Whatever does or doesn’t happen in a future courtroom, I’ll say the same thing to these gentlemen that I said to Republican members of the House after Dan Patrick spat on them: You absolutely must, vocally and consistently and unabashedly, support not just the next Republican opponent to Ken Paxton, but the Democratic opponent as well, since we all know he’ll skate through the primary. Anything less is craven surrender. You guys aren’t that. Beat him in court, and then do everything you can and everything you must to beat him at the ballot box. The Chron has more.

Posted in Legal matters, Scandalized! | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Endorsement watch: Picking someone in District E

Posted on September 26, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

The Chron makes their first candidate endorsement for November 2023.

Houston City Council races are officially nonpartisan, but since just about everything seems partisan these days, let’s go ahead and say it: District E, the bizarrely shaped district that conjoins suburban Kingwood in the north and suburban Clear Lake in the south, appears made to elect a Republican. So it’s not surprising that both candidates for the open seat have solid Republican credentials.

Our choice is Martina Lemond Dixon, 53, currently a member of Humble ISD’s school board. If her name rings a bell, it might be because we at the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board endorsed her in the 2022 primary, when a crowded field of Republicans vied to run for county judge against Democratic incumbent Lina Hidalgo. Then, as now, we are impressed by Dixon’s commitment to service and drive to improve her community: She told the editorial board during our candidate screening that she went for a district seat, rather than an at-large seat representing the whole city, because she wanted to be the first person constituents call with problems. And surely they will.

Dixon is also board chairman of the Harris County Appraisal District — but asks that you don’t hold that against her. A year ago, Gov. Greg Abbott appointed her to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

Her priorities are public safety, fiscal responsibility and, as a homeowner who sustained severe damage during Harvey, flooding infrastructure.

[…]

Both Dixon and her worthy opponent, Kingwood Tea Party stalwart Fred Flickinger say they’d model themselves less on hell-raising Republican at-large member Michael Kubosh, and more on the current Republican representative of District E, the pragmatic, constituent-serving Dave Martin. We applaud their role model.

Flickinger, 60, who helps lead his family’s hydraulic equipment company, seems to view problems (and solutions) through more of a partisan lens than Dixon, and we worry he’d function more as an obstructionist rather than a constructive coalition builder.

A vote for Dixon is a vote for a government where Democrats and Republicans can work together to improve citizens’ lives. Houston needs that. And so does the rest of America.

Let’s maybe not put that much weight on one Council race. The first link in the endorsement is to an overview of the race if you want to know more about these two candidates. (There was a third candidate initially, but the new district lines had drawn her out of E, so that candidacy ended.) I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I do get press releases from Paul Bettencourt’s office about Fred Flickinger, so draw your own conclusions.

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Interview with Donnell Cooper

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Donnell Cooper

The last open At Large seat is At Large #3, which also has the biggest field of nine candidates. I have interviews with four of them this week, beginning with Donnell Cooper. Cooper is a Houston Community College Acres Homes campus manager and adjunct professor who won a Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award for his many hours of volunteerism in the community. He serves as president for The Greater Houston Frontiers Club, a national nonprofit organization that has provided more than $2 million in local scholarships to students in Harris County and works to increase HCC scholarships through the college’s Black History Committee. Here’s what we talked about:

PREVIOUSLY:
Kathy Blueford-Daniels
Dani Hernandez
Judith Cruz
Plácido Gómez
Mario Castillo
Cynthia Reyes-Revilla
Joaquin Martinez
Tarsha Jackson
Leah Wolfthal
Melanie Miles
Abbie Kamin
Sallie Alcorn
Letitia Plummer
Nick Hellyar
Obes Nwabara
Danielle Bess
Holly Vilaseca
Marina Coryat

This week is mostly about At Large #3, and next week we will get into a couple of propositions and other things before we move on to Controller and Mayor. The Erik Manning spreadsheet is here. My previous posts about the 2023 HISD election are here and here. My posts about the July campaign finance reports for City Council candidates are here and here.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Interview with Donnell Cooper

Harris County libraries are now “book sanctuaries”

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

It’s great that they’re doing this, and terrible that they have to.

As book bans and challenges occur across the state and nation, Harris County libraries have joined a movement dedicated to preserving people’s right to decide for themselves what they want to read.

Harris County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday for the Harris County Public Library system to become a Book Sanctuary, joining a network of 2,828 book sanctuaries across the United States.

According to the resolution, “The freedom to read is under threat across the nation, and nowhere more so than in the state of Texas which challenged 2,349 books, of which at least 511 were removed from school libraries and classrooms in 2022, and is on pace to once again lead the nation in challenging and removing books in 2023.”

[…]

Chicago established the nation’s first Book Sanctuary in September 2022 during Banned Books Week and set up a website inviting other institutions to follow suit.

“A book sanctuary is a physical or digital space that actively protects the freedom to read. It provides shelter and access to endangered books, and can be created by anyone and can exist anywhere — in a library, a classroom, a coffee shop corner, a community center, public park, your bedroom bookshelf, or even on social media,” according to the Book Sanctuary toolkit.

Last year, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis said during Banned Books Week the county library had over 600 banned titles in its circulation.

Between the Legislature and various rogue school districts, there are unfortunately a lot of reasons to need something like this. I’m glad Harris County took this step, and I hope that someday we can look back on it and have a somewhat uneasy laugh about what a strange time in history that was. Assuming the next Lege doesn’t ban cities and counties from establishing themselves as “book sanctuaries”, that is.

Posted in Books, Local politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Harris County libraries are now “book sanctuaries”

Metro introduces its bike share program

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Sounds pretty good, actually.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County is expected to contract with a Canadian operator that will provide up to 700 e-bikes and 100 charging stations as the agency embarks on the creation of its own bike-share program.

The proposed three-year contract, with options for two additional years, valued at as much as $10.5 million, is scheduled to be considered by Metro’s board of directors next week.

The move could seal the fate of struggling Houston BCycle, the bike share operator that launched in 2012, and quickly expanded to more than 150 docking stations across the city. Riders pay one-time rental fees to use bicycles and return them to any docking station, or can purchase memberships for more frequent use.

[…]

BCycle – not Houston Bike Share – was among four bidders seeking a contract with Metro. Houston Bike Share is a nonprofit that operates the Houston BCycle bike-share program. BCycle was not one of the top two bidders chosen for oral presentations by Metro’s technical committee.

The transit agency’s Public Safety, Customer Service and Operations Committee voted Thursday in support of a recommendation to put a proposal for negotiations with Quebec-based PBSC Urban Solutions before Metro’s full board of directors. The company, according to BikeHouston executive director Joe Cutrufo, provides equipment for some of North America’s most established bike-share programs in Montreal, New York City and Chicago.

“The equipment is head and shoulders above BCycle’s equipment,” Cutrufo said,

PBSC operates in 31 cities across 15 countries, including 12 cities in the United States.

The company initially will bring in 140 e-bikes, 20 grid-connected and solar-ready charging stations, and 200 docking points at launch, with plans to add to those numbers every year of the potential five-year contract. The contract also includes Shift Transit as a subcontractor to take care of daily operational tasks, such as bike and station maintenance and manning a 24/7 call center.

The focus for the new program will be on seamless integration into Metro’s current services. The new program will be a part of the agency’s Trip app for planning travel and will be a part of the future fare collection system set to launch next summer.

“From the get-go, we’ve agreed it’s a good idea to have bike share be integrated with the transportation system because bike share is public transportation,” Cutrufo said.

In January, Houston Bike Share thought it had an agreement with Metro in place for the transit agency to absorb Houston Bcycle’s operations. From Metro’s perspective, the agreement was for a six-month period to evaluate the current state of operations. In May, the agency put out a request for proposals for implementing a new bike-share system.

Metro Chief Financial Officer George Fotinos said BCycle’s existing operation does not align with Metro’s multimodal model. He suggested, however, that both Houston BCycle and Metro’s program could operate in Houston.

According to Fotinos, the technology and asset base offered by BCycle were out of line with where Metro wants to go. Metro staff estimated it would take about $10 million to bring the BCycle equipment up to its standards.

See here and here for more on the state of B-Cycle, and here and here for more on the Metro/B-Cycle partnership that wasn’t. The Chron adds some details.

The aim is to use cycling either to connect to places within biking distance or to access frequent transit, Metro CEO Tom Lambert said. Though costs are not finalized, the plan would be to charge a price for the bikes similar to the buses and trains, where a person pays $1.25 for a three-hour block of time.

“If you are starting with a bike and going to a bus, that is one trip,” Lambert said.

[…]

If approved, the proposed system would be similar to the BCycle system for users, but with noticeable differences. The app and payment system will be different and integrated with Metro’s fare system.

Hopes of a partnership between Metro and the nonprofit were dashed, Metro officials said, when it became clear absorbing the nonprofit was not worth the cost or hassle.

“The current infrastructure and model on the ground does not align with Metro’s vision,” said George Fotinos, the agency’s chief financial officer.

The aging bikes and kiosks were also a factor, Fotinos said.

[…]

Locations where someone can find a bike are also likely to look very different. BCycle, especially outside the central business district, is popular but largely recreational, with stations in parks and shopping areas. Metro’s aim is to link potential riders to transit with convenient bike pickup and dropoff locations, meaning bikes at major transit hubs. Dozens of the existing stations are not in prime locations for Metro, while other spots might be ideal.

Asked if some current BCycle stations could be removed and replaced with the new Metro kiosks, Lambert said “maybe,” noting that officials are still researching where to place the first wave of bikes.

Unlike BCycle, which has both conventional and electric bikes, all of the Metro system will be e-bikes, pedal assisted to make riding them less strenuous.

Starting with 20 stations and 140 e-bikes, the plan includes adding another 20 stations and 140 bikes annually. If extended to the full five-year contract, that would mean 100 stations and 700 bikes – slightly smaller than the full build-out of the BCycle system.

The transit-centric system, meanwhile, does not stop BCycle from carving out its own niche and remaining operational in some way.

“Both operating in the space is no sin,” Fotinos said. “We are fully promoting all multi-modal uses… One does not preclude the other.”

I look forward to seeing the formal presentation next week. There are lots of questions, like where the initial stations and first expansion stations will be, what the cost will be and whether there will be an annual pass option like what B-Cycle has, whether there might be a discounted fare if one just uses the bike, and so on. Maybe this can help better define what B-Cycle might be going forward, if it can get the funding. Maybe PBSC should be invited to bid on a contract for the rest of the city’s system. I take Joe Cutrufo’s word that their product is superior to B-Cycle’s seriously, so let’s keep all options on the table.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Weekend link dump for September 24

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

“Before Alex Rodriguez flipped the switch on his defiant, longtime drug-cheat image … before the post-career entrepreneurial whirl and frolic across the celebrity landscape with superstar then-fiancée Jennifer Lopez … before the TV gigs with Fox Sports and ESPN and a failed attempt to purchase the New York Mets followed by the successful bid for a minority piece of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx … before all that, A-Rod had to finally come clean about his sordid past. Here’s how it unfolded.”

“It’s not just that Romney, by speaking out and then walking away, is both a hero and a coward, then. It’s that he is intrinsically a part of the winding daisy chain of cowards who shun him in public and thank him in private. His very existence allows them to believe that in whispering that they are with him even as they roam the world making it safer and safer for Trump and Trumpism, he has become an unwitting enabler of precisely the thing he most deplores. And for every coward that secretly confesses to Romney, there is yet another coward in his shadow, seeking expiation from him, in a seemingly endless chain of people who say one thing and then do quite another, because they want to be famous, or because they want to hang on to power, or because they are afraid someone with a gun will murder their children.”

“EVs are cutting the world demand for oil, but not in the way you may think”.

“Hollywood is paying a steep price for never really figuring out the streaming model”.

You tell ’em, Larry.

“The Snarky Reason Behind the ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Boat Name”.

“Being Mean to Scabs Is Working”.

“One thing should be made very clear to the girl who comes up the city, and that is that the ordinary ice cream parlor is very likely to be a spider’s web for her entanglement.”

“In every variation and iteration, of course, these two stories are related. “America’s religious exodus” is obviously and inextricably tied up with the massive, global, transdenominational scandal of clergy sex abuse and cover-up. How could it not be?”

“But, as opposed to stand-up greats like Richard Pryor who supplemented their commentary with clearly exaggerated alter egos, Minhaj never even hinted that he was doing a character, or giving voice to stories he’d heard from others, or gesturing toward the broader landscape of Muslim Americans. Minhaj took what real, everyday brown folks were going through and led those people to believe that he’d also been there—earning his fame and plaudits from that very trust, as well as the trust that engendered among those who wished to understand brown Americans.”

“News flash: don’t wait for the big reporters to clarify this for anyone or explain that it hardly makes sense that the self-described “most pro-life president ever” might now be a credible spokesman for reproductive rights. Get serious people: Democrat and abortion rights supporters generally will have to do this on their own.”

“The question now is simply whether Kavanaugh wants to kill the Voting Rights Act with this argument, in a case where the state is in open revolt against a court order, or does he want to wait until some other state does the exact same thing without the stench of having previously lost the argument.”

“The Supreme Court is coming for Affirmative Action in the Military”.

“It’s always difficult when a board removes a founder, but in this case, it’s easy. Kick rocks, buddy.”

“For the first time, researchers have sequenced RNA from an extinct animal species — the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus).”

RIP, Pete Kozachik, Oscar-nominated visual effects and stop-motion artist best known for The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Good riddance.

Lock him up.

Let Them Wear Shorts. As a dedicated shorts-wearer myself, I could not agree more.

“From almost any other judge, the ruling in Spectrum WT v. Wendler would be a shocking rejection of basic free speech principles; from Kacsmaryk, it’s par for the course.”

“The reason that disinformation fighters spend a lot of time on Republican lies is because Republicans lie a lot. It’s that simple.”

“Haley Van Voorhis, a safety at Division-III Shenandoah University, became the first woman non-kicker to appear in an NCAA football game on Saturday”.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Chron talks to some Mayoral candidates

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

You can find a bunch of Mayoral Q&As with the Chron editorial board here on this Mayoral Candidate Questions page. All of them also include a brief video of the chat, with the following Mayoral candidates so far:

John Whitmire

Sheila Jackson Lee

Lee Kaplan

Gilbert Garcia

Robert Gallegos

MJ Khan

As of Friday afternoon, they had not published a Q&A with Jack Christie, but I assume one is in the works. I’m glad the Chron took the time to talk to these candidates; I’m curious as to how many of the seventeen total hopefuls they will do this with. Along those lines, I’m a little puzzled why they took the time to talk to these candidates.

A parody of the National Anthem may not be what voters attending Thursday’s mayoral forum expected to hear, but it’s what mayoral candidate David Lowy delivered as his opening statement.

Instead of “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air,” the candidate – dressed in a leopard print jacket and gold-rimmed sunglasses – promised to “bring fun to this town” and “make a smile from a frown.”

By the time Lowy finished his song, audience members were either applauding or staring in disbelief. Regardless, it was a performance they would never forget.

[…]

Being provocative isn’t the only way for trailing candidates to set themselves apart. Annie Garcia, a lawyer running for mayor, is staking her campaign on public backlash over the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District (HISD).

“On November 7, use your first vote to send a message,” Garcia said in her closing statement at Thursday’s forum. “Vote for Mama G, and we’re going to get Greg Abbott the hell out of HISD.”

Even if she does not win, she hopes her campaign will send a message to the next mayor that the issue cannot be overlooked. The mayor, however, has limited powers when it comes to education.

[…]

Kathy Lee Tatum, another mayoral candidate in attendance, played directly to the emotions of the room, noting her own struggle navigating Houston with a disability.

Despite her limitations – a consequence of her arthritis – she said she and her husband constantly have to assist people whose wheelchairs have fallen into potholes or uneven roads and sidewalks. This point drew applause from attendees who said they had experienced similar problems with accessibility in Houston.

Respect to Kathy Tatum for addressing a badly overlooked issue, one that I’d like to see other Mayoral candidates address as well. I’d point you to her webpage but she doesn’t have one and her campaign Facebook page is bare bones, to say the least. Garcia, who was in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary for US Senate, is also discussing a serious issue, it’s just that it’s one she couldn’t really do anything about as Mayor. As for David Lowy, maybe try open mike night at the Mucky Duck sometime? I dunno.

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Katy ISD’s book banning

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

What are these people doing?

Katy Independent School District has remained silent on the reasons 14 additional books were removed from shelves and how the district’s book review policy is being implemented, despite a public pledge of transparency on book banning.

Of the seven Katy ISD board members, only Rebecca Fox would discuss her opinion on the move, saying the new policy may need to be revisited if exhaustive book reviews continue.

In August and September, an internal committee found 14 books, including titles by Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle and Judy Blume, to be inappropriate for children for reasons the district would not make public. In June, the board had directed $93,000 in new books ordered for campuses to be put in storage until they could be reviewed.

Prior to enacting the new policy, Katy ISD removed four books in 2022, eight in 2021 and four in the first seven months of 2023.

This year the district expanded the terms under which a book could be pulled for review, adding “nudity” in the definition of inappropriate material. For the first time, six elementary school books have been removed.

The book “No, David!” — winner of the Caldecott Honor Book and several other national awards — is one of them.

The cartoon David takes every opportunity to misbehave but is always reminded that his parents love him anyway, according to the book’s publisher, Scholastic Inc. At one point in the story, a David jumps out of the tub and and is pictured running off without clothes on.

Drew Daywalt’s “The Day the Crayons Quit” was one of 44 books flagged for review in August that was later retained. An illustration depicts a beige crayon that has lost its wrapper, becoming “naked.”

Fox, who voted in favor of the book review policy, said it’s an example of how implementation has deviated from the policy’s intent.

“Nudity was added to the policy, but a book about a crayon with a wrapper is not nudity. That’s not what was intended by the policy,” she said. “If this continues, we may have to revisit the definitions of the policy.”

You think? I know that the “imagine if a Democrat/liberal had said/done this thing” trope is hoary, but this is one time where you really should try to imagine it. Fox News might literally melt down. And in this case, it wouldn’t actually be that hard to see why. I mean, what kind of depraved pervert finds something sexual in an unwrapped crayon? Yes, common sense ultimately prevailed for that book, but why was that even a question?

Anyway. This is where deep-seated homophobia takes you. Katy ISD needs to dump its at large districts and elect some decent human beings to its Board. Until they do, this is what they’re gonna get.

Posted in School days | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Mars” mission update

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Keep these coming, please and thank you.

Ultra runner Kelly Haston is not going stir-crazy inside her 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat, and that’s a pleasant surprise.

“It is comfortable and spacious, and I do not yet miss being outside,” Haston said. “I am an avid trail runner, and I was worried I would miss being outside with friends and loved ones.”

Haston is the commander of a four-person crew spending 378 days inside Mars Dune Alpha, a 3D-printed “Martian habitat” at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

They have restrictions on how much water they can use for showering. Their food is shelf-stable, meaning it will keep without refrigeration, and communication lags can be up to 22 minutes each way.

They’re pretending to be on Mars to help NASA identify the physical, mental and social challenges that could arise when living on another planet.

And as of Aug. 23, when she answered the Houston Chronicle’s written questions, Haston did not feel cooped up. The crew regularly leaves the habitat to explore Mars, and this has satisfied Haston’s urge to go outside. They explore by putting on spacesuits and leaving their habitat for an adjacent 1,200-square-foot sandbox. They don virtual reality headsets and take long walks on treadmills to conduct scientific collections and observations.

“The terrain is beautiful,” Haston said, “with many different land formations to see and explore.”

See here for the background and more on the CHAPEA mission here. So far it sounds like a combination of summer sleepaway camp and the early days of COVID lockdown, with far less existential angst. If she and her crewmates are still talking like this in another 300 days or so, I think there may be a lot of people who’d gladly sign up as volunteer beta testers. We’ll see when there’s another update.

Posted in Technology, science, and math | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Whiny loser Mealer drops her election contest lawsuit

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Girl, bye.

Alexandra del Moral Mealer, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo’s former Republican opponent, dropped her lawsuit challenging the results of the election she lost last November by over 18,000 votes, according to court documents filed Thursday.

Mealer filed an election contest lawsuit on Jan. 6, one of 22 similar cases brought by GOP candidates in Harris County.

Mealer explained her decision in a statement Thursday.

“My goal in filing an election contest was not to relitigate my race,” Mealer said, “but rather to make sure future races are fair to all voters and candidates. To this end, I sought to uncover all the data and records I could that relate to the November 2022 election.” Mealer added that she plans to advocate for changes to the Texas Election Code regarding public access to data.

Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee called Mealer’s lawsuit a “waste of time and resources.”

“She didn’t win the election and she wasn’t going to win the election contest, yet she insisted on continuing to spread conspiracy theories in an attempt to overturn the will of the voters,” Menefee said in a statement Thursday. “It’s time for the other losing Republican candidates to drop their lawsuits as well.”

[…]

Mealer’s former legal counsel, Elizabeth Alvarez, filed a letter last month with the court saying she did not support Mealer’s recent claims of ballot fraud. Mealer denied that her allegations about the election were a matter of ballot fraud.

Hidalgo’s attorney, Neal Manne, criticized Mealer on Thursday for failing to identify a single voter who was unable to cast a ballot.

“The lawsuit was frivolous when she filed it, and she has wasted a tremendous amount of the County’s and the Court’s time before finally acknowledging tonight that there is no evidence to support her outlandish claims,” Manne said in a statement.

Manne added that his firm represented Hidalgo pro bono.

“We will continue to provide free representation to other candidates whose electoral victories are being challenged in lawsuits that really are just cynical political stunts,” Manne said.

Sartaj Bal, another GOP candidate, also dropped his lawsuit Thursday.

Last month, the first election challenge went to trial in a lawsuit brought by Erin Lunceford, who lost her race to incumbent 189th District Judge Tamika Craft by 2,743 votes, a far narrower margin than Mealer’s.

Craft’s attorneys provided the judge with an email Bal sent to party leadership before filing his lawsuit, questioning whether they would have enough evidence to win a new election.

“Again, we have zero admissible evidence in our possession at this time and in my opinion it’s game over until we do — if we ever do,” Bal wrote.

See here for more on the original election contests, here for more on the one contest that has had a court hearing, and here for more on the first of now-three lawsuits that have been dropped. I think you know how I feel about M****r and her bullshit by now, so I’m just going to leave it there. May I never have to see or hear her cursed name again. Reform Austin and the Press have more.

Posted in Election 2022, Legal matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

City runoff election will be December 9

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Slightly reducing the overall intrigue factor of the season.

The runoffs for Houston’s City Hall elections will be held Dec. 9, the secretary of state’s office confirmed on Tuesday.

Houston voters will head to the polls Nov. 7 to elect a new mayor, city controller and 16 City Council members. In any race where a candidate does not garner a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will proceed to a runoff.

It is widely expected that the crowded mayor’s race will require a second round of voting, along with several hotly contested council seats.

Under a new law passed by the Texas Legislature this year, the runoff must be held on a Saturday between 30 and 45 days after Election Day. The secretary of state’s office could determine which Saturday, leaving Dec. 9 and Dec. 16 as this year’s options.

The selection inspired speculation among political observers because of its potential conflict with the deadline to file for next March’s primary elections, which is Dec. 11.

Both mayoral front-runners, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Sen. John Whitmire, are long-tenured elected officials and may choose to run for re-election to their current seats if they do not prevail in the mayoral contest.

The Dec. 9 selection means either candidate would be able to file after the runoff, rather than facing the politically perilous decision of filing to run for re-election while still in pursuit of the mayor’s office.

See here for some background. As noted, there are already candidates for CD18 (Amanda Edwards, Isaiah Martin) and SD15 (Molly Cook, Karthik Soora), so if the loser of the most likely runoff decides he or she wants their old job back, they can still try to make it happen. That may also cause some folks who had filed for one race to switch to the now-open seat. The prospect of a December 16 runoff would have made this all a lot more chaotic, but this will still make for an active couple of days. And don’t forget, there will be at least one special election to contend with as well. It’s going to be a busy couple of months however it shakes out.

Posted in Election 2023 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on City runoff election will be December 9

The Arlington nun mutiny

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Charles Kuffner

Oh my God this story is wild.

Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), Doctor of the Church and co-founder of the Discalced Carmelites

There’s a strange saga unfolding in Texas. It involves allegations and accusations of illicit sexual relationships, drug use, theft, abuse, spying, planted evidence, and plots to steal a multimillion-dollar property. The people involved are Catholic priests, bishops, and some pretty fired-up nuns.

What has become an open, bitter feud between the bishop of Fort Worth and 10 cloistered nuns in Arlington, Texas, has scandalized and thrilled American Catholics. The cops, the courts, and the Vatican are involved. Onlookers are taking sides. It’s still unclear who’s going to come out on top. And it all started with a startling confession from a devout nun.

The series of events began in December 2020, shortly after Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, the 43-year-old prioress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, had a seizure. Gerlach, who had joined the order as a teenager, normally lives a life of quiet prayer and seclusion. But at some point during that month, while she was recovering from the seizure and was heavily medicated, she told a priest and her caregiver (another nun) that she had committed some kind of sexual sin (with another priest).

The story probably could have died there. Unluckily for Gerlach, though, that priest appears to have told his boss, the diocese’s bishop, Michael Olson. And when Olson got wind of the confession sometime in April 2023, he would kick off a strangely intense drama that spiraled to levels no one could have predicted.

I cannot begin to do this story justice with an excerpt. Go click over and read the whole thing, and tell me that your jaw didn’t hit the table as you were doing so. Fort Worth Report has a handy timeline and links to its past stories on this saga if you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole. I’ve said this about some other wild stories I’ve seen, but I really want there to be a prestige podcast about this when it’s over. I think Texas Monthly could do it justice. Now go read, you won’t regret it.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments