And so it ends: After 37 years, AstroWorld is closing its doors for good. While we wait to see who buys the land it sits on and what they decide to build there in its place, here's a one last visit story, with pictures, for your entertainment.
The Texas Lottery Commission is set to take action on the recent sore spot of overinflated jackpots by passing a rule to guarantee prize amounts.
If the proposed rule is adopted, the grand prize winner will be paid either the advertised jackpot or the jackpot based on sales, whichever is greater. The guarantees would apply to jackpots paid with the 25-year annuity, not to winners who choose the immediate cash-option payment.The proposed rule also would require lottery officials to make a "fair and reasonable" estimation of potential jackpots. If the jackpot falls short of the estimate and ticket sales, the lottery would be allowed to pull money from other lottery funds to cover the difference.
What to do when those other sources of funding run dry is apparently a discussion to be held on another day.
In all seriousness, I think this is a good and necessary step for the TLC to take. If we're going to have a lottery, we may as well be able to have faith in the fantasies that it's selling. As long as they're sufficiently conservative in their sales estimates and thus in their advertised prizes, this ought to go a long way towards fixing the problem.
As was the case with Harriet Miers, I'm not going to have too much to say about the current SCOTUS nominee, Samuel Alito. We'll all be up to our collective clavicles in commentary on this one, so I see no reason to add to the clutter. I would appreciate it if someone who's smarter than I am could explain in simple words why President Bush didn't just nominate this guy from the get-go. What was it that made him look at Harriet Miers and say "She's the one"?
Finally, since poor Harriet is about 95% of the way back to the obscurity from which she came, I'll nominate the Pink Lady for offering the best parting shot:
In this morning’s announcement, Bush praised Judge Alito as the nominee with “more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years, calling him “brilliant.” Harriet Miers, meanwhile, has been holed up in her apartment listening to “Killing Me Softly.”
My apologies to those of you who now have that stupid song stuck in your heads. You kids who didn't grow up in the 70s being forced to listen to your parents' radio stations have no idea how lucky you are.
UPDATE: And the "Thank you, Captain Obvious" award goes to the nimble thinker at the New York Times who gave us the headline Nomination Likely to Please G.O.P., but Not Some Democrats. Because this would be the first time that ever happened with this crowd.
Grits tells the sad yet predictable tale of what happens when Governor Perry convenes a panel to identify flaws in Texas' criminal justice system and suggest possible reforms "from the initial stage of investigation into a crime to appellate and post-conviction proceedings." I suppose we should all be happy that at least this committe has more than one member on it. Check it out.
This is fascinating. Remember the McMartin Preschool and the intense national hysteria that followed accusations that the owners and their employees spent the days molesting their young charges? It all eventually fell apart as the extremely shoddy interviewing techniques, coupled with the increasingly bizarre and hard to fathom allegations and ultimate lack of physical evidence led to recantations and vacated convictions, but not before many innocent people had their lives ruined.
Anyway, the LA Times magazine has printed an apology from one of the kids who was supposedly molested to those who were accused of the crimes. It's compelling reading, so go take a look. Thanks to Kevin Drum for the link.
Richard Smalley, a professor at Rice who shared in a Nobel prize for his co-discovery of buckyballs, died last week at the age of 62.
Born on June 6, 1943, in Akron, Ohio, Smalley's childhood was one of middle America and middle class. As a youth he spent hours with his mother, Esther Virginia Rhoads, collecting single-celled organisms from a local pond and viewing them under a microscope.After earning his chemistry doctorate from Princeton University, Smalley accepted a job as an assistant chemistry professor at Rice in 1976.
At Rice, Smalley's research group set about building a series of beam-and-laser machines that could vaporize material, leaving individual atoms in the residue. By vaporizing different materials, and cooling the resulting atoms to very low temperatures, the researchers could study and manipulate how the atoms clumped together.
Jim Heath, now a professor at the California Institute of Technology, joined Smalley's lab in 1984 as a graduate student. Heath recalled his first day on the job, when Smalley patiently explained the experiments he wanted completed, and demonstrated how to operate the equipment.
There was just one problem: at 3 a.m., when he had finally finished the day's experiments, Heath realized Smalley had forgotten to tell him how to turn off the machine. With trepidation, Heath called the senior scientist at his home and woke him up.
"He was actually delighted that I was still there working that late," Heath said. "That was the sort of environment he created. He pushed people reasonably hard, but he balanced that by being a very compelling, almost Moses-like teacher. He knew what he wanted. You're unlikely to ever meet someone who had a more intense and focused mind than Rick."
A year after Heath began working in the lab, Smalley, along with Robert Curl at Rice and Sir Harold Kroto of University of Sussex, discovered a new form of carbon. This fullerene, or buckyball, contained 60 carbon atoms arranged in a perfect sphere.
Few scientists had expected to discover a new arrangement of carbon atoms because the element already was so well-studied.
"It was an absolutely electrifying discovery," said James Kinsey, then a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who later became dean of natural sciences at Rice. "Within a year or two, you couldn't pick up a chemistry journal without one-third of the articles being about fullerenes."
The new carbon material proved to be surprisingly strong and lightweight, and had almost magical electrical properties. The buckyball's discovery helped fuel today's explosion of nanotechnology research, in which scientists are racing to exploit the unique properties of myriad nanomaterials, with applications for everything from medicine to bulletproof vests.
Eric Berger relates a few more anecdotes about Smalley, including that he was elected Homecoming Queen at Rice in 1996 as tribute for his role in earning the Nobel. He was obviously quite a guy. Rest in peace, Richard Smalley.
(Shameless name-dropping aside: I never knew Dr. Smalley, but I am acquainted with his co-laureate Bob Curl, who is a longtime fixture in the local tournament bridge scene.)
Following up on my post about the Zogby Interactive poll from last month, we now have a full report of all the matchups they surveyed, which fills in a couple of blanks from the report they made available to the Wall Street Journal Online. Two items in particular of note, starting with this one:
GovernorPerry* (R) 40%
Bell (D) 27%
Friedman (I) 18%Perry* (R) 41%
Sharp (D) 26%
Friedman (I) 19%Strayhorn (R) 35%
Bell (D) 26%
Friedman (I) 17%Strayhorn (R) 32%
Sharp (D) 26%
Friedman (I) 18%
I believe this ought to put the final nail in the idea that only John Sharp could take out Rick Perry. Not that it matters, since Sharp now has other things on his plate, but as of last month at least, he was polling slightly worse than Chris Bell in this matchup. He does do a little better than Bell against Comptroller Strayhorn, but only because Strayhorn's numbers dip slightly.
What this says to me is either that Sharp's name ID isn't appreciably better than Bell's, or that being known to more people isn't the asset for Sharp that one might have thought it would be. Whatever the case may be, I say it's time to stop wasting time on what isn't going to happen - and that includes the current wishcasting of Bill White announcing for Governor five minutes into his inaugural address as a second-term Mayor - and start focusing on what is. Rick Perry is polling at 40% of the vote, which is less than his combined opposition. This is a winnable race if Democrats can pull themselves together. It's time to get going on that.
Item two is from the Senate race, where the published reports were all about various fantasy football matchups. Here's how the real race compares to them:
Senator
Hutchison* (R) 52%
Radnofsky (D) 34%Hutchison* (R) 50%
Kirk (D) 37%Hutchison* (R) 51%
Sharp (D) 36%Hutchison* (R) 52%
Watson (D) 36%
Barbara Radnofsky fares a little worse than the others against KBH, but not by much. All things considered, it's about what I'd expect. She's obviously got a lot of ground to make up, and she'll have to chip away some of KBH's current support, something which may be made easier by Hutchison herself and her recent penchant for stupid statements. That said, given KBH's status as the Great Exalted Popular Moderate, I'm not displeased with her topping out at 52%. It's still a mountain to climb, but at least it's not K2.
Rick Perry's approval numbers are back in their usual state of negativity after a one-month bounce from Hurricane Katrina, according to SurveyUSA. You can see the trendlines here. Basically, after recording September numbers of 49% approve/45% disapprove, October checks in at 43/52. That's still his best approval number going back to at least May, but the disapproval number is also one point short of the highest it's been. Compared to his peers, he's 36th in approval total, and 39th in net approval.
The demographic splits yield some interesting data. Compared to September, when he was in net positive territory for just about every group, Perry has lost significant turf among Hispanics, independents, and (surprisingly) regular churchgoers. He's actually doing worse among men than he is among women, which is something I'd frankly never expect to see - it was like that last month though it didn't register with me, but in July he was doing slightly better with men. I might think it's possible that since September he's taking the brunt of some frustrations with the Hurricane Rita evacuation, except that he's doing as well in Harris County as he was before - indeed, it's one of the few places he's still in net positive terrain. He's a little worse off in East Texas (41/55 compared to 43/50), but not nearly enough to explain such an across-the-board decline. Without anything else to go on, I think people have simply gone back to feeling about him as they have been for awhile now.
I'll keep an eye on these monthly checkups, as I'm sure Team Bell will, too. My guess is that if we see any motion in these numbers, it'll be a further erosion - another special session on school finance would do the trick for that. We'll see.
The Chron puts what I believe are the wraps on its endorsements for 2005 by giving its recommendations in the HISD trustee races, choosing Richard Cantu in HISD1 and challenger Daisy Maura in HISD9. They did the one contested HCC trustee race yesterday, endorsing Richard Schecter for Position 5. I still don't know what happened to City Council District A, not to mention several ballot propositions, but who knows, maybe they're still to come.
Today's profile is on the Mayoral race, in which some interesting numbers get tossed about:
Some political analysts say he could exceed the re-election margin of former Mayor Bob Lanier, who won his second term in 1993 with 90.8 percent of the vote, at the time the highest percentage in nearly 60 years. Lanier, like White, was popular and faced little-known challengers."I predict White will break 92 percent," said Dave Walden, who served as chief of staff to Lanier and campaign manager to White's 2003 runoff opponent, Orlando Sanchez. "All the stars are aligned for him."
He noted that Lanier was under constant criticism from then-Controller George Greanias, while White has mostly kept cordial relations with other city officials. "What I didn't expect was White's ability to move things through council as smoothly as he has," Walden said.
Ninety-two percent is pretty audacious, even more than Greg's 90% guesstimate and my downright pessimistic-by-comparison suggestion that the floor starts at 75%. Let's make a contest out of it: What do you think Bill White's election day tally will be? Go all the way down to the hundredth of a percent so we can more easily break a tie if we have to. I'll put myself down for 82%. Leave your guesses in the comments and we'll see in ten days who's the closest.
Ah, here I've finally found the right index page with all the race profiles and Chron endorsements - note to whoever from the Chron is reading this, it would be nice if the Politics index page had this link. They've written about Props 1, 2, 5, 7, and 9, endorsing all but 2. For the rest, plus City Council A, you're on your own, at least so far.
At long last, here's my list of recommendations for the 2005 elections. I'm only going to make choices for races that will be on my ballot, and as James Campbell wrote today, these are just recommendations, not commands.
Mayor - Bill White
City Controller - Annise Parker
At Large #1 - Peter Brown
At Large #2 - Jay Aiyer
At Large #4 - Ron Green
District H - Adrian Garcia
HISD trustee position 1 - Natasha Kamrani
Ballot propositions:
Prop 1 - NO
Prop 2 - NO
Prop 3 - YES
Prop 4 - NO
Prop 5 - YES
Prop 6 - NO
Prop 7 - YES
Prop 8 - YES
Prop 9 - NO
Most of these decisions are fairly easy, since many races are not contested or not seriously contested. I can't think of any scenario in which I'd be likely to change my mind, however - these are all high-quality people, and I'm very happy to be voting for them. The two with real choices are At Large #2 and HISD1. While there is more than one worthy candidate in each of those slots, I believe that Jay Aiyer and Natasha Kamrani represent the best of those choices. I think Jay has the strongest credentials in that race, and I've been very favorably impressed by Kamrani's overall vision and plans for HISD. If you have the chance, in the waning days of the campaign, to meet either of these folks, or any of the others for that matter, I think you'll understand why I feel as I do about them.
I'm not offering any recommendations in At Large #3 and #5, but for different reasons. There's no one in #3 that I think is worth a vote. I wish there were someone running against Shelly Sekula Somthingorother that I could support, but the only thing that her opponent has done that I've noticed is leave spam comments on at least three different blogs, mine included (you didn't see it here because I deleted it). I realize that I myself floated the idea of spoofing another candidate's site in spam comments as a new-wave dirty trick, but I don't see that happening here. Frankly, if I thought Somethingorother were smart enough to do that kind of thing, I'd have a whole new respect for her. So feel free to skip that race.
At Large #5 is a little different. I'm definitely more in line with challenger Mike Stoma philosophically than I am with incumbent Michael Berry, and that's a consideration that normally carries a lot of weight for me. This is one of those times where it's not so clear-cut. I believe that Berry was uniquely qualified this term to lead any organized anti-Bill White effort, since he had spent a fair amount of time on the Mayoral campaign trail with White in 2003 and he certainly has his own vision of what Houston should be like. He also has more gravitas and experience than the other At Large members who might have acted as a counterweight. Finally, we all know he wants to run for Mayor again some day, right? Well, not only did he not do that, but right from the very beginning he was publicly appreciative of Mayor White's priority initiatives. Whatever you may think of the Boy Wonder, I feel that at some point, one must at least consider voting for someone who's been supportive of things you favor. For that reason, I say make your own choice and feel good about it either way.
As for the ballot amendments, the two I feel the most strongly about are #1 and #2. Beyond those two, there isn't much to get me all riled up. I've noted before that some people are advocating a blanket No on these propositions. Obviously, I think some are worthy of consideration, but none of them will break my heart if they don't pass. Vote No on the first two and you can do what you want with the rest as far as I'm concerned.
Today's Chron has a fuller story on the closing of longtime Houston Heights department store Kaplan's-Ben Hur, which I noted last week. It's mostly a nostalgia piece, with quotes from the currnt owners and several faithful customers, but what caught my eye was this:
Closing the store allows the family to sell the property. Greenwood King real estate agent Erik Fowler, who is not involved, estimated the land alone, about 85,000 square feet, could be worth from $1 million to as much as $2 million.
The question is what would be built there to replace it. Here's a map to the location of the store. On the one hand, it's well situated for some kind of high-end retail. Yale is a busy street, the area is close to many residential neighborhoods, and the many antique shops on 19th and 20th Streets already bring in a stream of people with some disposable income burning a hole in their pockets. The main problem is parking. Kaplan's doesn't have much, and spots on the nearby streets go quickly. I don't know that any business which would have to rely heavily on the residents who will mostly walk there, as Kaplan's did, will be able to generate the kind of cash flow necessary to cover its monthly note or lease. Maybe a strip center would be able to do it if it had the right mix of shops in it. It's not a slamdunk is all I'm saying.
Residential property is a possibility. You could fit quite a few $300-500K homes on those 85,000 square feet. The main problem is that, well, it's in a mostly commercial area fronted by a busy street. I just don't know how appealing that would be to too many folks who are in the market for a three-bedroom house. I don't think there's no buyers for what would go up there, but I do think it's a smaller segment.
What would be interesting is if someone decides to go for a mixed-use property like you now see in Midtown: a multistory building with shops or eateries on the ground floor and apartments or (more likely) condos above it. You'd still have to solve the parking issue, but depending on how you design the place you might be able to tack on a small garage on the back, for use by both residents and customer. It's all a pedestrian-friendly area, so that would work in your favor as well, and the benefit of condos over larger houses is that it'll be more attractive to the single and childless couple buyers who'd have fewer objections to living near traffic than parents would.
Anyway. Worth keeping an eye on once the Kaplan family officially puts it on the market.
Poor, poor pitiful me! Poor, poor pitiful me! Oh, these boys won't let me be Lord have mercy on me! Woe, woe is me!-- Various artists, including Terri Clark, Linda Rondstadt, and Warren Zevon
It just breaks my heart to see a man brought low like this.
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay sent constituents a letter Thursday calling the prosecution against him the "politics of personal destruction," and said he has come under attack because he's been a strong advocate of conservative causes.The letter is the second the Sugar Land Republican has sent to supporters since he was first indicted in Travis County on election law violations last month. DeLay has repeatedly said he is a victim of political persecution by District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat.
"Because of their decade of defeat, Democrats have now dropped to the least common denominator — the politics of personal destruction," DeLay said, using the same defense mounted by former President Clinton during his impeachment.
DeLay said the prosecution against him is part of a larger pattern of "liberals" using the criminal justice system against conservatives.
"What we're fighting is so much larger than a single court case or a single district attorney in Travis County," DeLay said. "We are witnessing the criminalization of conservative politics."
That man sure does know how to throw one heck of a pity party, does he not? He's even got people at the Austin Chronicle shedding tears for him.
I'm sorry, I'm getting all verklempt over here. Talk amongst yourselves.
(AusChron link via The Stakeholder.)
Since I'm not feeling like writing much about politics today, I thought I'd take a look at the question of how long baseball teams have waited to win their first pennant and World Series, and how long it's been since their last one. We all know that the Astros won their first pennant in 43 years of existence this year, while the White Sox ended a 46-year pennant drought and an 88-year titleless streak. So who else has had it so bad?
Using the Baseball Reference leagues page as my guide, I put together two lists, one which sorts teams by length of time before their first pennant, and the other which sorts them by lenght of time since their last pennant. Anyone who watched the National League Championship Series saw the oft-displayed graphic which stated that the Rangers (44 years and counting) have gone the longest among the expansion teams without a league title, followed by the Astros (43 years before the first one), Expos (36 and counting) and Mariners (28). The Angels came on board in 1961 and won their first crown in 2002. Of the original 16 franchises, the Saint Louis Browns/Baltimore Orioles had the longest dry spell; they won their first pennant in 1944, 43 years after they were founded and 41 years after World Series play began.
That's nothing compared to World Series frustration. The Philadelphia Phillies are the reigning champions of championshiplessness. They didn't win a World Series until 1980, 77 years after the first one was played. It's even worse when you look at the overall history, as Rob Neyer did during the 2002 season.
Since 1901, there have been exactly 200 league championships available; 100 for the National League, 100 for the American League. The Phillies have won five National League pennants since 1901; every other "original" eight National League team was won at least nine pennants. Over that same span, no circa 1901 American League franchise has won fewer than five pennants (thanks to the Yankees, who can fly 38 flags, the Indians and White Sox are still stuck on five).The Phillies have won exactly one World Series; each of the circa 1901 major-league franchises can claim at least two World Series (yes, even the Indians and White Sox).
From 1916 through 1979, the Phillies won exactly zero World Series games; each of their peer franchises won at least eight World Series games during those 64 years.
See, Astros fans? It could be worse. Joining the Phillies in their start-of-life futility are the Browns/Orioles, who took 63 years to win the Series, and the Dodgers, who needed 52.
Of course, the mother of all streaks, wihout peer now that the two Soxes have put their demons to bed, belongs to the Cubs: 60 years since their last pennant, 97 years since their last World Series title. You could come up with some pretty evil marketing slogans for the 2008 Cubbies if present trends continue. Of the 25 other franchises which have won a pennant, every single one of them has claimed at least one since 1979. There are still two teams who can moan about longstanding Series frustrations, the Indians (last title in 1948) and the Giants (1954), plus eight expansion-era clubs led by the Rangers. But nobody can hold a candle to the Cubs. Who knows, maybe 2006 will see a third consecutive curse-busting postseason. Stranger things have happened.
See beneath the fold for the complete lists.
Team Debut Pennant Wait Title Wait =============================================== Pirates 1903 1903 0 1909 6 Red Sox 1903 1903 0 1903 0 Giants 1903 1904 1 1905 2 Athletics 1903 1905 2 1910 7 Cubs 1903 1906 3 1907 4 White Sox 1903 1906 3 1906 3 Diamondbacks 1998 2001 3 2001 3 Tigers 1903 1907 4 1935 32 Marlins 1993 1997 4 1997 4 Mets 1962 1969 7 1969 7 Devil Rays 1998 Never 7+ Never 7+ Braves 1903 1914 11 1914 11 Royals 1969 1980 11 1985 16 Phillies 1903 1915 12 1980 77 Rockies 1993 Never 12+ Never 12+ Dodgers 1903 1916 13 1955 52 Brewers 1969 1982 13 Never 36+ Blue Jays 1977 1992 15 1992 15 Padres 1969 1984 15 Never 36+ Reds 1903 1919 16 1919 16 Indians 1903 1920 17 1920 17 Yankees 1903 1921 18 1923 20 Senators 1903 1924 21 1924 21 Cardinals 1903 1926 23 1926 23 Mariners 1977 Never 28+ Never 28+ Expos 1969 Never 36+ Never 36+ Orioles 1903 1944 41 1966 63 Angels 1961 2002 41 2002 41 Astros 1962 2005 43 Never 43+ Rangers 1961 Never 44+ Never 44+Team Last Pennant Wait Last WS Wait
================================================
White Sox 2005 0 2005 0
Astros 2005 0 Never 43+
Red Sox 2004 1 2004 1
Cardinals 2004 1 1982 23
Marlins 2003 2 2003 2
Yankees 2003 2 2000 5
Angels 2002 3 2002 3
Giants 2002 3 1951 54
Diamondbacks 2001 4 2001 4
Mets 2000 5 1986 19
Braves 1999 6 1995 10
Padres 1998 7 Never 36+
Indians 1997 8 1948 57
Blue Jays 1993 12 1993 12
Phillies 1993 12 1980 25
Twins 1991 14 1991 14
Reds 1990 15 1990 15
Athletics 1990 15 1989 16
Dodgers 1988 17 1988 17
Royals 1985 20 1985 20
Tigers 1984 21 1984 21
Orioles 1983 22 1983 22
Brewers 1982 23 Never 36+
Pirates 1979 26 1979 26
Cubs 1945 60 1908 97
The vice president's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr., was indicted today on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the CIA leak investigation, a politically charged case that will throw a spotlight on President Bush's push to war.Libby, 55, resigned and left the White House.
Karl Rove, Bush's closest adviser, escaped indictment today but remained under investigation, his legal status casting a dark cloud over a White House already in trouble. The U.S. military death toll in Iraq exceeded 2,000 this week, and the president's approval ratings are at the lowest point since he took office in 2001.
Today's charges stemmed from a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Rove, Libby or any other administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame or lied about their involvement to investigators.
The grand jury indictment charged Libby with one count of obstruction of justice, two of perjury and two false statement counts. If convicted on all five, he could face as much as 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines.
Vice President Dick Cheney was mentioned by name in the 22-page indictment and several officials were identified by title, but no one besides Libby was charged.
You can see the indictment here.
For more reaction, you can click on just about every blog link under the sun. I'll give the last word here to Barbara Radnofsky:
Texas Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Barbara Ann Radnofsky called on her Republican opponent to renounce perjury now that I. Lewis Libby has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice.Kay Bailey Hutchison called perjury a technicality on “Meet the Press.” On Monday, her spokesman said, “Senator Hutchison was not commenting on any specific investigation. She was expressing her general concern that perjury traps have become too common when investigators are unable to indict on any underlying crime.”
Her spokesman followed that pronouncement with a letter to the Houston Chronicle on October 26, claiming that prosecutions based on “finding any shred of inconsistency” do not constitute perjury.
Radnofsky insists, “Lying to a grand jury is a crime.”
“Now we have a sitting U.S. Senator saying that perjury is a technicality, then through her spokesman dismissing perjury,” says Radnofsky. “No elected official should tolerate or excuse perjury. I call on Kay Bailey Hutchison to renounce perjury. She should resign if she tolerates it,” Radnofsky said.
Let the games begin.
Today I present the second Q&A session with a candidate for HISD trustee in position 1. My first such interview, with Richard Cantu, can be found here. Today's subject is Natasha Kamrani. Early voting has already started, so if you haven't cast your ballot yet, I hope these articles will be useful in helping you decide for whom to cast your ballot.
Without further ado:
1. Tell us about yourself - your background, your experience, your qualifications for the job.I graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 1990 with a degree in History and a minor in Chinese. Upon graduation I applied to and was accepted into Teach For America, the national teacher corps of recent college graduates who commit to teach in inner-city and rural school districts that suffer from persistent teacher shortages. I was placed at the Houston Independent School District's Edison Middle School to teach English as a Second Language to recent immigrants from Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala.
Upon completing my commitment to Teach For America, I spent the following four years as the local Executive Director of Teach For America where I was responsible for the training and placement of over 200 teachers and raising funds to sustain the organization.
I left Teach For America in 1997 and, upon completing my studies at the University of Houston Law Center, I have practiced civil litigation at a private law firm for the past five years.
In 1998, I married fellow Teach For America corps member, Chris Barbic. My husband is the founding head of schools of the YES College Preparatory School District. We are the parents of three-year old Tatiana and twenty-month old Ramiz.
I currently sit on the Advisory Board of Teach For America, the Houston Heights Association's Education Committee and was a member of the task force which helped establish HISD's Wilson Elementary Montessori School.
2. If elected, what would be your top priority? What is HISD doing that you would most like to see changed, and what is HISD not doing that you would most like to see them take up?
My top priority would be middle school reform. Simply put, the only true method to address failure in high school is to address the widespread failure in our middle schools. The strategies that our district is employing at the high school level are worthy, but what’s the point if widespread failure in our middle schools isn’t addressed at the same time? Some of the approaches that HISD is currently using to address failure in high school such as: creating smaller learning communities, and using student support to remediate and then accelerate instruction so that learning deficits are caught much earlier, are common sense ways to address middle school failure.
Students who are achieving at low levels in high school arrive in high school with major deficits. Students should not leave 8th grade unless they are on grade level and prepared to take a Distinguished Diploma track. Children who have been socially promoted through middle school don’t have the skills to successfully handle high school academics.
This leads to the “ninth grade cliff,” in which these unprepared and overwhelmed students end up in high school where they must now earn credits in order to advance to the next grade level. When children who don't have the skills necessary to pass classes don't, they become part of our horrifying high school drop out statistics.
Currently, great attention is being paid to making changes at the high school level; however, I believe this attention is misdirected. To address the very real problems we face with our high schools, we must focus our energies on creating excellent middle schools. Excellent middle schools will, in turn, address the issues we're currently facing at the high school level including our high drop out rate.
3. The Texas Legislature has tried several times to change the way public schools are funded. What is your opinion of the things they tried to do? What should they have done, and what should they not have done?
Bottom line is that our state must be providing a larger share of public school funding. No two ways about it. The amount of funding we currently receive from the state, as opposed to the funding currently provided by our tax payers, is appallingly miniscule. Robin Hood, while an approach that on its face appears to provide positive solutions for many struggling districts, is simply a stop gap (and temporary) answer. We must call upon our state to step up to the plate and provide its fair share of school funding.
4. How has the No Child Left Behind legislation affected HISD? What can HISD do to better comply with NCLB's requirements? What should be done with the schools that failed to meet NCLB goals this year?
Since HISD, under the leadership of Rod Paige, was the birthplace of the efforts now named federally as "No Child Left Behind," our district has not, in any substantial way, been affected by this legislation.
Schools that fail to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress goals set out by NCLB must be reformed with a great sense of urgency. Failing schools must not be tolerated. However, what leads schools to fail may vary drastically school by school. Our district must make an effort to put in place an evaluation method which will determine why each school is failing. Based on this evaluation, the district must then devise a unique plan for each school--with the input of the community--for determining how to address the causes for failure and to then to implement a plan, including measures of success upon which the school can constantly be evaluated for improvement, to ensure that the school is taking the steps necessary to operate well for
children.5. HISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra has promised policy changes that would lead to a reduction in the amount of classroom time students spend on testing. What is the right amount of time for this? What changes would you like to see made?
NCLB mandates testing at certain grade levels. To the extent that this testing is mandated, our Superintendent's hands are tied in reducing the amount of time actually spent taking tests. Where the district has room to move is in the amount of time spent PREPARING for tests. Since the test is a minimal skills test, the key to ensuring that "test prep" time is cut to a minimum is to ensure that the curriculum taught in our classrooms is of such a rigorous level that children will have no problem acing a minimal skills test. In addition, we need to have programs in place which remediate learning for children who arrive in school behind grade level and then
accelerate instruction to ensure that all our students leave performing on grade level--another important criteria in ensuring that children can take, and pass, tests without months of preparation.6. What distinguishes you from your opponents in this race?
I am the only candidate for the board seat who has worked directly in
education--as a teacher and as executive director of Teach For America, an education non-profit. During my tenure as Executive Director of Teach For America, I visited every school in the district, I worked first hand with teachers, school administrators, district administration and board members. I am the only candidate who has this breadth of experience in and knowledge of our public schools In addition, my husband is also a former teacher and now head of schools. Public education is what my family has developed a
unique expertise in and it is our true passion.In addition, my work as a lawyer involves countless hours of negotiation, mediation and settlement of cases. The skills I've developed working with people whose interests are sometimes in direct contradiction of one another will serve me well as I sit at a table with my eight fellow board members while we work together to negotiate strategies for improving our schools.
Thank you, Natasha Kamrani.
If anyone from Anne Flores Santiago's campaign is reading this, I would still like to get and print her answers. Send me an email to kuff - at - offthekuff - dot - com if you have any questions.
The Supreme Court will consider Travis County, Texas, et al. v. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, et al., along with several other related Texas redistricting cases, during its private conference on Friday. They are among dozens of cases the Court will review at the conference to determine if they should be added to the Court's docket for argument.In October 2004 the Supreme Court remanded the Texas redistricting case back to a three-judge federal panel, which then rejected, for a second time, legal challenges to the new Texas congressional map, passed in 2003 and followed in the 2004 election.
The appellants, which include elected officials and special interest groups, are asking the Court to throw out the new map in favor of one drawn shortly after the 2000 census. They also want the Court to explicitly define what constitutes partisan gerrymandering -- an act the Court last year deemed unconstitutional. If the Court agrees to hear the case, opening arguments could begin next spring.
You can reinstate the 2001 map if you want, but I say once the 2004 election occurred with the present map, it became impossible to redress the wrongs. You can't give Frost, Lampson, Sandlin, Turner, Stenholm, Bell, and Rodriguez their incumbency and seniority back. The best you can do is to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. For that reason, I could see the court ruling that mid-decade redistricting is illegal, and I could see them coming up with a new standard for partisan gerrymandering, but I can't see them throwing out the existing map and ordering the previous lines to be reinstated. At this point, it just doesn't make sense.
In June a three-judge panel unanimously rejected the appellants' claims, ruling the partisan gerrymandering did not rise to a level it could deem unconstitutional. Judge John Ward, in a separate, concurring opinion, expressed concern that the map possibly violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, but that there is currently no constitutional test for excessive partisanship.In making his point, Ward cited Vieth v. Jubelirer, a Pennsylvania gerrymandering case the Supreme Court decided in 2004. The 5-4 decision said that partisan gerrymandering should be illegal, but the Court did not define what constitutes legal redistricting.
The appeals panel split on whether a state can redraw district boundaries when a plan already exists.
Loyola Law School professor Rick Hasen, an election law expert, says the Court's failure to agree on a judicial test for gerrymandering and the question of redistricting mid-decade may be reason enough for the Court to hear the Texas case. The swing vote on the Pennsylvania case was Justice Anthony Kennedy, who agreed gerrymandering violates the Constitution but was not prepared to author a test.
"Kennedy said he wanted to keep the issue open for another day," says Hasen. But he also warns that the Court's liberal camp may be wary of using the Texas case to write a test to distinguish redistricting from gerrymandering. "In terms of the unfair partisan gerrymandering, the facts are not as extreme as they were in Pennsylvania."
Given how utterly illogical our boundaries would be if partisanship were not the consideration, that's saying something about Pennsylvania.
Elmo in one hand, a cellphone in the other. What more could a girl want?
(Picture taken in Dallas while we were on the run from Rita.)
I'll say this for Save Texas Marriage: They've stirred up the pot something fierce.
An organization of heterosexuals opposed to amending the Texas constitution to ban gay marriage is accused of using automated phone messages to mislead voters.In tape recorded messages sent to a million homes in Texas a group called Save Texas Marriage says that amendment is so badly worded it would nullify common-law marriages.
Wednesday the conservative Liberty Legal Institute filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission. Acting for the group supporting the amendment the institute claims the phone ads were designed to "confuse voters that favor the amendment using deceptive practices." and argues the calls illegally went out to people who had registered for the National Do Not Call list.
Late Wednesday the FCC dismissed the complaint saying it does not regulate the content of political advertisements and the Do Not Call list does not apply to political campaigns.
Liberty Legal has also filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission, and The Federal Trade Commission.
Don't forget the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and FEMA, just in case. You know how sneaky those gays are.
I remain skeptical of the strategy that Save Texas Marriage is employing, but I cannot deny that it's generated a lot of coverage. If local Happy Talk TV News around the state does teasers for it with one of the breathless blowdried anchorpeople saying something like "Could your marriage be outlawed in the next election?", then I'd have to admit that they've hit the center of their target.
And two can play at the complaint-filing game. In response to a report that Rep. Warren Chisum sent out a pro-Prop 2 press release from his office in Austin, which could violate the statutory ban on the use of public funds for political advertising, BOR's Karl-T filed a complaint and "request to investigate" these actions with a special prosecutor in the Public Integrity Unit of the Travis County District Attorney's office. I'll be very interested to see how that turns out.
In my opinion, No Nonsense In November founder Glen Maxey epitomized class when he gave the following statement in a story about a pro-Porp 2 rally thrown by the KKK:
Glen Maxey, who heads anti-proposition group No Nonsense in November, said it would be unfair to assume those who support the proposition also support the Klan."It just ticks me off that people like this purport to speak for anyone, including people on the other side of the debate," said Maxey, an Austin Democrat who served several years in the Legislature as its only openly gay member.
"It's certainly not helpful," he added. "As a political consultant, I'd be drinking a stiff one right now if I had to deal with these people articulating my message."
The next time one of our friends on the Right uses the actions of some isolated knucklehead to make a claim about "the Left", show him this quote.
Finally, a little setting of expectations about the outcome:
State constitutional elections typically are low-key affairs, drawing fewer than 10 percent of voters to the polls. And because it is widely assumed the amendment will pass easily, apathy also could supress turnout, said state Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, the author of the ban.For Chisum, winning with less than 70 percent of the vote would be a disappointment.
[...]
Most states that have approved gay marriage bans have done so by overwhelming margins, including 86 percent in Mississippi. The closest outcome was in Oregon, where gay rights advocates outspent their opponents but still lost 57 percent to 43 percent.
Because turnout will be low, their superior grassroots organization favors amendment opponents, said Glen Maxey, director of the Austin-based No Nonsense In November.
"Whoever has the best ground game in this election wins," Maxey said.
Even matching Oregon's result would be a political triumph, Maxey added, creating what he called a "Paul Hacket moment."
Hacket was an anti-war Democratic candidate in Ohio who stunned the political establishment earlier this year by nearly winning a staunchly Republican congressional district.
"If we even come close, that changes people's perceptions about Texas," Maxey said.
Seventy percent versus fifty-seven percent. Who's going to come closer? Leave your guesses in the comments.
Rep. Tom DeLay has notified House officials that he failed to disclose all contributions to his legal defense fund as required by congressional rules.The fund is currently paying DeLay's legal bills in a campaign finance investigation in Texas, where DeLay has been indicted, and in a federal investigation of Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The lobbyist arranged foreign travel for DeLay and had his clients pay some of the cost.
DeLay, R-Sugar Land, has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
DeLay wrote House officials that he started an audit and it found that $20,850 contributed in 2000 and 2001 to the defense fund was not reported anywhere. An additional $17,300 was included in the defense fund's quarterly report but not in DeLay's 2000 annual financial disclosure report — a separate requirement. Other donations were understated as totaling $2,800 when the figure should have been $4,450.
House rules require quarterly reports of donations and expenditures by a lawmaker's legal defense fund. Donations exceeding $250 also must be disclosed on annual financial disclosure reports.
[...]
On Oct. 13 DeLay wrote the clerk of the House, Jeff Trandahl, that the first inkling of inconsistencies in his disclosures came last February.
"I brought this matter — which I discovered on my own — to the attention of the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to alert the chairman and ranking member," DeLay said in his letter. "Upon learning of these accounting irregularities, I immediately requested that the trust undergo a full and complete audit.
Remember, kids, Tom DeLay has a crack legal staff which has assured him that all those corporate contributions to TRMPAC were just peachy. That's the same crack legal staff which failed to catch donations to his defense fund from lobbyists as well as reporting violations by ARMPAC. Just so you know.
After a two-day hiatus, the Chron gets back in the endorsement business, as they recommend incumbents Adrian Garcia and Carol Alvarado for City Council Districts H and I, respectively. Garcia's a slamdunk, as Alvarado would have been prior to the diploma controversy. Here's how the Chron dealt with that:
Her opponent recently pointed out that Alvarado had not received the degree she claimed to have from the University of Houston, but this should not be disqualifying. University officials determined that Alvarado had earned the degree and promptly awarded it.
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this whole thing was no big deal. The fact that all it took for Alvarado to become official was to fill out some paperwork means to me that she was a graduate all along. Had she been short of credit hours, then I'd agree that she lied. If you could prove that she knew about this deficiency beforehand, it would still be a lie, but a relatively small one. As it actually is, I think the most she can be accused of is carelessness or maybe indifference to detail, and neither of those qualifies as a mortal sin in this context. Barring any subsequent revelations, I call this one a closed matter.
Back to the Chron, there's still the curious omission of City Council District A from their endorsement list, plus of course the remaining ballot propositions and the HISD/HCC trustee races. On that last score, the HISD1 race generated some news today with the following story of another candidate's carelessness.
Houston school board candidate Anne Flores Santiago told state ethics investigators last year that she helped falsify financial records to make it look as if her mother's campaign for the Texas Senate had more supporters than it really did, records show.Santiago's mother, Yolanda Navarro Flores, agreed to pay a $1,000 civil fine to the Texas Ethics Commission in July 2004 to settle the case, according to the commission's records.
Flores, a Houston Community College System board member, took out a $35,000 loan to finance her losing 2004 Democratic primary election against Mario Gallegos, the commission report says. Santiago and a campaign volunteer, however, reported that the money came from several campaign donors, including $9,000 from young members of Flores' extended family.
The report made it seem Flores had collected nearly $57,000 from donors. A corrected version later filed by Flores put the figure closer to $17,000.
"The daughter states that she filed the report electronically with the commission without telling her mother of what she and the volunteer had done," the report said.
Santiago, 38, and making her first run at elected office, said she had a limited role in the incident.
"I was simply the typist," she said, explaining that the other volunteer "gave me instructions."
"I entered data, and that was the extent," she said.
Santiago said she was unaware at the time that the information on the campaign finance report was wrong.
"I did not know," she said.
Santiago declined to answer further questions about her role in the ethics violation. She and her mother did not respond to e-mails or phone calls seeking the identity of the other campaign worker.
I have to say, I never find the Ken Lay defense strategy to be appealing. It's also mighty convenient to be able to blame the screwup on an unnamed and unavailable-for-comment campaign volunteer. Maybe Santiago was "just the typist" as she claims, which would make her sin more venal than mortal, but it's still embarrassing.
Santiago accused her political opponents — Natasha Kamrani and Richard Cantú — of leaking the Ethics Commission report to the media."I can sum it up in two words: dirty politics," Santiago said. "I'm the front-runner in this race and my opponents are getting desperate."
I find the TEC website to be almost unusably bad, so I'll just ask: Is this sort of report public information? If it is, then one could claim that any enterprising reporter could have found it and written about it unbidden by another. Can one truly "leak" data that's in the public domain?
If it's supposed to be sealed (and to be honest, I can't think of a good reason why it should be, not that this matters in Texas), then Santiago has a legitimate beef. But if it is out there where anyone with an Internet connection and/or some spare time can find it, then I say that had there been a greater interest by the press in this year's elections we might have already known about this by now.
She then leveled some accusations of her own. Of Kamrani, she said: "I didn't just register to vote 30 days ago like one of my opponents." Of Cantú, she added: "Nor did I just pay my taxes right before I signed up to run either.[...]
Kamrani said she has voted in previous Houston Independent School District board elections and in the 2004 general election last November. Her voter registration lapsed during changes in residency between 2001 and 2004, she said.
"I just moved into a new house," Kamrani said.
Cantú acknowledged that he and his wife missed the deadline for paying their property taxes, but he said they paid before any lawyers got involved.
"Occasionally we'll pay during the penalty period," he said. "Like most middle-income folks living paycheck-to-paycheck ... (But) I always make sure that our taxes are paid up."
Harris County property tax records show Cantú paid the taxes on his home by the January deadline but waited until June to pay taxes on two other pieces of property. That cost him more than $200 in penalties and interest, but he was never considered delinquent. Cantú began collecting political donations a month later, records show.
Not being registered to vote is an unflattering thing for any aspiring candidate. When or if Kamrani voted between 2001 and 2004 should be verifiable - the Vo and Heflin attorneys certainly knew who to interview earlier this year for that race's election contest - as should the date that her registration lapsed and how long it took to get fixed. Without that information, this strikes me as a pretty weak charge.
Likewise, if Cantu was late but not delinquent, then this too is a relatively minor thing. Color me unimpressed at Santiago's counteraccusations. I can be convinced that she was an unwitting wrongdoer for the TEC thing, but this doesn't enhance my opinion of her.
Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination for the Supreme Court.
In her letter dated today, Miers said she was concerned that the confirmation process "would create a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country."She noted that members of the Senate had indicated their intention to seek documents about her service in the White House in order to judge whether to support her nomination to the Supreme Court. "I have been informed repeatedly that in lieu of records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy," she wrote.
"While I believe that my lengthy career provides sufficient evidence for consideration of my nomination, I am convinced the efforts to obtain Executive Branch materials and information will continue."
All I want to know is, will the Senate be as adamant about asking the next nominee questions as they were Miers? Because if they aren't, this whole thing was a complete waste of time.
Father John has a number of links to stories about the current state of Health and Human Services privatization in Texas and how the influx of Katrina victims has affected their delivery of services. Two items to highlight, the first from Carlos Guerra:
Texas "point-of-time" enrollment figures for children receiving Medicaid indicate that almost 17,000 fewer children were covered in September than in August.How is this possible, I asked José Camacho, head of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers, whose 52 member groups serve 560,000 people.
"Yes, we started getting reports of folks that had been on Medicaid, and they reapplied and got a rejection letter," he said, before explaining that for children to be "recertified" for Medicaid, their parents must go through a face-to-face interview conducted by a certified state worker.
When the throngs of temporary Texans arrived, each of them also had to undergo a face-to-face interview, as required by law, to receive food stamps, so the remaining state eligibility workers were dispatched to help them.
The result was that when many parents seeking to renew their kids' Medicaid applied, they were, of necessity, put off. "Even if they filled out the form, if it wasn't entered (by a state worker), they didn't reapply," Camacho said.
This result of having fewer workers is, of course, a feature and not a bug. Fewer workers means less throughput on Medicaid renewals, which means the state has to spend less on this costly benefit. Say what you want about HB2292, there was a certain logic to it.
Item two is from the Austin Chronicle:
Based on a job-recruitment advertisement placed by one of the companies sub-contracted to provide a telephone eligibility "call center" in Midland, the prospective operators would be paid a starting wage of $8 an hour. At that rate (about $1,280 a month, gross), a single parent with one child, or a single-income family of three, would be eligible for food stamps. And should the company not provide affordable health insurance (as is likely), their new employees would also be eligible for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.[...]
Under this new system, the new state workers hired at these sub-living wages will themselves be able to administer their own applications for food stamps, Medicaid, and CHIP. They can interview themselves, review their own meagre pay stubs, determine their own levels of eligibility, and sign and hand-deliver their own approval letters – saving an envelope and a stamp in the bargain.
Now that's what I call eliminating the middleman!
Like I said, a certain logic.
On a semi-related side note, a task force of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, including Joseph Fiorenza, Archbishop of the Houston/Galveston archdiocese, has called upon federal leaders to not give aid to Katrina victims at the expense of existing services for the poor.
"It would be wrong to cut essential food, housing and health care for the poor while the rest of us make no real sacrifice and, in fact, benefit from recent tax cuts," the letter states.The letter noted the role of Catholic organizations and other non-government agencies to house, feed and provide medical care to victims.
But it also emphasized that these groups can't fix the problems alone.
"The efforts of those motivated by compassion and charity in responding to the hurricanes' devastation, while essential, cannot take the place of a strong federal commitment to just public policies and wise public investment," the letter states.
Their letter was sent to every member of the US House of Representatives, but I think there's a pretty clear relationship to what's going on with THHSC as well.
What a bummer. I'll have more later, but for now, there's no definition of the word "unsuccessful" that accurately describes this season for the Astros. They have nothing to be ashamed of, and they have every right to be proud of themselves no matter how badly they may feel now. Until the day that they do win a World Series, 2005 is and will be the best year in their history. Congratulations to the White Sox for their historic win, and congratulations to the Astros for their historic season.
Houston Comets star Sheryl Swoopes has outed herself in a magazine article.
"My reason for coming out isn't to be some sort of hero," Swoopes said in an interview that appears in the current issue of ESPN The Magazine. "I'm just at a point in my life where I'm tired of having to pretend to be somebody I'm not."I'm tired of having to hide my feelings about the person I care about. About the person I love. Male athletes of my caliber probably feel like they have a lot more to lose than gain (by coming out). I don't agree with that. To me, the most important thing is happiness."
In the ESPN magazine article, Swoopes said she has been involved in a same-sex relationship with former Comets assistant coach Alisa Scott since shortly after divorcing Eric Jackson, her high-school sweetheart and husband of three years, in 1999.
According to the ESPN article, the 34-year-old Swoopes is the most recognizable athlete, male or female, to come out in a team sport. In September, Swoopes became the first WNBA player to be named MVP for a third time.
According to this AP wire story, Swoopes has denied that being gay was the reason for the breakup of her marriage. Though she certainly is the highest-profile team sport player to come out, she's not the first such WNBA player; to the best of my knowledge, that would be former New York Liberty center Sue Wicks.
Comets coach Van Chancellor said he had been aware of Swoopes' impending announcement for several days. He refused to comment or speculate about how the announcement might affect Swoopes' future in the WNBA."I've coached Swoopes for nine years for the Houston Comets as well as with the (USA Basketball) national team," Chancellor said. "What she does in her personal life is her own decision.
"I respect everything about Sheryl, how she's handled herself on and off the court. To me, she will always be one of the greatest ambassadors for the game of women's basketball and as a person has helped me win four (WNBA) championships and two gold medals."
Speaking as a five-year Comets season-ticket holder, I predict Swoopes will get a big ovation the first time she steps on the court next year. The fans love her, and I just don't see too many of them objecting to this. And yes, the gay and lesbian community of Houston makes up a sizeable portion of the Comets' fan base. She'll do just fine here.
An interesting question will be how her revelation will affect any endorsement deals she currently has.
She was named [NCAA] National Player of the Year [in 1993] and became the first female to have a basketball sneaker manufactured (by Nike) under her autograph.
The things that made Sheryl Swoopes attractive to advertisers before she came out are still true today: Great athlete, respected by all in the game, star-power personality, and good looking to boot. I don't know what kind of endorsements she's doing these days, but I'll be very interested to see if any companies drop her. She's apparently added at least one new deal, a lesbian cruise line (whose name makes me chuckle), according to Women's Hoops.
Mechelle Voepel has a long and thoughtful piece about what Swoopes' announcement may mean for other, currently closeted, athletes and coaches. The whole thing is worth your time to read, but I found this at the end to be especially poignant:
[T]here is the question of how Swoopes' story will be received in Lubbock, Texas, home of Texas Tech and some of the most loyal and knowledgeable women's basketball fans in the world. It's just as dumb to suggest that everyone in Lubbock has a problem with homosexuality as it is to say that everyone in New York City has no problem with it. However, Lubbock is a place one would describe as conservative, to use, admittedly, a stereotype.Swoopes is a legend in Lubbock more than anywhere else; she brought the university national recognition and always will be one of the most important people in the school's history. Texas Tech fans genuinely love her, though some will feel very conflicted about her story.
But I think most of them, even if they don't understand or totally accept Swoopes' story, are people who believe we should live and let live. They might still vote for any and all measures to ban gay marriage, but they'd give Swoopes a sincere hug if they saw her.
I've got no business turning Sheryl Swoopes into a rallying point for a political movement. I do hope, however, that a few of the people who love her for what she did for Texas Tech in 1993 will be thinking about her as they step into the voting booth next month.
Hey, remember that blue ribbon panel that Governor Perry announced last month to figure out what to do with school finance? It's been five weeks since John Sharp was named its chair, and he's hard at work talking to editorial boards around the state. What is it that he isn't doing? Holding meetings with the other members of the panel. And why is that?
Sharp, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, emphasized that he wasn't yet speaking for the committee, whose other members still haven't been named but may be announced this week by the governor.
Well, that would be an impediment, though on the bright side it ought to make booking a meeting room easier. One does wonder why Sharp is so lonely these days, since it's not like Governor Perry hasn't had time to do other stuff.
Since Rick Perry has named John Sharp to the school tax panel, he's made a ton of other appointments:
- He’s appointed 7 members to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy.
- He’s appointed 5 people to the Texas Medical Board.
- He’s appointed 2 people to the Texas Commission of Licensing and Regulation.
- And he’s appointed people to the Texas Growth Fund Board of Directors, the 11th Court of Appeals, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, the Texas Small Business Industrial Development Corporation, and the Texas Economic Development Corporation.
Ah, it's just school finance. No big deal. And you know, I remember a Dilbert cartoon in which Scott Adams postulated that the collective IQ of any committee drops five points for each additional member. So maybe I'm just not thinking outside the box here.
Sharp said the committee, which will include about 12 members, both Republicans and Democrats, and mostly from the business community, won't try to write a new school finance plan or tell the Legislature how much to spend on education.
Oh, well.
Another month, another fifty-state report by SurveyUSA on Senator popularity. Our senior member stays in the top half of the Senate with a 58% approve/35% disapprove tally. You can see her tracking numbers here, where the most notable thing is a slow but steady climb in her negatives, and the population splits here. Note that she's a fair amount more popular than John Cornyn, and notice also that both of them are in negative territory among Hispanics. Just a guess here, but I'd say that KBH's recent silliness on immigration has taken a toll on her, with perhaps a spillover effect onto Cornyn, who has publicly distanced himself from her idea of using local police as volunteer immigration enforcement.
On that score, it's a few days old, but this op-ed in the Marshall News Messenger is pretty cutting.
While we agree with most of what Sen. Hutchison proposes, this is one of those ideas that sounds good, but is actually terrible.We hope she takes a second look at the pitfalls and decides to pull it back for further review. Then maybe it will get lost in a desk drawer.
[...]
[O]ur police are busy enough. Period. While we acknowledge that there are not enough INS agents to keep out the flood of illegal aliens, asking already over-worked police officers to do the job isn't the answer.
Not only that, but it heaps the cost of such enforcement on local governments. Much of this cost would be "unseen," but it would still be there.
When an officer is doing the work of the INS, he isn't doing the work of guarding against crime that endangers our citizens.
[...]
Then there is the question of just where the illegal aliens would be kept while we are waiting for them to be picked up by INS.
If every police force in the nation were to begin arresting these people, the back-up would be tremendous.
We could wind up holding deportees for days, weeks or even months before they were taken from us. And just who would pay for those medical bills while in our custody?
It is possible that the INS would reimburse the counties for holding the prisoners (we wouldn't suggest counting on that), but that would not help us in Harrison County where our jail is already so overcrowded that we have to send our prisoners elsewhere.
This is a bad bill that many will support for emotional and pure political reasons, but when logic is applied, it simply doesn't make any sense. It should be disposed of as quickly as possible.
Via the ACLU Liberty blog and Grits.
She also gets deservedly slapped around by the Chron for her idiotic perjury isn't really a crime remarks.
One cannot pick and choose when a charge is justified. Lying to investigators and grand juries is not a technicality. Our system of law depends on the ability of law enforcement to get at the truth, both in interviews with investigators and in sworn testimony in court. The penalties can be personally devastating and often do not hinge on other crimes. Former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros continues to be dogged by a decade-long investigation set off by his admitted lies to FBI agents vetting him for a Cabinet post about how much money he had paid a former mistress, an act that was not a crime.If Hutchison found perjury and obstruction reason enough to throw a president out of office, surely those offenses would be sufficient cause to charge people if they obstructed a probe of a potential violation of national security laws. The unmasking of a covert CIA operative can have life and death consequences for previous associates met over the years in countries around the world.
Public officials such as Sen. Hutchison do not enhance their stature when they seem to support one standard of justice for officials of the opposing party and another for their own. What was good for the Democratic goose in the Clinton impeachment trial should be good enough for the Republican gander in the Plame investigation.
And today the Express News joins in.
Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, speaking Sunday on "Meet the Press," appeared to offer a preview of administration strategy if indictments come.She said, "I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment ... that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality."
That is extremely disappointing coming from Hutchison because perjury is not a technicality. It is lying under oath.
It also sharply varies from her comments in 1999 when the topic concerned perjury and testimony by then-President Bill Clinton.
According to the Washington Post, she said, "I don't want there to be any lessening of the standard (regarding obstruction of justice and perjury). Because our system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
Hutchison was right then. She is wrong now.
Nice to know that some people haven't forgotten all the high dudgeon they got themselves into back in the late 90s.
I sometimes think that the main reason Kay Bailey Hutchison is so widely considered to be a popular moderate is because for the first eight years of her career she had Phil Gramm out in front of her hogging up all the spotlight. The more we see, the less there is to like.
Two side notes to mention: Eye on Williamson on how KBH gets treated differently in the media, and a little press coverage on Barbara Radnofsky, who critiques KBH's immigration plan.
For the second consecutive day, there are no endorsements in the Chron's op-ed pages (though there is the anticipated Rosa Parks obituary), which leads me to wonder if they've done all the endorsing they plan to do. Why that would be, and why they've skipped these particular races and propositions, are mysteries to me.
For example, the Express News has offered a recommendation on all nine propositions - you can see seven of them here, with the two others here and here. The Morning News has a concise summary of all of its recommendations here. The Statesman did an all-in-one piece almost two weeks ago. That's not so hard, is it? I mean, sure, there's city elections in Houston and not in these other places, but Dallas has over a dozen city propositions on its ballot, and the DMN has reviewed all of them by now. So where is the Chronicle?
Well, at least we're still getting race coverage. Today's piece is on the two contested HISD trustee races, one of which will be on my ballot.
Trustee Karla Cisneros' decision not to seek re-election in District 1 set up the three-way match for her seat, and the outcome could change the board's ethnic makeup.A win by Anne Flores Santiago or Richard Cantú would give Hispanics three of HISD's nine school board seats. More than half of HISD's 210,000 students are Hispanic. Cisneros is Anglo and married to a Hispanic.
The current board comprises four whites, three blacks and two Hispanics.
Cisneros has endorsed Natasha Kamrani, a 37-year-old lawyer who came to Houston from Ohio 15 years ago as a Teach for America corps member teaching Spanish-speaking students at Edison Middle School.
Her husband, Chris Barbic, runs the YES College Prep charter schools.
Kamrani said she would push to improve HISD's middle schools and support policies aimed at preparing all high school graduates for college.
Santiago, 38, wants to expand an HISD partnership with the Houston Community College System that allows high school students to earn college credits. Too many HISD students are graduating without basic skills, she said.
"We need to make sure our students can read and write when they graduate from high school," Santiago said at a recent candidates' forum. Santiago owns a private ambulance service and her mother, Yolanda Navarro Flores, is a member of the community college board. She is endorsed by HISD Trustee Diana Dávila, the wife of HCCS board member Abel Dávila.
Cantú, 36, runs Mayor Bill White's Citizens' Assistance Office and is the only District 1 candidate who has sought a school board seat before. He has promised to make teacher pay raises and HISD's high dropout rate his top priorities.
He is endorsed by HISD's main teachers union, the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Cantu said he supports HISD's partnership with Project GRAD, a non-profit group that promises $4,000 college scholarships to graduates from certain low-income schools. The organization requires the schools it supports to use its teaching methods and strict disciplinary practices. HISD trustees this year cut Project GRAD's budget by $1 million amid concerns from some administrators that the organization hasn't delivered strong enough results.
Cisneros has endorsed Kamrani, who is definitely the favorite choice in my neighborhood. I'll have more on this shortly, but in the meantime I'll point you to Kamrani's website so you can learn more about her, and to my previous Q&A session with Cantu.
Finally, the tireless Sal Costello has a pointer to more video of him disputing pro-Prop 1 assertions. Eye on Williamson has more on yesterday's Costello video, plus a plea to help No Nonsense In November in that county.
UPDATE: Forgot to note that BOR has some information on statewide coverage of the Save Texas Marriage effort, and that Jonathan Ichikawa was way ahead of the curve on this one.
This article on Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson is interesting, but ultimately doesn't tell us a whole lot about the famously publicity-shy cartoonist that we haven't read elsewhere. With one exception:
Bill Watterson, 47, hasn't made a public appearance since he delivered the commencement speech in 1990 at his alma mater, Kenyon College. But he recently welcomed some written questions from fans to promote the Oct. 4 release of the three-volume "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes," which contains every one of the 3,160 strips printed during its 10-year run.Among his revelations:
• He reads newspaper comics, but doesn't consider this their golden age.
• He's never attended any church.
• He's currently interested in art from the 1600s.
None of those facts are particularly compelling to me, but I can't tell you how much I wish I'd known about this in time to submit a question of my own. What I'd have asked him is "Are you aware of all those damned peeing Calvin stickers out there, and would it have killed you to have done something to protect your copyright?" Because I'd sure like to know the answer to that.
UPDATE: According to two commenters so far, Watterson has said that he's aware of the peeing Calvin stickers and has made some efforts to stop them, but as they're made and sold by a zillion tiny distributors, there's no easy way to do that. Fair enough. I think what I wanted from him as far as protecting his copyright goes would have been to actually take a louder and more public stance about this phenomenon. Use the fact that he's the creator of one of the best-loved comic strips of all time to tell everybody that he doesn't like these stickers and wished people wouldn't make, sell, or buy them. Who knows, maybe doing so early on, especially when the likeness of Calvin in these things was so apparent you could tell which individual strip it was taken from, would have killed this industry in its infancy. I guess what bugs me is that I've never seen a direct statement from Watterson about this, and I've always interpreted that as indifference on his part. I'm glad to hear that he really does care, but I sure do wish that fact were more widely known.
Crap. Only good thing I can think of to say is that I gave up and went to bed after the ninth.
One question: I know she was cute and all, but why did the Fox cameras keep focusing on that one brunette White Sox fan? Or did I just answer my own question?
Last chance tonight, Astros. Nothing to lose at this point, so let it all hang out.
If only I had such sway over the Chronicle's editorial page! Thanks for the egoboo and all, but I've never even gotten them to print one of my letters to the editor. Believe me, if they were taking orders from me they'd have finished all of their endorsements by now.
Sedosi's complaint here is that the Chron doesn't have an op-ed on the passing of Rosa Parks. Far as I can tell, the editorials there generally lag the news cycle by a day or two. While I agree that it would be nice to see them be more on top of things, I think it's a little unfair to single them out without at least a cursory check of what the other major papers are opining on. With that in mind:
- The top editorial at the Morning News has to do with sanctions on Syria, with secondary pieces on Ben Bernanke and teaching kids about the evils of drugs.
- At the Star-Telegram, they're weighing in on cancelling proms, a tax increment financing district, and more kudos for Ben Bernanke.
- The Express News tells us to support the McCain anti-torture bill and to vote for Prop 7, while also counseling NBA players to accept a dress code.
- Last but not least we have the Statesman, which turns out to be the only paper eulogizing Rosa Parks on its editorial page. (They also lionize Ben Bernanke, which makes me wonder who all these papers have been listening to and why the Chron didn't get that particular memo. I will admit, though, that "Bush hires competent non-crony for important job" is a topic worth remarking on.)
So five major papers, and one editorial obit for Rosa Parks, with many other pieces commenting on older stories. I feel certain that by Thursday, at least four of the five will have said something about Ms. Parks. As well they should remember a true American hero, who deserves to be commemorated from coast to coast. All I'm saying is that if it's a crime for the Chron not to have done it today, they had their share of accomplices.
Last month, the idea of Harris County selling off the financial interest in its toll road network to a private firm was first publicly floated. At the time, a feasability study was proposed, with an October 25 deadline for Dick Raycraft, director of county management services, to report back on just what would be studied. Well, today's the 25th:
Commissioners Court is expected today to give the go-ahead to a comprehensive study that will determine whether it is in the public's and the county's interest to fully or partially privatize the toll road. The plan calls for the county to ask selected investment banks to submit proposals about the toll road's future.The court also will consider whether it should create a working group that will help review proposals about the toll road's future.
The study will consider which of the following options is best for the toll road users, the county and its long-term financial stability.
The county could:
•Keep the toll-road authority as is.
•Sell parts or all of the system to a private firm or to a partnership between a private firm, the county and a newly created regional mobility organization. Such a sale might net $2.7 billion to $4.4 billion, concluded First Southwest Co., the county's financial adviser.
•Or it could lease the right to operate the system for 50 to 75 years to a private firm or to a partnership between a private firm, county and the regional group. Such a deal could net the county $2 billion to $7 billion, according to investment banks.
Under a public-private partnership, the county could hold no more than a 49 percent interest. A private firm and a regional mobility organization would control the remaining 51 percent.
The organization, [Harris County Judge Robert] Eckels said, would include members appointed by Harris County, surrounding counties and Gov. Rick Perry.
Commissioner Sylvia Garcia said, "The study will explore our options and look at what the future of the toll-road authority ought to be. We would be remiss in our responsibility not to look at this."
Robin Holzer, who outlined the reasons why this is a bad idea when it first came up (there's a lot more discussion on that link after her piece, so do click the link and read it all), explains it again in shorter form:
"Many, many members of our organization are concerned the accountability will be less if the toll roads are run by a private company," said Robin Holzer, chair of the Citizens Transportation Coalition.[...]
Holzer said private firms want to operate the toll road because they know that they can make money on top of whatever was required to be paid to the county. She wondered why the county just doesn't make the money itself rather than give a private firm a cut of its take.
"I am skeptical that the deal makes financial sense. Some people will be tempted by the thought, 'Hey, we can have money now instead of later,' " she said.
The subsequent discussion of Robin's initial analysis of this led me to this interesting perspective on what may be to come:
County Toll Road Authority director Mike Strech tells us impetus for the study comes from an unsolicited offer by Goldman Sachs to the county received about a month back. Goldman Sachs have proposed a longterm franchise in return for a franchise fee of $7b.Goldman Sachs made a proposal about five years ago which was rejected by the county.
There's a report in Bond Buyer magazine quoting Edwin Harrison, the county's chief investment officer as saying that Lehman Bros, UBS and Citigroup have also said there should be no trouble getting a sum like $7b for a toll franchise.
First Southwest in a preliminary report for the county is reported in the local press as saying a franchise could bring in a net $2b to $5b after defeasing county debt of $1.8b.
However a First Southwest guy told us that so far all they have had is general conversations with Harris County officials. Any numbers they have given were very rough back of the envelop calculations of the order of magnitude. To get a good grip on the subject they would need to do a proper study. He said there are many alternatives that could be considered:
* sale to another government agency
* formation of a regional mobility authority
* an initial public offering in which the authority is converted into a publicly held and traded company
* a longterm toll concession granted after competitive bids
"There are a lot of options," he said "and obviously we hope we will be hired to help the county explore them. We have a lot of experience here and we know these toll roads."
Yes, I'm sure they're oh so eager to help the county out. Someone remind me to look into recent campaign contributions made by whoever wins this consulting gig once it happens.
Finally, since the article mentions "Spanish toll company Cintra" (also known as a main player in the Trans Texas Corridor), here's just a little reminder of what meeting the new boss may mean:
In Chicago, Cintra took over the Chicago Skyway, a 7-mile bridge, late last year. The city, which built the bridge in the 1950s, was paid $1.8 billion for 99 years.Before the documents were signed, Cintra and its partners, doing business as Skyway Concession, announced that the $2 toll would increase to $2.50 for cars and up to $11.80 for trucks.
"Everybody agrees the tollway needs money for repairs ... but to increase it by that much is shocking," said Bob Stranczek, president of Chicago-area Cresco Lines, which specializes in hauling steel. "Most of us operate under 1 to 3 percent profit margins. We don't have the money to pay these fees."
Don't say you weren't warned.
Tonight will feature the first World Series game ever played in the state of Texas, and what is Major League Baseball talking about? Whether or not the Astros must open the roof on Minute Maid Park.
Major League Baseball officials say they, and not the Astros, will have final word on whether the retractable roof at Minute Maid Park will be open for tonight's Game 3 against the Chicago White Sox.Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said Monday the league will have control of the roof and prefers keep it open, weather permitting. Forecasters are predicting clear skies and 62 degrees at first pitch, with temperatures falling into the mid-50s during the game.
"MLB controls the postseason, certainly the World Series," Selig said. "We really haven't gotten heavily involved in the debate. Our position is that we want teams to do what they do during the regular season.
"If, say, 80 degrees is the cutoff during the regular season, that's what it should be in the postseason. I don't want it to become a farce. Let's say it's 72 degrees. Why wouldn't the roof be open? Why do you have a retractable roof in the first place?"
Because it's their stadium and they have the final say over it for every other game, including games in the first two postseason rounds, which MLB supposedly controls? Because the Astros are 36-17 with the roof closed but only 15-11 with it open, and when you're down 0-2 you need all the home-field advantage you can get? Because they may possibly know more about what their fans would want than you would? I'm just saying.
Rob Matwick, the Astros' senior vice president for ballpark operations and customer service, said the top concerns during the regular season are the threat of precipitation and the temperature."The No. 1 decision-maker probably ends up being the chance of rain in the summer," he said. "If the rain chance is 60, 70 percent, we'll err on the side of caution and stay closed. From there, heat and humidity and the heat index-type numbers are the criteria we would look at."
Matwick said the typical rule of thumb during the summer is the roof will be closed if the temperature is 85 degrees or above at scheduled first pitch for a night game.
"Our only experience with cold is during the College Classic (a baseball tournament in February), and we've played Classic games in the bright sunshine and roof closed just because it's too cold," Matwick said.
For what it's worth, I attended a College Classic game a couple of years back, on a night that dipped into the low 50s or maybe high 40s. Since the day had started out as sunny and warm as today's is now, I didn't give a whole lot of thought to bringing sufficiently warm clothing for the game that night, and as a result I was not as comfortable as I would have liked. Any fans who are going straight to the game after work and who didn't think to bring their sweaters will regret it. Maybe that would be their fault for not thinking ahead, but especially if they assumed the roof would be closed as it usually is it would also be a shame.
Meanwhile, the Chron recalls the referendum that led to the construction of EnronMinute Maid. I supported this at the time, based mostly on a belief in the economic power of new stadia which I now know to be almost completely false. I do think there was and is value in building this stadium, and I agree with Mayorbob Lanier when he says that there'd be a lot fewer opponents of its construction, at least if you were to do a poll right this very minute. That said, I couldn't recommend these deals with a straight face any more. Maybe a partial public funding arrangement - it would depend on who pays how much and what the public got back out of it - but on the whole this wasn't worth it.
I did get a chuckle out of local gadfly/stadium opponent Barry Klein's demonstration of how not to win hearts and minds:
[I]sn't he excited that the Astros are in the World Series?"I'm entirely ambivalent," Klein said.
"I'm pleased when the team is doing well, but I'm content when they lose because I know the local establishment is gloating, and I'd prefer they not be in that mood."
Boy, that'll sure get the masses flocking to your side.
Finally, the Orange Show notes that the traditional intra-city bet on the Series outcome has a distinctly Houston twist to it this year. From a press release I received:
As Mayor White continues his tireless work to keep Houston moving, he is including an official entry in Everyones Art Car Parade, the world's largest and oldest Art Car Parade, in the traditional bet between the two cities participating in the World Series. Mayor Daley bet some of Chicago's signature items such as hot dogs and a giant cheesecake. Mayor White is offering an experience that no other city can offer - an official entry in the city's proud display of mobile works of art produced by the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, Everyones Art Car Parade!The Houston Astros play the first ever World Series game in Texas on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2005. A grand collection of Art Cars will drive around Minute Maid Park beginning at 4 pm to celebrate this historic occasion.
"While we are always rooting for more entries in the world's largest and oldest Art Car parade, this is one entry we are rooting against with all of our collective might," said Susanne Theis, Executive Director of the Orange Show Center for Visionary. "We're confident that the Astros will win the World Series and ensure that Chicago does not have an official entry in Everyones Art Car Parade. Houstonians will be overjoyed to see Art Cars welcome the World Series to Texas and even more excited to see a Houston Astros World Series Champions Art Car rolling in the parade on Saturday, May 13, 2006!" added parade director Kim Stoilis.
Many Houstonians remember the playoff wager that involved David Letterman and then Houston Mayor Kathy Whitmire during the 1986 playoffs against the New York Mets. The Astros lost the hard fought series forcing Kathy Whitmire to display a giant photo of Mets leftfielder Mookie Wilson in her office for an entire year.
Mookie Wilson! Man, I'd forgotten about that bet. Bet that pic would be worth a few bucks on eBay now.
There may not be any endorsements today, but there's still some local election news, starting with this piece on City Council At Large #1 and its frontrunner, Peter Brown. I just want to point out this bit of muddled thinking from candidate Roy Morales:
Morales said he doesn't support the position of Mayor Bill White and the Police Department that immigration enforcement should be handled by federal authorities. He said the city should work with them to enforce the laws, including detaining undocumented people to await deportation, but it shouldn't use racial profiling."We've got to think all this out," he said, adding that the city should seek solutions with county and federal authorities. "We owe it to our citizens to try," he said.
You could start by telling us how you would pay for all this extra police work as well as the facilities needed to store the undocumented folks they pick up. Adding in a little bit about how a cop on the beat can tell who's a legal resident and who's not without harassing a bunch of citizens and documented visitors would be nice, too.
Over in District I, the Alvarado Diploma Dustup gets a second day in the news cycle.
UH Communications Director Eric Gerber on Monday said he was prohibited by privacy laws from providing detailed information about Alvarado. But he released a statement saying that in 1999, numerous UH requirements for a bachelor of arts degree were revised. The writing proficiency exam was dropped."Since that time, students who had enrolled under earlier degree plans have been allowed to petition to waive this obsolete requirement," Gerber said in the statement. "Such requirements are routinely approved."
I presume he meant "such requests are routinely approved", but whatever. There's nothing in here that alters my belief that Carol Alvarado could plausibly have thought she'd jumped through all the hoops to get her diploma. Perhaps she should have known, and perhaps she should have been more careful, but completing the coursework for a degree and claiming to have one is still in my book not the same level of offense as not completing the coursework but still claiming the degree. Voters can certainly see it differently, but to me this is not a resignation-worthy infraction. Greg and Dos Centavos have further thoughts.
For whatever the reason, the Chron has taken the day off from endorsing anyone or anything today, despite the fact that there are still a handful of Constitutional amendments, three contested City Council races, and HISD/HCC trustee races to be discussed. I really really wish I knew what their schedule was for all this.
So we'll look elsewhere today, and a good place to start is with the Swanky Conservative and his principled reasons for voting against Prop 2. I don't share all of the tenets that brought him to his decision, but when differing perspectives lead to the same righteous conclusion, it shows the strength of that conclusion. Check it out.
I see that the announcement about Save Texas Marriage is in the news. I've said about all I have to say about this tactic, so I'll just note how painfully amusing it is to see Kelly Shackleford, who hasn't uttered one honest word during the entire debate over Prop 2, complain about deceptive practices. If there's one person in the state of Texas who's qualified to comment on deceptiveness, it's Kelly Shackleford, who adds to his legend in this piece by falsely accusing some Save Texas Marriage proponents of being phony clergy members.
Well, there's also this:
Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, who authored the amendment, called the group's assertion "ludicrous" and said no legal scholar could possibly agree that Proposition 2 could negate traditional marriages."It's just crazy," said Chisum, who has long championed measures to block same-sex marriage in Texas. "This is politics at its lowest level here. They're just trying to scare people."
That would be the same brilliant legal scholar Warren Chisum who claims that not adopting Prop 2 would lead to legalized polygamy. As with Shackleford and baloney, if there's a Grand Poobah of Invoking Boogeymen For Political Gain, it's Warren Chisum.
On other subjects, David Van Os has joined the "just vote No" coalition. I expect to vote No on most of them, but I'm still working my way through it all, and while I can't think of any amendment whose defeat I would mourn, I'm not prepared to say they should all die just yet.
Toll road opponent Sal Costello has a story with video in which he argues against Prop 9. He also points to two editorials that advocate No votes on Props 1 and 9.
Finally, I promised to give my own endorsements today, but I'm not ready yet. Hopefully, I'll have them written by tomorrow.
Judge B.B. Schraub has named retired Judge C.W. Duncan to determine if Judge Bob Perkins is fit to judge Tom DeLay. Got all that?
Duncan, a senior district judge from Bell County who sometimes continues to serve as a visiting judge, will hear DeLay's complaint that Perkins, a Democrat, should step aside because he donated $400 to the Democratic National Committee and $310 to the Texas Democratic Party after DeLay's co-defendants were first indicted last fall. He has also given money to other Democratic groups in recent years.A hearing on the matter will be at 10 a.m. Nov. 1 in the 331st District Court in Austin.
[...]
Last week DeLay's lawyers urged Perkins to step aside as well. Perkins asked B.B. Schraub, the presiding judge of the 3rd Administrative Judicial District, to settle the issue. Schraub, a Seguin Republican, also had given money to Republican candidates. On Monday, he tapped Duncan, a member of a longtime Bell County family, who apparently has a reputation for being nonpolitical.
"I don't remember him ever being very political," said Nancy Boston of the Bell County Republican Party.
Write that down for when Team DeLay begins its next slime campaign.
On the Karmic Balance scale, DeLay's desire to challenge every little thing in court is apparently conflicting with his desire to hold onto his power in the House.
DeLay and his attorneys are faced with a dilemma. The former majority leader needs to win the case quickly to get his job back, while his lawyers need to do everything they can - which includes filing motions that could potentially slow the case - to acquit their client.[...]
The number of pretrial motions filed in the case is consistent with the number of pretrial motions filed in other big cases, according to legal experts in Texas. Whether they slow the eventual case is up to the individual judge who rules on them, though.
"If these [motions] are going to be seriously pursued there is a lot to be resolved," said George Dix, a law professor at the University of Texas who has written a six-volume series on criminal procedure in that state.
Of the motions already filed in this case, DeGuerin's challenge of the grand jury process - in particular, his charge that Earle coerced a ruling from jurors during one of the closed-door hearings - could take the most time to resolve, Dix said, because it is a significant procedural question that could require its own separate trial.
[...]
"I'd be very surprised to see this case go to trial before December," said Joe Turner, Colyandro's Austin-based attorney, who attended the hearing on Friday.
Colyandro and Ellis, of course, are pursuing a different time-consuming scheme, which is a challenge to the constitutionality of the law under which they were arrested. They've already lost one round, but appeals are underway and the final destination, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is likely months in the future.
And finally, here's the best photoshopped DeLay mug shot I've seen yet. It's not quite a 10 - add a pack of smokes rolled up in his shirtsleeve and it might get there - but it's at least a 9.5. Well done.
It's preview time at Texas Monthly again, and for your reading pleasure for the usual limited time only is this fine piece by Patricia Kilday Hart on the history and effects of the tort "reform" movement in Texas. If you think the passage of Prop 12 from 2003 meant they had no more courtrooms to blockade, you're sadly mistaken, as were some of the poor saps who voted for Prop 12 and now find themselves screwed by it. Read it and weep.
Rosa Parks, American hero, died today at the age of 92.
Parks inspired the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955.Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a young Baptist preacher, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery. (Full story)
Parks, a seamstress, facing regular threats and having lost her job, moved from Alabama to Michigan in 1957.
She joined the staff of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, in 1965, championing civil liberties. Parks later earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal.
Conyers, who first met Parks during the early days of the civil rights struggle, said Parks died in Detroit Monday evening.
"I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights movement, has left an impact not just on the nation, but on the world," he told CNN in a telephone interview. "She was a real apostle of the non-violence movement."
Conyers said Parks worked on his original congressional staff when he first was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.
He remembered her as someone who never raised her voice -- an eloquent voice of the civil rights movement.
"You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene -- just a very special person," he said, adding that "there was only one" Rosa Parks.
Rest in peace, Rosa Parks.
There's a new website up called Save Texas Marriage, which makes the claim that Proposition 2 is so poorly worded that it would actually outlaw all marriages in the state of Texas. I can't say I think much of this argument - among other things, if this were the case, someone might have thought to mention in before now. You can visit the site and see for yourself what they have to say, but for my money, this is the kind of case I'd like to see made against Prop 2.
Some Dallas-area business owners believe the marriage amendment, should it pass, will hamper the state's business growth."If you are sitting at Stanford in the midst of a progressive culture that accepts you whether you are Indian, Asian or gay and see Texas -- what kind of message are you sending to (prospective) employees? That you only accept ... straight (employees)? That you don't accept people for who they are," said Frank McGovern, founder and president of Dallas-based Quality Telephone Inc., a telephone service provider.
Austin attorney Anne Wynne of Ikard Wynne Ratliff L.L.P. said marriage amendments passed in other states have affected domestic-partner benefits, even causing attorneys to argue that domestic violence laws no longer apply to heterosexual, unmarried couples.
[...]
Mary Mason, chairwoman of the board of directors for Missing Lynx, a San Ramon, Calif.-based software company, says the company aborted its plans to move to Ohio after that state passed an amendment banning gay marriage.
It was the last straw for about half of the company's 20 employees who were already wavering on moving for other reasons, including cold weather.
"Some of our employees are gay or have gay members in their family," she said.
Mason said that Missing Lynx still plans to expand in a new city, and Austin is one of the contenders. But Mason adds that a marriage amendment would discourage the company from looking more closely at Texas.
Tech businesses "are all being courted by Galveston and Austin, who are looking to bring in high-tech development," Mason said. "They are talking nice, but I can't get the people I need to move there.
"Part of what I've found is that people who can think creatively and can do this kind of work need a tolerant environment," Mason said. "Texas will wind up looking un-American, intolerant and very foolish."
There are many very real and tangible harms that Prop 2 will cause if it passes. I'd rather talk about that, because that's what matters. I'm not sure where the idea for Save Texas Marriage came from, but I don't buy it and I don't think the voters will, either. Story link via By the Bayou.
Well, we may or may not ever get back to the contested races in City Council districts A, H, and I, but it does at least appear that we'll get a recommendation on all the constitutional amendments on the ballot. Today's featured proposition is Prop 5, which gets a nod of approval from the Chron.
The proposed amendment, with wide support from business leaders, would eliminate interest rate caps on commercial loans above $7 million. In doing so, Texas would join 46 other states that do not put caps on what banks can charge commercial customers.Currently, Texas business owners needing high-dollar loans for commercial enterprises often must bank outside Texas because the constitutionally mandated interest cap makes a Texas loan infeasible or unavailable. Doing business across state lines means companies must employ attorneys versed in the banking laws of other states. It can require travel outside Texas to negotiate terms. If a deal initiated in another state goes to court, legal fees and interstate litigation costs can spiral.
Even when companies find a Texas-chartered lender to arrange their big-ticket loan, the constitutional interest cap drives up costs. Such deals, often entailing complex elements such as equity participation in which the lender takes a stake in the enterprise. In Texas, this requires additional legal scrutiny to avoid busting limits on interest rates. Such deals have been challenged in court when profits to the lender have been construed as interest payments above the mandated cap.
One of nine amendment proposals on the ballot, Proposition 5 would relieve businesses of these burdens and uncertainties. The proposition is narrowly tailored so that small business owners needing financing under $7 million will retain protections that exist under present law.
Consumers need not worry: the amendment will not affect loans for cars, home improvement or college.
"Wide support from business leaders" is not necessarily a good thing in my book (two words: tort "reform"), but off the top of my head I don't see anything terribly objectionable about this. If you can give me a good reason to vote against it, leave a comment and let me know.
According to the Texas Civil Rights Review, Maria Alvarado, currently the sole Democratic candidate for Lite Gov, is advocating a vote against all nine propositions as a means of expressing discontent with the unresponsiveness of the Legislature. I don't fully agree with this approach and will do my best to evaluate each proposition on its own merits, but I can understand it.
Today's news coverage is on the five-way race in At Large #2. I confess, I hadn't realized there was a fifth person in this race - I knew about Acosta, Aiyer, Elford, and Lovell, but had never heard of James Neal before now. He's also the one candidate for whom I've not seen any campaign signs around. Greg has a concise summary of the article.
Later today, or maybe tomorrow morning, I hope to give my endorsements for all the races, for what they're worth. Early voting starts today - more info is here, a map of early voting locations is here, and the early voting schedule is here.
Finally, there will be an anti-Prop 2 rally at the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center (an early voting location) on West Gray today at 3:30, along with an announcement of breaking news regarding the amendment. That's all I know about it, so follow the link and I'll report back when I hear more.
Via Political Wire, here's the brilliant legal mind of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison in action:
"I certainly hope that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."-- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), on Meet the Press, minimizing lying under oath as a "technicality."
You know what the beautiful thing is about the Internet? It makes it so much easier to expose a bald-faced hypocrite for what she is.
Lying is a moral wrong. Perjury is a lie told under oath that is legally wrong. To be illegal, the lie must be willfully told, must be believed to be untrue, and must relate to a material matter. Title 18, Section 1621 and 1623, U.S. Code.If President Washington, as a child, had cut down a cherry tree and lied about it, he would be guilty of `lying,' but would not be guilty of `perjury.'
If, on the other hand, President Washington, as an adult, had been warned not to cut down a cherry tree, but he cut it down anyway, with the tree falling on a man and severely injuring or killing him, with President Washington stating later under oath that it was not he who cut down the tree, that would be `perjury.' Because it was a material fact in determining the circumstances of the man's injury or death.
Some would argue that the President in the second example should not be impeached because the whole thing is about a cherry tree, and lies about cherry trees, even under oath, though despicable, do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses under the Constitution. I disagree.
The perjury committed in the second example was an attempt to impede, frustrate, and obstruct the judicial system in determining how the man was injured or killed, when, and by whose hand, in order to escape personal responsibility under the law, either civil or criminal. Such would be an impeachable offense. To say otherwise would be to severely lower the moral and legal standards of accountability that are imposed on ordinary citizens every day. The same standard should be imposed on our leaders.
Nearly every child in America believes that President Washington, as a child himself, did in fact cut down the cherry tree and admitted to his father that he did it, saying simply: `I cannot tell a lie.'
I will not compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences to a successor President who may choose to ignore it.
-- Excerpted from the statement by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) during the Senate's closed deliberations on the articles of impeachment against President Clinton, published in the Congressional Record for Friday, February 12, 1999.
She will, however, compromise this simple but high moral principle in order to avoid serious consequences for Republicans. Just so you know. Many thanks to Julia for finding this quote.
Barbara Radnofsky has a suggestion for KBH, from a press release I received this morning:
No elected official should tolerate or excuse perjury. I call on Kay Bailey Hutchison to renounce perjury. She should resign if she tolerates it.
Will anyone in the media call her on it?
UPDATE: Just out of curiosity, would KBH consider forgery to be a matter worth pursuing, or is that another one of those "technicalities"?
UPDATE: Turns out quite a few other Republican Senators thought perjury was important in 1999. What do they all think now?
The most remarkable streak in sports came to an end this weekend: Mount Union College lost a football game.
Its end came exactly 11 years after it began. The Purple Raiders survived a couple of close calls along the way, but they could not outlast a very good Ohio Northern football team Saturday.A 21-14 loss to the Polar Bears was the Raiders’ first regular-season defeat since a 23-10 loss to Baldwin-Wallace on Oct. 15, 1994. Starting seven days later, Mount Union started a streak that reached 110 regular-season wins in a row.
Kind of puts USC's puny 28-gamer in perspective, doesn't it? I don't know if the Purple Raiders will start a brand-new streak next week, or if this loss is the beginning of a reunion with mere mortality for them, but I salute their achievement, all of which was done in an environment of no athletic scholarships. Congratulations to Ohio Northern for busting the streak, and major kudos to Mount Union for its consistent and longlasting excellence.
Ah, screw it. When Scott Podsednik goes yard against you, there's not much to say.
Well, okay, one thing: According to Joe Buck, Podsednik is the second player in history to have a postseason home run in a year where he had 500 regular season at-bats without one. Who was the first? Buck never told us. Thanks for keeping us informed, big guy.
All right, all right, someone is going to ask about that pitch that "hit" Jermaine Dye. The zoomed-in replay would, I think, meet the NFL instant replay standard of "incontrovertible visual evidence", assuming that the review ump had access to that perspective. Without it, I wouldn't care to place a bet on how the review would be adjudicated. It's one of those things and that's just how it is. Let's hope that a little home cooking can get the Astros up off the mat.
On the day before the start of early voting, the Chron gives a ringing endorsement to Mayor Bill White, which he fully deserves. I agree with Greg that it would have been nice to get this much ink in some of the other, more contested races, but not much I can do about that now. What do you think is the over/under on White's vote percentage this year? All of his opponents would be hard-pressed to get as much as 1% if the election featured a real contender against White - indeed, none of the no-names who were on the ballot in 2003, a list that includes two people from this year, got as many as five hundred votes in that election. I'm thinking the line is at 75%, with no single opponent getting as much as 10%.
Today's featured race is HD143, which gets some decent coverage and a good picture of all the contenders on page one of the Metro section. I don't envy anyone the choice in this one.
Finally, BOR has the latest roundup of anti-Prop 2 editorials from around the state. Kudos in particular go to the Lufkin Daily News, which lives in the district of HJR sponsor Sen. Todd Staples, for getting it:
Proponents say the law banning same-sex marriage isn't sufficient, because a judge could overturn it. First off, as another editorialist pointed out, no Texas judge is going to overturn a ban on same-sex marriage, because that likely will be the last term of office he or she serves. Second, a state amendment can still be overturned by a federal judge as being a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The ultimate arbiter is the U.S. Supreme Court, which is where this issue will likely be decided once and for all.We urge voters to oppose Proposition 2.
They did finally find one newspaper that endorsed Prop 2, though by the brevity of the piece it's clear they didn't give much thought to it.
City Council member Carol Alvarado is now an official college graduate some 13 years after finishing her coursework at the University of Houston.
The councilwoman said she believed she had a degree until her November election opponent released University of Houston documents showing she did not graduate.Late Friday afternoon, however, in response to a Houston Chronicle request under the Texas Open Records Act, the university released "directory information" showing that Carol Ann Alvarado was awarded a bachelor of arts degree in political science.
It did not give a date for the degree, and a university spokesman and one of its lawyers said the school was prohibited from providing additional information under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
[...]
In voter's guide information submitted to the Chronicle when she first ran for City Council in 2001, 2003 and this year, Alvarado says she attended UH from 1987 to 1992 and received her degree. Her City Council Web site and campaign literature also list the degree.
Alvarado's District I opponent, lawyer John Parras, said Friday he began looking into Alvarado's educational credentials after an anonymous tipster left a message on his campaign office phone that she had not graduated.
"As a lawyer, I decided to investigate and share the information with my campaign supporters. I personally went to UH to get written verification," said Parras. "I was shocked when I learned that it was true."
The UH verification documents, dated Thursday, say that Alvarado attended the college of social sciences from 1987 through 1992. "The student intends to pursue a degree, however has not yet formally declared a major and degree objective," the document states, adding it reflected Alvarado's academic record as of Thursday.
Any individual, for example, a prospective employer, can obtain verification of a student's previous enrollment by making a written request in person, unless the student has asked that the information be withheld.
After Parras obtained and publicized the verification documents, Alvarado said, she called the university and learned that she had completed her course work, but hadn't fulfilled a "written proficiency exam."
"I was never notified by university officials that I needed this," she said.
The requirement has since been dropped, Alvarado said.
She moved to Washington, D.C., soon after completing her course work, and did not request a diploma, she said. "I'd like to clear this up," she said. "This has no bearing on the job I've done over the years."
Parras called for Alvarado to resign the seat she has held since 2002.
"She's betrayed the public trust, and I believe she should do the only honorable thing, which is withdraw from the race and resign her seat," he said.
There are a few details that are still unclear, but this doesn't currently feel to me like a big deal. Completing the course work is what matters, and Greg's description of the "written proficiency exam" makes it sound like a minor thing. Based on this, it's at least possible to me that she could have genuinely believed she'd officially graduated. Without some evidence that she knew (or should have known) she was stating a falsehood. Until and unless that happens, I'm inclined to give it a pass.
Stace, who is a supporter of Alvarado's opponent John Parras, takes a broader view of the issue.
The eleven-year odyssey of Independent Counsel David Barrett and his dogged pursuit of Henry Cisneros (see here for more) may finally be wrapping up.
The Senate decided today that it was time to close to a decade-old, $20 million investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros — years after Cisneros received a presidential pardon.The amendment to a spending bill, approved by voice vote, would require that the report of Independent Counsel David Barrett be made public within 60 days, and that the independent counsel close his office within 90 days after the report is published.
"The American taxpayers have spent a lot of money on this report and they deserve the right to see it," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, author of the measure.
The circumstances surrounding the Cisneros investigation are "all gone but the independent counsel is still working 11 years later," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who earlier this year was unsuccessful in trying to cut off spending for the probe.
[...]
The Cisneros provision would become law only if the House, which passed a different version of the spending bill, agrees.
So will Tom DeLay let the House pass this version of the spending bill and thus demonstrate that he's above pursuing the kind of petty, vindictive, partisan with hunt of which he claims to be a victim, or will he come up with some excuse to let this modern day Javert stay attached to the gravy train? Stay tuned and find out. Link via Houtopia.
And back to propositions, as the Chron endorsed Prop 9 on Saturday. I'm leaning towards a No on this one, though I don't feel as strongly about it as I do Prop 1.
Still to be reviewed: City Council Districts A, H, and I, props three through six plus 8, and the HISD/HCC trustee races. I'm guessing they'll skip the uncontested Controller's race as they did with At Large #4 and Districts D, E, and G. The Mayor's race gets discussed in today's paper - I'll put that in a separate post.
For you Travis County folks, Karl-T has some info on the bonds that are on your ballot.
Well, they can still get a split on the road, right?
I can't be the only person who was amused at the sight of a very wholesome-looking Liz Phair singing God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch, can I? Whoever it was that invited her to sing, whether you're ignorant of some of her more colorful compositions or fully aware of them, I salute you.
I know Phil Garner has done an excellent job juggling players in various roles throughout the postseason, but I have to question a couple of his moves tonight:
- I'm surprised he let Mike Lamb bat against the lefty Neal Cotts. I'd have sent Chris Burke up there and been ready to swap in Orlando Palmeiro if Ozzie Guillen had then countered by bringing Bobby Jenks in then. Maybe Lamb hit lefties better than I think - neither Joe Buck nor Tim McCarver explored the question at all - but otherwise, I was scratching my head.
- More curiously, why bring in Russ Springer when Dan Wheeler is available? Springer is not an eighth-inning pitcher, especially not on the road down by a run. Of all the things Garner did tonight, this is the one I question the most.
- Lastly, why is Palmeiro still on the bench when Adam Everett's turn came up in the ninth? Does anyone here think Everett has a prayer against Jenks? What's Garner saving him for?
I'm not saying that these thing necessarily affected the outcome. I do, however, think that Garner did not use the assets he has in an optimal fashion. We'll see if he gets asked about it.
UPDATE: John Lopez hits some of the same notes as I do.
UPDATE: Joe Sheehan has the numbers:
Lamb hit .179/.217/.339 against southpaws this year, striking out in nearly 30% of his 56 at-bats against them. His performance prior to '05 wasn't much better, .248/.300/.436 in 101 ABs from 2002-04. Cotts didn't have a significant platoon split--I've taken to comparing him to Arthur Rhodes at his peak, myself--so that may have played into Garner's thinking, but I can't imagine there's any reason to have Lamb hitting in that situation. He's horrible against lefties.Even if you assume that sending up Chris Burke will mean Guillen will counter with Jenks, you have the option of going back to Orlando Palmeiro or Jose Vizcaino. The publicity Jenks is getting notwithstanding, you'd rather face him with a platoon advantage than Cotts without it, and Jenks' big curve provides some chance of a wild pitch that would score the tying run from third.
Allowing Lamb to bat was the least viable of all the available options, even if it meant burning through multiple players. As with the decision to use Rodriguez, it seems to me that Garner may not have made the right adjustments to playing under AL rules. That at-bat is so high-leverage that you have to maximize your chance to score. Using Burke as a pinch-runner for Berkman, rather than as a pinch-hitter for Lamb, was perhaps Garner's biggest mistake of the night.
I'd forgotten that Burke had already been used as a pinch-runner for Berkman, a move that also seems questionable. Oh, well.
The way I look at it, Team DeLay's motion to force Judge Bob Perkins to recuse himself is just another attempt by them to control what's happening. The motion itself is a longshot at best, and given the way DeLay has insisted this is all about politics, why should anyone believe that a judge who's a fellow Republican would be any less impartial? If DeLay is so confident that there is no case for the prosecution, wouldn't his vindication be even more complete in a trial overseen by a judge who once wrote a check to MoveOn? What would any of his detractors have to complain about under those conditions?
I say that Tom DeLay is entitled to the same things that any other indicted felon is entitled to. In particular, that means a judge who will interpret the law fairly and objectively. Any ruling that judge makes that he doesn't like will eventually wind up on the docket of the all-Republican Court of Criminal Appeals anyway. DeLay does not get to choose his judge, any more than he got to choose his terms of surrender. I don't care who he thinks he is, everyone is supposed to be treated equally by the law. Too bad for him if he believes he deserves otherwise.
Sigh. Another piece of Houston's history is going away.
After 92 years of selling Tiffany lamps, men's suits, coffee beans and other merchandise, Kaplan's-Ben Hur is closing its doors in December.Martin Kaplan, the owner of the historical Heights department store at Yale and 22nd, launched a going-out-of-business sale this week that will continue until the store closes. Kaplan's grandparents Dave and Bessie opened the store in 1913.
The store's website has a letter to its customers announcing the impending demise and accompanying sale. This Houston Business Journal article has a little bit about the store's history. And take a look at the linked document (Word doc) on the Kaplan's page, which gives a perspective on the state of retailing from someone who knows a little bit about it.
One of the things that I remember well from the Rockets' 1994 march to the NBA title was how for about a six-week period, everyone was wearing Rockets garb, and every other car you passed on the street had some kind of "Go Rockets!" slogan chalked on its windows. I was working downtown then, in a not particularly business casual atmosphere, and I still saw a lot of Rockets T-shirts, especially during and right after the Finals. A group of my coworkers and I even made a trek to the downtown Foley's (may it rest in peace) to buy shirts for ourselves during lunch one day.
It's still a little early, but I'm already starting to see the same sort of thing now for the Astros. Certainly, people are out there shopping for the goodies.
Fans continued today to dissect the World Series matchup with the White Sox over coffee and spent their breaks in long lines to buy something — anything — commemorating the championship.Nicky Buford, 32, of Richmond, spent $294 on seven championship T-shirts, two hats, two foam fingers and a baseball at the team's Minute Maid Park store.
"We've been in Italy for the past five years," said Buford, whose husband is an Army officer. "To be back in the States and have this feeling is awesome."
The search for souvenirs began before the last pitch Wednesday for Pat Clark, who wanted 40 T-shirts for the employees of Vaughan Nelson Investment Management's downtown office. During the ninth inning, the human resources manager sped to an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in Pasadena.
Clark waited four hours for four shirts, the store's limit. After a two-hour nap, she stopped by Wal-Mart, Target and other Academy stores, finding nothing but lines.
At 8:50 a.m., she stumbled upon enough shirts for everyone at the Minute Maid Park store, which opened early.
"I walked in saying, 'Oh please, let there be shirts for me,' " Clark said. "We are so excited. This doesn't happen often."
I'm sure all that commerce will give the local economy a boost. Speaking of which:
Having the Houston Astros in the World Series may be a home run with fans, but hosting games probably won't score the same economic return as the 2004 Super Bowl, economists and local officials say.That's because the two sports championships are vastly different events when it comes to generating tourist dollars.
Most Super Bowl attendees come from out of town, spending their money at hotels, restaurants and parties. As many as 100,000 people came last year. But it's mostly locals in their respective cities who attend World Series games, experts say.
Though some economists say impact estimates for major sporting events are inflated or difficult to prove, NFL executives and local organizers predicted that the Super Bowl would bring $300 million into the economy.
Is it just me, or is anyone else marvelling at the fact that nearly two full years after the actual Super Bowl occurred, we're still using the same damn estimates of its "potential" economic impact made months in advance of the event? Has nobody bothered to calculate what actually happened, or is it just that the real numbers are too embarrassing to publicize?
Though some economists say impact estimates for major sporting events are inflated or difficult to prove, NFL executives and local organizers predicted that the Super Bowl would bring $300 million into the economy.That's much more than even the rosiest of estimates for the Astros' three scheduled games next week against the Chicago White Sox: anywhere from $20 million to $50 million, depending on who's doing the predicting.
"The World Series is not really much of a national event in the way that the Super Bowl is," said Victor Matheson, a College of the Holy Cross economist who studies sports events.
Still, even some economists say the NFL's estimates of the Super Bowl's economic impact are off the mark. Some say the local economic benefit of hosting a Super Bowl is zero. Others say there is some benefit, but maybe only $20 million to $50 million.
Matheson says the economic impact of a post-season baseball game, which is almost like guessing in a city as large as Houston, is about $7 million.
Well, at least somebody's willing to admit that this isn't an exact science.
Mayor Bill White's staff cited studies showing a range of $3 million to $10 million per game. Jordy Tollett, who heads the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the impact could be as high as $50 million.White said excitement would be noticed more than any economic windfall.
"This is an opportunity for Houstonians to enjoy themselves and get together for a common cause," White said.
And some things never change. Leave it to Jordy Tollett to go overboard. I'm glad that Mayor White has a more realistic view of the real impact.
Let's just forget the numbers, since they mean less than batting average with runners in scoring position does. Play ball, have fun, and go Astros!
Tom DeLay's day in court has been pushed back while the presiding judge waits on a ruling to determine if he should be recused.
State District Judge Bob Perkins put all other motions in DeLay's case aside, saying he will ask Judge B.B. Schraub, the administrative judge for the 3rd Judicial District, to set a hearing on the motion to remove Perkins from the case."It seems to me that this is going to be continuing to be an issue any time there's a Democratic judge and a Republican defendant or vice versa. So we probably need to get some hearing on that by the presiding judge of the region," Perkins said.
DeLay, R-Sugar Land, has asked Perkins to be removed from the case because of his political donations.
[...]
[Travis County DA Ronnie] Earle after the hearing said he sees no reason for Perkins to remove himself.
"I think what this means is that if this judge had contributed to Crime Stoppers, that the judge then couldn't hear a burglary case," Earle said. "I think carried to its extreme, that's what this motion means, and I think that's absurd."
In the motion for recusal, DeGuerin listed 34 political donations totalling $5,185 made by Perkins over the past five years.
Schraub, the judge to hear the recusal motion, is based in Seguin, and has been the administrative judge for the region since 1990. He is a Republican. Three Republican and one Democratic governor have appointed or reappointed him to his job, his assistant said.
It was not clear how much the motion would lengthen proceedings in the case. The Texas congressman has said he wants a speedy trial.
Whatever. Far as I'm concerned, the longer the circus is in town the better.
Team DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin took the opportunity to spread a little more fertilizer about the parties involved.
Attorney Dick DeGuerin of Houston said District Attorney Ronnie Earle wants to dismiss his motion as just partisan. DeGuerin noted in particular that Perkins has contributed to MoveOn.org, a group that is using political attacks on DeLay to raise money."Mr. Earle seems to think it's just a Democrat-Republican thing," DeGuerin said. "But I noticed yesterday that MoveOn.org, to which you have contributed, was selling T-shirts with Mr. DeLay's mug shot on it to raise money."
Perkins replied: "Let me just say, I have never seen that T-shirt, number one. Number two, I haven't bought it. Number three, the last time I contributed to MoveOn that I know of was prior to the November election last year when they were primarily helping Senator Kerry."
Perkins was referring to the help MoveOn.org offered to Sen. John Kerry in his 2004 campaign to unseat President Bush.
MoveOn.org denied it was selling any such shirts, and issued a statement that said, "DeGuerin has either bad information or lied in court."
I confess, I never really got into the Durst trial, and I don't know any real specifics about the rest of his body of work, so I have to ask: Is DeGuerin always this profligate with the BS, or is this case somehow exceptional? I know that the PR was is at least as important as the courtroom battle, but outright falsehoods are usually a bad idea. Kudos to the Chron for linking directly to the response; usually, all one gets is a summary or a one-sentence quote. Think Progress has more, noting that the AP took DeGuerin's bait uncritically.
Lindsay Beyerstein is in Austin to witness the proceedings, and she was able to get some pictures, including a couple of snaps of DeLay making his entrance. Please note this one, which I think pretty conclusively demonstrates that however toothy DeLay's grin may have been in his mug shot, it won't actually matter to those who want to incorporate his image into a message. Link via Amanda, who is also chronicling the events in Austin.
Finally, I do think the funniest thing that has been or will be said about this whole spectacle is the following bit of unintentional hilarity penned by the Statesman.
Seven county sheriff's deputies were assigned to maintain order in the 70-seat courtroom. The crowd, made up largely of reporters, was calm.
Well, that's a relief! We all know how raucous those newsies can get at an arraignment. I hope the deputies will carry pepper spray when the pretrial motion hearings begin, just in case things really get out of hand.
And another jump, this time from ballot propositions to the special election in HD143, where the Chron endorses Ana Hernandez. I don't have a dog in that fight; Hernandez is the only one of the HD143 candidates I've met (very briefly at a Heights Democrats meeting in August) and she certainly seems capable enough, but without a basis for comparison I can't give a full assessment. Marc Campos is the main proponent of Laura Salinas, who seems to be the next most prominent contender. Read through his writings if you want to know more about her.
Meanwhile, the Morning News hops on the anti-Prop 2 bandwagon with an editorial that's so spot-on I'm going to quote it in full:
Proposition 2 on the statewide ballot next month would prevent state judges from overturning current law banning gay marriage. Given that state judges in Texas are elected, and therefore answerable to the people, the chances of a judge doing so are about as good as the Texas Supreme Court outlawing barbecue, so this proposed amendment essentially uses a sledgehammer to kill a mosquito.Still, if that were all Proposition 2 did, it might be easier to support.
But Proposition 2 goes beyond protecting the definition of marriage. The real impact of Proposition 2 will be to throw into question the legality of other sorts of contracts affecting gay Texans, many of them widely supported by society as a whole.
It is for this reason that we recommend a "no" vote on Proposition 2.
The first part of the proposed constitutional amendment says that marriage "consists only of the union of one man and one woman." Fair enough. That's already state law and has been since the state Legislature adopted the Defense of Marriage Act in 2003.
The second part of the proposed amendment prohibits "any legal status identical or similar to marriage." This would seem to undermine the ability of gay couples to enter into any partnership whose benefits stem from a recognized relationship. This is a problem.
A big problem.
Dallas and Travis counties provide certain health benefits to the partners and families of gay workers. So do hundreds of jurisdictions elsewhere in Texas and across the country. An amendment outlawing "any legal status ... similar to marriage" seems to subject these benefit plans to legal challenge. For what gain?
Proponents of this amendment argue that it won't affect private contracts between gays, and they cite language that was part of the resolution referring this issue to the ballot as proof that the intent behind the amendment isn't to undermine private contracts. But that language doesn't appear on the ballot. (The sorts of contracts we're referring to include arrangements to assure gays visitation rights when a partner is hospitalized, the ability to make the same sort of health care decisions for incapacitated partners as married partners, etc.)
In fact, the state House expressly rejected an effort to clarify the amendment's effect on private contracts when it voted 96-44 earlier this year against including on the ballot a provision stating that the amendment "may not be construed to prohibit the recognition of any contractual relationship currently available."
We doubt most Texans want to make it more difficult for gays to visit loved ones in the hospital or the like. These and other private contracts are already largely accepted by society – and even considered good for business. Thirty-eight of the Fortune 50 companies offer benefits to same-sex couples. Four of North Texas' largest private employers added domestic partner benefits last year.
Proponents say Proposition 2 is about protecting marriage and promoting family values. That may be, at least in their minds, but the unavoidable fact is that this amendment would make it significantly more difficult for gays to protect the health and well-being of their loved ones.
Why on earth deny to these men and women, not special privileges, but ordinary human decencies?
We recommend a "no" vote.
Amen and hallelujah. The reason why the likes of charlatans such as Kelly Shackleford keep harping on "protecting marriage" is because they have no answer to these points. Misdirection and disinformation is all they've got. If after all this time you're still thinking about voting Yes on Prop 2, I hope you fully understand just what it is that you're standing for. Thanks to Elizabeth H-T for the pointer.
UPDATE: Forgot to note that today is also District C day, so read and learn (a little) about the candidates in that race. I work and spend a lot of time in District C, and I had the chance to meet several of these folks, so even though I'm not voting there I'm interested in how this one turns out.
The race for HD48, which was decided by 147 votes in 2004, just got more interesting as incumbent Todd Baxter has announced his resignation as of this November.
"I am stepping aside because my family and my professional career come first," said Baxter, 37. "My wife and I are expecting our second child this spring, and I am looking forward to spending more time with my family. As I prepared for yet another winning campaign, I realized the full cost of elective victory was the lost time with my family and professional endeavors."Baxter's move sets up a special election in the coming months that could give the winner the benefit of incumbency, however brief, heading into a November 2006 contest for a full two-year term. The winner of the special election would serve until Baxter's term is up at the end of 2006.
Baxter's full statement is here (link via BOR). As the Statesman piece notes, Baxter was a TRMPAC poster child, and both of his Democratic opponents (Andy Brown and Donna Howard) have been pounding on him to return the dirty DeLay money. I suppose either Baxter decided he was unlikely to prevail in 2006, or maybe he just figured it wasn't worth the aggravation, which is certainly understandable.
The BOR thread speculates on whether Baxter's exit will help Democrats take the seat. Maybe, maybe not. If you look at the other race totals in HD48, you see that while it went mostly Republican, two Dems (Jan Patterson and Margaret Cooper) carried the day there. This is a fairly evenly-matched district overall - in contested races excluding Baxter/White, the vote totals are 346,189 R to 310,347 D, or 52.7% to 47.3%. From where I sit, that makes this a tossup, with the outcome to be determined by the candidate and his or her GOTV efforts.
You can argue that Baxter was damaged goods and thus an easier target for Brown/Howard/whoever. That's true, but he's also a known quantity with some district-friendly votes on his resume, in particular his opposition to toll roads. The two Democrats who got majority support in HD48 were both running for open seats. He may have been the lowest performing incumbent in that district, but he still won in the end. In general, I'd rather not have to compete with incumbent's advantage.
We'll see when Governor Perry schedules the special election, since the time frame he picks may give a clue as to whether or not he calls another special session on school finance, and if so when that would be.
Gov. Rick Perry can set a special election sometime between the end of November and May. Perry spokesman Robert Black would not speculate Thursday on the election date, because Perry had not received official notice of Baxter's resignation.
Relevant election laws are here and here, for those of you with more aptitude for legal interpretation than I. For what it's worth, if Perry calls the election for May, I'd say that's a clear sign that he intends to put off school finance until 2007. The earlier the date, the more likely he'll call a session in 2006. Just my opinion.
I assume you've all seen the Tom DeLay mug shot by now. If not, it's in this story, and will forever be in The Smoking Gun's collection. I just want to note that once again, Team DeLay is demonstrating that they believe their guy deserves Special Treatment:
The Sugar Land Republican was fingerprinted, photographed, taken before a judge, posted $10,000 bail and left shortly before 1 p.m. His lawyer told reporters DeLay was put through the process because of a political vendetta by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, the Democrat who brought the case."Now Ronnie Earle has the mugshot he wanted," DeGuerin said.
"I wanted to avoid the circus," DeGuerin added. "He wanted a perp walk, and we did not want to do it."
With all due respect, who cares what you think about this? If your guy were named Tom Smith, he'd be routinely subjected to arrest, fingerprint, and mug shot like everyone else, and he wouldn't have a national forum to bitch about it. If DeLay doesn't like the way indicted felons get treated during their processing, he has way more power to do something about it than most other people who've gone through it have. It really is amazing how sensitive some of these law-and-order types become to the rights of the accused when they're the ones being told to hold up the numbers and face the camera.
Anyway. You may notice that DeLay is smiling in his mug shot. The Statesman asks why that is.
Answer: A photo of DeLay grinning from ear to ear doesn't pack quite the punch in a Democratic attack ad as one that looks more like the mugshot of, say, actor Hugh Grant.Note the House of Representatives security pin on DeLay's lapel.
He looks in the photo like a proud member of Congress who might just have won the lottery, not one indicted on charges of money laundering. The photo looks like it could have been taken anywhere.
And that was just the point.
Please. Have we never heard of PhotoShop? I grant you that DeLay would have been foolish to show up looking like this, but his Dapper Dan expression won't prevent any attack mailers. Any picture, or any alteration to this picture can be used - it's not like most people will remember what his actual mug shot looked like, if they ever saw it in the first place. Or this image could be taken unaltered, with a headline of "WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING?" and a footer that lists all the sins he and whoever he's being tied to are accused of. The actual picture is incidental - it's the reason for the picture that matters.
Have the critics turned on Desperate Housewives?
ABC's hit is second only to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as television's most popular show this fall, although several critics have taken issue with how its second season has begun. Joanne Ostrow of the Denver Post said the hour is "edging toward vapidity.""The tone is off," Ostrow wrote. "Not campy enough to make the comedy clever, not real enough to make it engaging as mystery-drama. The story is too rooted in convention to be truly outrageous, too melodramatic to make it plausible as anything but goofy comedy."
David Bianculli of the New York Daily News said the series doesn't have any traction. This season's new story line, with Alfre Woodard's new character, Betty, imprisoning someone in her basement "has not only wasted Woodard's talent, but also our time, as well," he wrote.
This season finds the series "clinging to old plots while fumbling with new ones," wrote Robert Bianco of USA Today.
Whatever. I think it's basically the same piece of fluff that I enjoyed last year. I don't think they're "clinging to old plots" so much as they're taking the natural continuations of them. We got answers last season, but very little really came to a conclusion. Which current thread would you have them drop, and why?
For what it's worth, I find Bree's situation to be very engaging. I want to know when and how she'll figure out she's dating her stalker. Given how every action has consequences on this show, I feel confident that Susan is in for some future unpleasantness based on what she did this last episode (I'll put it in the comments as a spoiler buffer). Lynette continues to impress me with her endless ability to be devious. Only Gabrielle hasn't had much to do, and I think that will change with that new lawyer on the scene.
Overall, then, no real gripes from me.
Meanwhile, Sue is unhappy with the current season of The Amazing Race.
1. The "racearoundtheworld" aspect is gone. Now, it's a race around North America. La dee fricking da. [...]2. Fewer Roadblocks. I've seen all the legs of this Race and I only remember seeing two Roadblocks so far. Lame.
3. The tasks suck. Go here and get a clue which will tell you to go someplace else and get another clue. Yawn. [...]
4. There's too damn many people. [...]
5. Too little cultural interaction. [...]
6. The tasks haven't been physically demanding or intimidating. [...]
7. There's no really wonderful team and no villain. Mama Paolo is annoying and I'm sick of her berating her family, but she's no Frank, Karen, or Ian. Let's face it: TAR is reality TV and it's not reality TV without somebody to love (Kris and Jon, Uchenna and Joyce, Don and MJ) and somebody to hate (Jonathan, the Guidos, Flo).
Well, they fly out of the US in the next episode, so that's one. I agree there should be more roadblocks and detours, though I do think the ones they have had have been good (and demanding, especially in this last episode). They've been a bit sneaky with some of the travel tasks, which I like even if that helped trip up a family that I liked (again, in the comments). And I agree that more cultural interaction would be nice.
I disagree about the contestants, though. There may not be an easy villain like Jonathan or Boston Rob, but as long as the Weavers (whom everyone else clearly dislikes) are in the race, there will be some tension. No one respects the Gaghans, which has some potential for conflict as well. And while I don't have a clear favorite rooting interest at this point, there are several families I like, especially the goofball Branson, Linz, and Godliewski crews.
So overall, maybe not the best Race ever, but good enough for me.
And we can't have a post about TV-bashing without noting that those sex-obsessed watchers at The Parents Television Council have once again done us all the favor of pointing out which shows are worth TiVoing. That Brent Bozell really loves his job, doesn't he? As well he should - all he does is watch naughty TV shows and complain about them, and get paid for it. Pretty sweet gig if you can get it. That's pretty much all there is to see here, so on to the spoilers in the comments.
The Aurora Picture Show, located here in the Heights, has an event next week for Katrina and Rita relief that sounds interesting:
October 26: The Pink Satin Suit, A KAT Fund BenefitWednesday, October 26, 7pm
The Pink Satin Suit
A Documentary about New Orleans photographer Johnny Donnels
By Anastasia and Will Lyman
Benefiting KATFundNearly sixty years ago in New Guinea, a homesick New Orleans kid swore the Army would be the last employer he ever had. Today, Johnny Donnels’ photography is known all over the world. The last of the great Bohemians, Johnny himself is an icon of the French Quarter, where he runs a gallery filled with his own art.
Proceeds from this screening benefit KATFund, a grant-making fund established by the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, to provide financial support for visual artists in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who were affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Red beans and rice donated by Treebeards.
Admission $5.
Aurora Picture Show
800 Aurora Street
Houston, Texas 77009
Tel. (713) 868-2101
You can also find this information on their calendar for next Wednesday. Don't know if I can make it - though the prospect of free red beans and rice will certainly tempt me - but if this sounds interesting to you then I hope you can. Thanks to Mark Yzaguirre for the tip.
On we go with our randomly-winding path through races, initiatives and the editorial writers who endorse them. Today we skip to Proposition 7, to which the Chron gives its stamp of approval. I'm leaning towards a Yes on this one, but don't currently feel all that strongly about it.
Elsewhere, Eye on Williamson comments on State Rep. Mike Krusee's endorsements of Props 1, 3, and 9, and the San Antonio Current gives some coverage to Prop 2. Kelly Shackleford of the so-called "Free Enterprise" Foundation gives the amazingly dishonest pro-Prop 2 party line without ever coming close to addressing the three points that I and others keep bringing up. I don't feel like ranting about this today, so I'll just list some opportunities to do something positive about Prop 2 in the extended entry. Read on as you see fit.
TO: All Leaders, Volunteers, People with Creative Energy
FROM: Glen Maxey, Campaign Director
RE: Strategic Planning, Message Refinement, Idea meeting for Final Week
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Texans will be hitting the polls next Monday (Oct. 24) to vote on a Constitutional Amendment that would write into the Bill of Rights a prohibition against marriage and civil unions for gay and Lesbian Texans. As early voting begins, No Nonsense In November, the campaign working to defeat the amendment, has many positive developments and a strategy that point to us doing the unthinkable: WINNING. The smell of victory is in the air, but we need you to make defeating this amendment a reality.
I rolled out these new developments to key community leaders this past weekend in Austin. The response was so amazing that I have decided to travel across the state this weekend to share our exciting new strategy with all fair-minded Texans who wish to be involved in the making of political history.
I promise that you will want to be a part of this – you’ll be just as amazed as they were on what will be happening soon. Information outlining this exciting new game plan will be shared at this weekend’s high-level strategy meetings. We also really need creative, energetic new ideas to help deliver our exciting and just a little bit shocking new message.
No matter where you live in Texas, you can play a key part in ensuring victory.
Curious? Then show up and get involved in the new game plan!
Austin:
Saturday; Oct. 22nd, 10:30 a.m.
Ventana Del Soul Coffee House
Texas Espresso Auditorium
1834 E. Oltorf Dr. (East of I-35 near Parker Ln.)
To RSVP: Celia@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 512-236-0843
Dallas:
Saturday, Oct. 22nd; 11:00AM
IBEW Union Hall
7940 Northaven
To RSVP: Suzanne@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 214-821-2511
Fort Worth:
Saturday, Oct. 22nd; 2:30PM
Agape Metropolitan Community Church
4615 E California Parkway
To RSVP: Keith@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 817-335-8683
San Antonio:
Saturday, Oct, 22nd, 12:00 noon
Madison Presbyterian Church
319 Camden (at Lexington and Camden by I-35 and Hospital Center)
To RSVP: Melanie@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 210-320-4682
Houston:
Sunday, Oct 23, 3:30PM
Star Pizza
77 Harvard, (1 block east of Heights & Washington Ave.)
This does not conflict with the vigil at city hall at 2pm. So come have pizza and
cold one after the vigil and join us for a strategy session.
To RSVP: Emily@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 713-522-4372
Beaumont:
Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005, 1:30pm
Spindletop Unitarian Universalist Church
1575 Spindletop Road
Beaumont, Texas
To RSVP: Liz@NoNonsenseInNovember.com or 512-443-2027
While sending an RSVP is encouraged, it is OK if you decide to join us at the last minute and have not RSVPed.
You do not need to live in one of these cities to join us. Come to the city nearest you, learn the new strategy and take it to your home town and implement the winning game plan there. Your involvement in the next few weeks will be critical to our success on November 8th. Join us and become a part of political history.
-----------------
From info@houstonera.org, :
Blockwalking in Houston
Please join us in walking door to door this week talking to the voters who will be making the decision on November 8th. Everyone is nervous their first time but we also have a thorough training and pair you with an experienced block walker.
Clear your calendar for at least 2 of these dates—
* Saturday, October 22, 9am-2pm and 11am-4pm
* Wednesday, October 26, 5:00-9:00pm
* Thursday, October 27, 5-9:00pm
* Friday, October 28, 5-9:00pm
Confirm Your Attendance Now - email
Emily@NoNonsenseInNovember.com
Another citizen journalism opportunity from the Chron:
If you're going to the World Series, we want to hear from you.Chron.com is looking for "citizen journalists" to report on the scene in the stands at Minute Maid Park and U.S. Cellular Field.
- Use your cell phone to send us pictures of you and your friends at the game.
- Text us with updates on how you're enjoying the game.
- Drop us e-mails with your latest reports.
How do you get involved? Send us an e-mail at yourstories@chron.com, and give us a pitch on how you would be one of our "Fans In The Stands." Earn your piece of Internet fame!
Isn't this missing something? Hey, Dwight, where's the call for World Series liveblogging? I say bring your laptops to Minute Maid and eliminate the middle man. It's what the Astros want you to do:
[Astros vice president of marketing Andrew] Huang expects that the way fans use the network will evolve over time. "It's great to come to a game and check your e-mail, but we want to create interactive opportunities for people to participate in the game," he says.The Astros will work with Major League Baseball to develop exclusive real-time features, such as electronic scorecards, statistics on players, and perhaps even instant replays. The club is also considering letting fans order refreshments from their seats, promoting tickets for upcoming home stands during the game (the team already sells 77% of its single seats online), and letting fans vote for the best play of the game. The most engaging uses, Huang admits, probably haven't even been conceived yet.
I just conceived of one. The rest is up to you, Houston Chronicle.
I'll save the analysis of who is the favorite to win this World Series for later. For now, I've got a little inspiration from this Baseball Prospectus article on World Series matchups. There were eight original franchises in each league, meaning there were 64 possible World Series combinations from 1903 to 1960. There are many more now, of course (224, to be exact), but since 1903 only 32 of those possible matchups have occurred. One of those that has never happened is Cardinals-White Sox. Maybe next year.
As far as I can tell, this Astros-White Sox World Series is the new record holder for pairing two teams with the longest combined Series drought - 46 years for the Sox and 43 for the Stros. The next closest that I can think of is from 1980, when the Phillies (30 years at the time) and Royals (first Series in their 12th season) met up. Had the 1994 Classic not been cancelled, a Cleveland (40 years) versus Montreal (never in 25 years of existence) meetup would have been the standard. Well, technically the 1995 Series between Cleveland (now 41 years) and the Braves (three years) slightly outpaces Philly-KC, but that's too one-sided for me.
It's just a footnote now, but had the Cards completed a comeback to win the pennant, we'd be talking for a long time about their improbable comeback on Monday night after being one out (and one strike) away from elimination. How improbable was it? Nate Silver calculated the odds based on the game situation, the pitcher on the mound, and the count, and came up with 298-1 against. Putting it in simpler terms:
No visiting team came back from a two-run deficit when down to their last out in the entire 2003 season. Same thing was true in 2004. The overall win probability in this situation between 1996-2005 was 0.76%.
The adjustment for Lidge's effectiveness, especially with two strikes on the hitter, is what gets us to the final number.
To answer Kimberly's comment here, I'm very happy for the Astros, and I'll be rooting for them to bring home the bacon, but I'm not someone who's lived and died with them for decades, so it's not quite right for me to do a lot of gushing about this. Let me point you instead to the folks who've really paid their dues: Tom, Lair (who may never take his prized Chad Qualls jersey off again), PDiddie, 'stina (who I assume is feeling better now), Christine (whose plan to prevent a repeat of Monday seems to have worked), Norbizness, Greg, Houtopia, Plunk Biggio, and no doubt many others who are still sleeping it off. Y'all celebrate, you've earned it.
Long as we're celebrating, here's four more words to make you smile: Tom DeLay's arrest warrant.
Naturally, Team DeLay is whining like a scared puppy about being treated like a regular person.
The capias warrant by state District Judge Bob Perkins normally would have been a routine procedure in Texas after a person has been indicted on a felony. It requires that the defendant be arrested and have fingerprints and a mug shot taken.But DeLay's lawyers had wanted to avoid an arrest and booking for DeLay. When DeLay was first indicted Sept. 28, they persuaded Earle to have District Judge Mike Lynch issue a summons, which would have legally allowed DeLay to avoid booking.
DeLay was expected to appear at the sheriff's office in Fort Bend County today for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges.
Fort Bend County Chief Deputy Craig Brady said arrangements were being made to bring DeLay to the sheriff's office in his home county sometime Thursday for booking and fingerprinting.
The process was expected to take between 45 minutes and an hour. Brady said a specific time had not been set, but Sheriff Milton Wright was contacted Wednesday by DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin.
Earle said Wednesday that he decided against asking for a summons for DeLay, R-Sugar Land, on a second set of indictments returned Oct. 3.
"We believe Congressman DeLay should be treated like everyone else," Earle said.
DeGuerin said the arrest warrant was issued because the defense team for DeLay and co-defendants Jim Ellis and John Colyandro has spent the last two weeks filing briefs claiming prosecutor misconduct by Earle.
"It's retaliation, plain and simple," DeGuerin said. "He's retaliating because we haven't given him any quarter."
Oh, you poor baby. That mean ol' Ronnie Earle, not showing you any milk of human kindness after all you've done for him. What is this world coming to?
Speaking of Earle, there's still some grumbling about his participation in the documentary film The Big Buy (see here for my review). Filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck respond to their critics:
We've recorded the same Travis County district attorney whom every news organization covering this case has recorded. We just paid more attention for a longer time than most. That's what documentary filmmakers do. Those that consider Earle a villain and DeLay his victim will find things in our film to support their belief. Those who think DeLay is up to no good and Earle is the hero will likewise be supported in their views. We are equal-opportunity storytellers.In short, we're basically doing the same job as the Statesman's own excellent reporter, Laylan Copelin. We're just doing it with a camera.
This is what puzzles us about our critics' reaction — access to Earle is OK when it's on behalf of readers or TV news viewers, but it's not OK when it's on behalf of viewers of a documentary?
Finally, if you can't wait for a bootleg copy of DeLay's mug shot to get posted somewhere, In the Pink has a proxy to tide you over. Enjoy.
UPDATE: Forgot to include this article about the judge in the case, Bob Perkins.
Perkins, who ordered DeLay's arrest Wednesday, in the past has been involved in the prosecutions of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Texas House Speaker Gib Lewis. Perkins said he approaches cases involving politicians like any other in his criminal courtroom."My approach to this would not be any different than any other," Perkins said. "You've just got to play by the book and do what the law says. That's the only way you can assure that you are doing the right thing."
In 1993, Perkins administered the grand jury that indicted Hutchison, a Republican, on ethics charges.
Perkins removed himself from trying the case because he had given $300 to her Democratic opponent. He may face a similar appearance of conflict in the prosecution of DeLay, R-Sugar Land.
But Perkins also has presided over the prosecution of a major Democratic politician. When then-House Speaker Lewis failed to show up in court in 1991 on a misdemeanor ethics charge, Perkins had him jailed.
"Gib Lewis was a leading Democrat of the state at the time," said Austin criminal defense lawyer David Sheppard. "I don't know how more apolitical you can get. I'll just tell you, he's a really good judge."
Other than poor, misunderstood Gib Lewis, everyone else quoted in the piece has nice things to say about Perkins and his stewardship in the courtroom.
Also forgot to mention that the Statesman link to the Birnbaum/Schermbeck piece came from The Daily DeLay.
I have a feeling there'll be a higher than usual occurrance of absenteeism and tardiness in the workplace tomorrow. Somehow, I think it'll be overlooked.
Congratulations to the Astros and to all their long-suffering fans. And just so you know, those 1914 Braves - the only other team to make the postseason after being 15 games below .500 - they swept the Athletics in the World Series. On to Chicago!
Skipping over two more contested City Council races (in Districts H and I), the Chron jumps into the statewide ballot propositions with a call in favor of Prop 1.
Proposition 1 seeks to amend the Constitution to authorize a Texas rail relocation and improvement fund to be administered by the Texas Transportation Commission.The TTC could issue bonds backed by monies in the fund, and the bonds would be repaid from fund balances. Bond revenues could be applied to construction projects that would move traffic around passenger and freight rail lines. The goals would be to advance public safety, improve air quality and spur economic development.
A constitutional amendment is required for these purposes because the state is constitutionally prohibited from taking on bonded indebtedness without voter approval beyond an amount requiring a specified level of debt repayment out of general revenue. The amendment, if approved, creates an exception to that prohibition.
Normally, a strong argument could be made that taxpayers should not spend money to reroute rail infrastructure belonging to private rail companies. But the need for public attention to the problem of trains blocking major thoroughfares has become increasingly clear as Texas cities grow.
They cite safety concerns, a theme echoed in this Express News endorsement (via Latinos for Texas) of Prop 1. What is hanging me up, however, is this:
If voters approve the amendment, lawmakers plan to find revenue for the fund in the next legislative session."We'll get input from the public and then figure out a way to pay for it," said Rep. Ruth Jones McClendon, D-San Antonio, who sponsored a resolution to put the amendment on the ballot.
The fund would be used in a public/private effort to move freight rail traffic out of densely populated areas.
To put it bluntly, I don't have a lot of faith right now in the Lege's ability to "figure out a way to pay for it". The current leadership is not interested in honest accounting, as any even casual observation of the school finance shenanigans should make clear. And the thought of opening a public-money spigot to an industry that donates heavily to Rick Perry is not a comforting one. I appreciate the need to do this, but there's way too much leeway here for unintended consequences. Like Greg, I will be voting No on Prop 1.
Does Harris County Tax Assessor Paul Bettencourt ever say anything else?
The average Houston-area homeowner's taxes rose 7.5 percent this year, a rate that could cause tax bills to double in nine years, Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt said Tuesday.The owner of an average home, worth $141,668, pays $3,376 in local taxes — up $238 from last year, Bettencourt told Commissioners Court.
When the court votes on this year's tax rate Tuesday, it is expected to keep the rate unchanged, as it has since 2001.
Bettencourt pressed the court, as he has in the past, to lower the tax rate because rising property values cause owners to pay more taxes even when the tax rate remains the same.
"We should try to reduce the rate wherever we can. There is little or no advocacy for the homeowners in the process," Bettencourt said.
That's misleading, to say the least. I can't speak for anyone else, but every year we get a handful of solicitations from outfits that offer to protest your tax assessment for you in return for a piece of any reduction they manage to win. We used one of them this year and sure enough, we got a break. All it took was the time to fill out and mail in a form. Surely we're not the only homeowners in Harris County to get this kind of thing. Does Bettencourt not consider that to be advocacy?
Bettencourt said that in 1997, the average home was appraised at $79,535 and paid $1,546 in taxes. Taxes have more than doubled on that home since then, he said."Right now, homeowners are the cash cow for government," Bettencourt said.
And how much could that homeowner sell that house for now? I'm willing to bet it's a lot more than $79,535. Let's be honest here - most houses are worth more on the open market than their appraised values. If property values, as expressed by the potential price one could get for selling one's house, increase at a given rate, then it makes perfect sense to me that as a general rule the tax assessment for that house should increase at a commesurate rate. What exactly is so evil about that? Why is the free-market value of your house not an appropriate yardstick for your local appraisal district to use?
If we were stuck in a housing market that was stagnant, then I'd agree with Bettencourt. Here, though, he's focusing on a single item without giving any consideration to the causes behind it. I say that's at best disingenuous. Greg and Tory have related thoughts.
I for one am getting tired of reading words like "most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded".
Wilma's confirmed pressure readings this morning dropped to 882 millibars — the lowest minimum pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Atlantic basin, according to the hurricane center. Lower pressure translates into higher wind speed.Forecasters said Wilma was stronger than the devastating Labor Day hurricane that hit the Florida Keys in 1935, the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall on record.
But Wilma was not expected to keep its record strength for long, as disruptive atmospheric winds in the Gulf of Mexico should weaken it before landfall, Hurricane Center meteorologist Hugh Cobb. Gulf water is about 1 to 2 degrees cooler than that in the Caribbean, which should inhibit its strength more, he added.
The strongest storm on record, based on the lowest pressure reading, had been Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which registered an 888 millibar reading.
SciGuy has more on what a badass Wilma is already, and also on this recordbreaking season of hurricane activity. Which still has six weeks to go, by the way. At least we're all pretty sure that Wilma is not coming our way.
That's a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which being that the areas devastated by Hurricane Rita are still in desperate need of help.
After more than three weeks of disappointing responses from the American Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and spotty media coverage, several Southeast Texas officials and business leaders are starting their own relief efforts and openly appealing to fellow Texans for assistance."We're not self-reliant. We're not too prideful. We're crying out now and saying we need help," said Mark Viator, a Beaumont pastor and manager of public and government affairs for chemical giant BASF Corp.
East Texas leaders say they have little choice but to plead for individual and corporate donations to help dig their citizens and already depressed economies out of what some have deemed the "forgotten hurricane."
"We needed an alternative to just complaining," said Walter Diggles, executive director of the Deep East Texas Council of Governments, known as DETCOG, which represents 12 counties. "We needed to give people who wanted to do something an opportunity to make sure their contributions went directly to the Rita victims."
The organization he leads began accepting contributions this week to the East Texas Rita Fund, established at the First National Bank in Jasper.
"Now we're looking to our sister communities across Texas to assist like they did with the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other major disasters," he said.
[...]
East Texas leaders have complained about slow, disorganized and inconsistent relief efforts from FEMA and the Red Cross.
They say FEMA offered more benefits to Hurricane Katrina victims, and the Red Cross excluded most East Texas counties from automatic relief for damaged homes, even though President Bush declared many of the counties disaster areas.
The agencies have insisted they are doing the best they can.
The Red Cross procedure allows Rita victims to appeal for damage assistance later, but Red Cross officials have acknowledged that the new procedure has caused confusion and frustration.
[...]
In Beaumont, Regina Rogers, an attorney who runs three nonprofits, is helping oversee fundraising efforts for the Southeast Texas Emergency Relief Fund for Hurricane Rita Recovery.
The fund, which originally helped Katrina victims, was designated for East Texans after Rita, Rogers said. About $1.3 million has been raised so far, including $1 million from Exxon Mobil and $250,000 from BASF, Rogers said.
She said her goal is not only to raise $10 million to $15 million but to educate potential donors about the devastation Rita caused when it hit a region already weakened and depleted financially after weeks of feeding, housing and donating money to Katrina victims.
"What's unfortunate is so many people, even folks in Houston, are just totally unaware of the damages in this area," she said.
I'm as guilty as anyone on that score. Here's the information on the two aformentioned relief funds:
• East Texas Rita Fund, benefiting 12 counties represented by the Deep East Texas Council of Governments. Contributions to: First National Bank, P.O. Box 700, Jasper, TX 75951• Southeast Texas Emergency Relief Fund for Hurricane Rita Recovery, established by business and philanthropic leaders in Beaumont. Contributions to: P.O. Box 201943, Houston, TX 77216-1943
Please give what you can.
It's amazing sometimes how what's said to reporters and what's said to a judge are often two very different things.
U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's chief lawyer says he has no evidence that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle participated in grand jury deliberations, despite having made that allegation in motions to dismiss DeLay's indictments.
But Houston attorney Dick DeGuerin said there have been enough public comments by grand jurors in news media reports to raise suspicions that Earle may have violated laws in his efforts to indict one of the most powerful Republican politicians in the nation.DeGuerin is seeking access to grand jury records to develop possible evidence of misconduct on Earle's part. He has subpoenaed records from two of his assistant district attorneys related to their dealings with three grand juries that investigated DeLay.
Members of a grand jury that no-billed DeLay have told reporters that Earle was angry with them. DeGuerin also has focused on media reports that Earle's office telephoned former members of the first grand jury to indict DeLay, asking them if they might have returned other charges, and then presented the results of the poll to a third grand jury, which issued new indictments.
DeGuerin is asking a judge to allow him to question members of the grand juries. A prosecutor being present when a grand jury was deliberating or voting on an indictment is specific grounds under Texas law for an indictment to be dismissed.
On Law and Order, this is what they call a fishing expedition. Nice try, Dick, but no cigar.
"It seems an uphill battle to get access to grand jury material based upon things reporters have written in a newspaper," said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at the University of Texas School of Law.Buell, who served as lead prosecutor in the case against Enron's former top executives, said the defense would have to show a "real serious claim of misconduct" to persuade a judge to allow questioning of Earle and grand jurors.
[...]
Susan Brenner, a professor at the University of Dayton School of Law who has researched grand juries, said polling discharged grand jurors about what they might have done on another charge is not a violation of secrecy.
"I don't see any impropriety of polling people who used to be grand jurors," said Brenner, who formerly defended white-collar-crime cases.
But Brenner added that such a poll would be "a strange thing to do." She said the results should not be presented to another grand jury as evidence.
If such a scenario did occur, Brenner said Earle might have violated an ethical rule and could be sanctioned or held in contempt of court. "But there's a difference between saying something is not wise or not appropriate and saying that it requires the dismissal of the indictment," she said.
That's a key point, I think. Even if an impropriety occurred - and remember, all we have so far is a defense claim of impropriety - it doesn't necessarily follow that the remedy is for indictments to be thrown out. Ultimately, I don't expect this to have any bearing on the case.
We're two days out from DeLay's first court appearance. It looks like he'll be treated more or less like any other arrestee.
At a hearing Friday before state district Judge Bob Perkins in Austin, the former House majority leader will be asked to designate for the record the names of his attorneys.The judge said Tuesday he doesn't know whether he'll take up any of the legal motions filed so far by DeLay's attorneys and that he may schedule those matters for a later date. DeLay is one of numerous defendants scheduled to appear before Perkins that day.
[...]
DeLay is expected to be fingerprinted, photographed and booked this week, despite attempts by his attorneys to bypass that process.
"Perkins believes that if God was charged with a felony, he would have to go through the booking process, too," said D'Ann Underwood, court coordinator for the judge.
DeLay, a Republican from Sugar Land, Texas, probably will spend about an hour being fingerprinted and photographed, she said.
It sure would be a shame if there were a screwup with his paperwork and it took all day to process him, wouldn't it? Thanks to Stace for the link.
I know we've all enjoyed watching President Bush's numbers head further and further south (even if there are potentially dire pony-related consequences), but to get the full flavor of it you really have to see the SurveyUSA 50-state poll. He's above 50% in only four states, and below 40% in 25. At long last, it would seem, Dubya has finally managed to unite us.
More amazing are his numbers in Texas - 42% approval, 54% disapproval. Honestly, I never thought I'd see a day where he was in net negative territory here. Presumably, given the steep dive he took since last month, what we're seeing is a Katrina anti-bounce. As such, this may well be a trough from which he'll climb back up, but for now, I'm just going to savor it.
And as long as I'm savoring, consider this: If Bush is still in the 42% approval zone next year, that ought to have an effect on all of the statewide and Congressional races, because for the first time in a long time, Democratic candidates for office won't have to defer to Bush's popularity here. For once, they'll be able to really run against him and make the kind of case for change that a challenger needs to make against an incumbent and a majority party. For once, their Republican opponents won't be able to simply portray themselves as Bush's bestest buddy. I'm not going to say that this will be a rising tide that will lift anyone to victory, but not having to explain why you'll be able to work just fine with a partisan President from across the aisle at least makes the turf you're running on a lot less inhospitable. You can already see this with the candidates we've got so far. Again, I'm not going to say that this is enough to win races they're not expected to, but it sure won't hurt.
The LGRL has a roundup of anti-Prop 2 editorials, while BOR has some more they missed - see here and here for the editorials, and here for an impressive array of Travis County officeholders who spoke out against it. I'll echo what Karl-T said in the first link - as far as I know, no paper has advised a vote for Prop 2. I'm not deluded enough to think that these endorsements will make a big difference in the final vote, but it's always good to see people do the right thing.
Which brings me to this Statesman article (via DC9) about a potential for backlash against the Democratic State Reps who helped put Prop 2 on the ballot.
As gay-rights activists launch an all-out attack on a constitutional measure banning same-sex marriage in Texas, they face an uncomfortable fact: A few lawmakers who received their support in the past helped push the proposed amendment through the Legislature.Some amendment foes view the vote as a betrayal, but with few good alternatives, they appear uncertain about whether to dish out punishment in next year's election.
Legislators such as Reps. Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs, and Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, who had received support from gays or endorsements from gay-rights organizations, were among 18 Democrats who cast votes in April that moved the amendment out of the House with barely the two-thirds margin it required.
[...]
"Richard Raymond and Patrick, in my mind, sent it over to the Senate," said Mary Ross Taylor, who is gay and is an active volunteer for the Democrats in Hays County, which Rose represents. "The word we heard a lot of was 'disappointment.' "
Rose and Raymond had also joined nine other Democratic representatives a week earlier in voting to ban gays or bisexuals from serving as foster parents. The proposal eventually died in a conference committee.
[...]
But the prospect for Democrats of withdrawing votes or money from someone like Rose is tricky; his opponents in the past two elections in his tightly contested district south and west of Austin have been Republicans who oppose gay rights.
"Who else will those disillusioned Dems vote for?" Taylor asked. "That is the problem for progressive voters in Patrick's district. The alternative is likely to be worse."
Glen Maxey, a former Democratic House member from Travis County who runs No Nonsense in November, a campaign to defeat the marriage amendment, agreed.
"There's not a single Republican on this planet who's preferable to Patrick Rose," said Maxey, who is gay. "I think Patrick cast a political vote, and we hope to show in the November election that Patrick's vote was incorrect."
[...]
Raymond, who hails from a bluer district, said he simply "voted his district" as he prepares to run for a U.S. congressional seat. The district stretches north from the border to Hays County.
"Laredo is not New York," Raymond said.
"I believe marriage should be between one man and one woman," he said. "I think the constituents I represent support the position I took on those two votes.
"Anybody that looks at my record through my career can see that I'm a true Democrat who has stood and fought for everybody and stands by the ideals that define our party."
[...]
"This is a dilemma that always crops up with interest groups that too narrowly define themselves on one issue or another," Kelly Fero, a Democratic strategist, said. "Do they hold politicians to a standard of purity that ends up hurting them, the interest group? Do you let perfect be the enemy of the good? That is the dilemma they face."
I'm sympathetic to the activists, because it sure as hell hurts when someone you see as a strong ally refuses to support you on a core issue like this. But I'm also a firm believer in the half-a-loaf, and for sure a minority party has to be awfully careful about purging people.
That said, there are opportunities to extract a little payback without necessarily giving a seat away. Richard Raymond is running in a contested primary against Henry Cuellar in CD28. Ciro Rodriguez, who had a pretty darned progressive record while he was in the House, is also in that race. I'm sensitive to arguments that Raymond is in the stronger position to take out Cuellar, based on financial and geographic considerations. I may well wind up burying the hatchet and supporting Raymond myself. But I'll certainly understand anyone who chooses to support Ciro Rodriguez instead, even if that reduces the chances of removing Cuellar. If you can't stand on principle in a primary, there's pretty much no other place to do it.
It must be endorsement week at the Chron, as they check in today with three more recommendations, for City Council Districts B, C, and F. No surprise in F, where incumbent MJ Khan is running against token opposition. Can't really comment on B, where they tout Robin German-Curtis, since as I said before I don't know very much about the octet in that race. I'm pleased and a little surprised to see Mark Lee get the nod in C - I'd have probably wagered on them picking George Hittner if I'd been forced to guess. Mark's a good guy, and having had the chance to meet several of his opponents awhile back, I've got to agree with the Chron when they say Lee is "a distinguished candidate in a pool of impressive competitors". Getting the endorsement in that race is quite an accomplishment. Kudos to you, Mark.
One question: why did the Chron skip the District A race? At first, I thought they were going alphabetically (District D's Ada Edwards and District E's Addie Wiseman are unopposed), but incumebent Toni Lawrence has a challenger. Maybe it's just random. I guess we'll see tomorrow.
I managed to skip doing a traffic report last month amidst all the excitement. August and September were both pretty busy around here, with 56,000 hits in August and over 79,000 in September, which is a new alltime high around here. The traffic increase seems to have coincided with the hurricanes. I guess a lot of people were looking everywhere they could for information about Katrina and Rita.
Unfortunately, these past few months have also seen a spike in spam referrals. It's getting so bad that a lot of bloggers are complaining about it. My webhost blogged about it recently, and Dwight wrote about a huge growth in spamblogs, which seems to be the driver of this annoying trend. He's got more info here; all I can say is that I hope the folks at Google are smart enough to keep up with these guys.
Anyway, the usual list of referrers and search terms is below the fold. Sadly, the referrers lists are shorter than usual due to all the crap sites crowding the real ones out. Sorry about that. Thanks as always for visiting!
August
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September
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What do you call it when a prosecutor offers to let someone who's facing felony charges plead to a misdemeanor? If you're Tom DeLay, you call it coercion.
The plea offer was mentioned in a letter to [ Travis County District Attorney Ronnie] Earle from attorney Dick DeGuerin of Houston that accompanied motions to dismiss the indictments against DeLay. DeGuerin also asked that DeLay be severed from two co-defendants so he could be tried as quickly as possible.DeLay, R-Sugar Land, was forced to step down as House majority leader after a grand jury under Earle's direction returned the first of two felony indictments against DeLay last month.
DeGuerin said Earle made the plea offer in the context of DeLay keeping his House leadership post.
"You tried to coerce a guilty plea from Tom DeLay for a misdemeanor, stating the alternative was indictment for a felony which would require his stepping down as majority leader," DeGuerin wrote.
"He turned you down, so you had him indicted, in spite of the advice from others in your office that Tom DeLay had committed no crime."
Gosh, you'd think that since everything DeLay and his House minions have done has been about preserving his power as Majority Leader, such an offer would have been logically consistent. Apparently, you'd be wrong. Who knew DeLay had such a sensitive temperament? Go easy on him, Ronnie, you might hurt his feelings.
As for DeLay's motion to separate his trial, it's about his desire to wrap this up quickly. Ellis and Colyandro want to go all the way through the appeals process because they say the law is too "vague" - what they really mean is that since they made their payoffs with checks and not bags of cash, they technically didn't do anything wrong. DeLay doesn't want to draw this out; among other things, he's got the whole Abramoff thing to be worried about. He needs a quick resolution. I'm guessing he'll get his wish to be severed, but if he doesn't it could be unpleasant for him. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Grits says DeLay is getting a taste of business as usual in Travis County.
In case you were wondering, it's games like last night's that Yogi Berra had in mind when he said that thing about it not being over until it's over. Reversals of fortune don't get much more whiplash-inducing than that.
What can you say? Time for Oswalt to do it again. And to think I thought I'd be able to watch "Lost" with a clear conscience on Wednesday. It's never that easy, I suppose.
I don't know a whole lot about the candidates in the race to replace term-limited Carole Mims Galloway in City Council District B this year, but since there's not likely to be much more news coverage on that race than this story, you'd best read it if you live there. You can also read the (60 words or less) candidate responses to the questions in the LVW Voters' Guide, though unfortunately Felicia Galloway-Hall, daughter of incumbent Galloway and one of the apparent frontrunners in the race, did not respond in time. I don't really have much to add to this - if you know more about these candidates, please leave a comment.
Congratulations to the White Sox for winning the American League pennant and thus finally killing their Lack Of Good Marketing Curse. I'm glad that nobody really cares about the agonies of being a White Sox fan - 88 years since their last World Series victory, 46 years since the previous AL flag. I just don't think I could stand two consecutive "Fever Pitch" championships. God help us all if the Cubs ever get this far.
The possibility that the Chisox might be playing the never-won-a-pennant Astros should make for a good story line if it comes to that. It's a little hard after last night's game not to think that the Stros might have Destiny on their side, though as Joe Sheehan reminds us, if they lose tonight they'll be in the same position they were last year, up 3-2 and heading back to Saint Louis. Go ahead and chill the champagne, but don't loiter around the fridge just yet.
As for the disputed strike call against Jim Edmonds last night, I confess that as I saw it in real time, I thought "Ball four". On replay, I didn't think it was the worst call I'd ever seen - top 25 maybe, just not Worst Ever. Edmonds clearly had a beef about it, and he's far from the only player in any series to have cause for complaint about the randomly-generated "strike zone". That said, he has no excuse for getting himself tossed. He'd already seen Tony LaRussa get the heave-ho for arguing ball and strike calls; there was no percentage in bitching about it. Shut up and step back into the box, it's a full count now. And maybe, just maybe, Beelzebud Selig might give some thought to a better way of picking which umpires get to call playoff games next year.
You may recall from my previous post on the Texas Bigfoot Research Center that they have an annual conference in the fall to discuss the state of Bigfoot research. Well, that conference was this past weekend. One can only imagine what their Powerpoint presentations look like, but let's consider these statements from a couple of scientists:
Jimmy Chilcutt, a retired fingerprint analysis expert for the Conroe Police Department, said many of the hundreds of prints he examined belonged to a primate, but not a human, ape, gorilla or chimpanzee.Like Chilcutt, other well-respected professionals have come forward to say such evidence should not be dismissed.
"To me it's still an open question, but here's some evidence that warrants some serious consideration, so give it a chance," said Jeff Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University who has studied more than 150 casts of footprints. "This is not a paranormal question; it's a biological question."
My mind is perfectly open, fellas. All I require in order to believe is some recent anatomical remains that can be conclusively shown not to belong to any known primate. If there's 2000 Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) skulking around North America, sooner or later a body's got to turn up. Find me one and then we'll talk.
For more genuine information, read the entry from the James Randi Educational Foundation Encyclopedia, plus this recent tale of Bigfoot evidence put to the DNA test.
From the Governing Magazine blog, on the possibility that 2006 will see a rise in independent candidates at the statewide level:
I can't name a single credible candidate for governor in 2006 who isn't a Democrat or Republican.
I can't say for certain if that's an assessment of Kinky Friedman's campaign or just a tacit admission that he's unaware of it. Given that magazine's primary focus, I'm inclined to say the former. Either way, I found it amusing. Link via Political Wire.
Karl-T has the official positions of the Young Conservatives of Texas on the nine ballot propositions. Some of them, notably Prop 1, are in agreement with those of the University Democrats. Make of that what you will. Karl-T will have his preferences posted shortly. Assuming I can ever make up my mind on these things, I'll try to follow suit when I can.
Latinos for Texas appears to be gearing up to work its way through the nine propositions. Here's what they've got on Prop One. No "yea" or "nay" is given, but there's a lot more context and background than anything else I've seen, so that's useful. I'll be checking back on this for more.
On a more general note, the invaluable League of Women Voters Guide to this election in Houston is now online. Thanks to Progressive Texan for the link.
I knew when I saw dueling op-eds on Prop 2 today that the one advocating a vote in favor of the Double Secret Illegal Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment would be disingenuous and evasive. It's hard to see what else it could have been. Sadly, it's also mind-numbingly stupid, the kind of stupid that makes you wonder if it wasn't submitted by the opposing side as a way to entirely discredit the argument.
Why do I say stupid? Because of this:
Opposition to Proposition 2 has only one point — repeated loudly, and amplified in the media. The sum total of the argument is that anyone against same-sex marriage is a bigoted homophobe.
Well, no, actually. There's at least three arguments against Prop 2 that I can think of, none of which use the words "bigotry" or "homophobia":
1. Gay marriage is already illegal in the state of Texas, meaning that the stated purpose of Prop 2 is irrelevant.
2. The language of Prop 2 which bans "recognizing any legal status identical or similar to marriage" is sufficiently broad and vague that it may be construed to outlaw contracts between two unmarried people (gay or straight) in which one confers certain (often property-related) rights to the other - see here for more on that. It may also be interpreted as banning domestic partner benefits and even common-law marriage.
3. Prop 2 does nothing to actually "protect" the institution of marriage, whatever "protect" means in this context.
Addressing that last point first, supporters of Proposition 2 have frequently used various "slippery slope" arguments to bolster their case. For example, Warren Chisum, the House sponsor of the bill that led to Prop 2 recently said "If you start down that road, where do you stop? Do you have multiple partners?" If it was Rep. Chisum's intent to ban polygamy (which last I checked is illegal in all fifty states), then why didn't he introduce a bill to do that? What does Prop 2 do to prevent polygamy that existing laws do not do?
Similarly, the author of this piece says:
Texans for traditional marriage have reason to feel protective of the definition of marriage. Marriage suffered a blow three decades ago with no-fault divorce. This allowed marriages to end for almost no reason. The result has led to an abundance of data showing how children suffer when their parents break up the family. We need to re-strengthen the permanence of marriage, not weaken it.
If no-fault divorce is a problem - and I neither concede nor deny that it is - how does Prop 2 help? Why not pass a bill to make getting a divorce harder? Or for that matter, why not pass a bill to make getting married harder? How will Prop 2 prevent even one no-fault divorce from occurring?
Going to point one, another common theme heard by Prop 2 supporters is that they want to make a ban on gay marriage impervious to being overturned by a so-called "activist" court. I can only wonder which of the nine elected or appointed Republican justices on the state Supreme Court they think is hankering to do so; if they have any in mind, my next question is why aren't they gearing up a primary challenge? And if some day there is a majority (not just a lone maverick or two) on the court which would look favorably on a challenge to the 2003 Lege's Defense of Marriage Act, it would mean that a majority of the voters here approve of having such justices on the court, which I submit to you means there'd be an equivalent majority in favor of taking that action legislatively, as should be done. Of course, by making this a part of our overburdened Constitution, that hypothetical future will of the people would be thwartable by a one-third minority in either chamber. Somehow, that point always seems to get overlooked by Prop 2 proponents.
Now, there is still a threat from the federal judiciary. As discussed here, an amendment to the state constitution would carry no more weight in a federal courthouse than a regular statute would. Which leaves us back where we started.
Point two is the most worrisome of the three, and frankly there's little that a Prop 2 supporter can say besides "No it won't!" against it. We don't know what the effect will be until a judge rules on it. It's possible that all of us who oppose Prop 2 are overwrought about this point, but why should we even have to worry about it? Again, if it was the intent of Chisum et al to simply reaffirm the existing legislation, then why add that provision? What purpose does this serve?
Though it does at least mention the already-illegal status of gay marriage in Texas, the companion anti-Prop 2 piece largely addresses the bigotry question. This is surely important, but it's also reactive. Prop 2 supporter have a host of questions to answer about why their solution to a nonexistent problem is necessary. We need to be asking them those questions.
Just noting for the record that the Chron made unsurprising endorsements in all four contested At Large City Council races - Peter Brown, Jay Aiyer, Shelley Sekula Somethingorother, and Michael Berry. I'd have thought they'd do a separate piece for each one, especially the two open seat races, but whatever. If they give real up-or-down recommendations on all the constitutional amendments, I'll be happy.
(And so we're clear, I mean "unsurprising" in the sense that these are the candidates I'd expect the Chron to support, based on their usual preferences. Sometimes that's for the good, as it is here with Brown and Aiyer, and sometimes, as with every Bush that's ever run for office, it's not so good. But at least it's usually predictable.)
It's official: Ciro Rodriguez is running to reclaim his CD28 seat from Rep. Henry Cuellar, joining State Rep. Richard Raymond in what is sure to be a contentious three-way primary. All I can say is that I hope this one has a quicker resolution than 2004's did (well, that and I hope it's someone other than Cuellar on the November ballot). The Jeffersonian, Dos Centavos, and DC9 have more.
UPDATE: Pineda Consulting believes Ciro will win.
The folks at ActBlue, who did such a stellar job of streamlining the process of making online contributions to Congressional and Senatorial candidates last year, are looking to expand to all 50 states for state races. We made heavy use of their capabilities for federal races as part of Texas Tuesdays last year; having this at the state level as well would be a huge boon for us.
Obviously, you can't do all 50 at once, so they're looking for input on how to prioritize. There's a poll you can take to give them some guidance - the top four states in this instant-runoff ballot will go first. Right now, Texas makes the cut, but casting a vote for the Lone Star State would help ensure that it stays there. If I understand the mechanism, ranking Texas first and leaving the others blank would have the greatest effect, but as long as you have it in there it'll do.
Greg and Karl-T have already made the pitch for this as well, so check it out and cast your vote.
The fine folks at Wampum are holding a fundraising drive to help them defray the costs of the annual Koufax Awards process. As detailed here, they don't really have any other viable options for making this less expensive on themselves. They don't need much, and when you consider all the work they put into this popular and well-received effort, whatever you can give them goes a long way. So give them a hand if you can, for nomination season is just around the corner.
Well, this sort of thing is never good for prosecutors: The Travis County DA's office has said that they do not have a list of Texas candidates who received money alleged to have been laundered through the Republican National Committee, even though it was cited in the indictments that were handed down.
Indictments against DeLay, Jim Ellis and John Colyandro state that Ellis gave "a document that contained the names of several candidates for the Texas House" to a Republican National Committee official in 2002 in a scheme to swap $190,000 in restricted corporate money for the same amount of money from individuals that could be legally used by Texas candidates.But prosecutors said Friday in court that they only had a "similar" list and not the one allegedly received by then-RNC Deputy Director Terry Nelson. Late in the day, they released a list of 17 Republican candidates, but only seven are alleged to have received money in the scheme.
A lawyer for Ellis said prosecutors' inability to produce the list mentioned in the indictments is on par with the tactics used by U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the communist witch hunts of the 1950s.
"I'll tell you what I think about this list. In the 1950s, a man named McCarthy claimed to have a list of 200 communists in the State Department, and he didn't," said J.D. Pauerstein, a lawyer for Jim Ellis, the director of DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority. "They (prosecutors) don't know what list they're talking about, even though they specify it in their indictment."
Without the exact list, the prosecutors' case against DeLay, Ellis and Colyandro likely turns on Nelson's testimony. Nelson testified at least twice to grand juries hearing the case.
"That would be something Mr. Nelson could testify to, and the jury could weigh the testimony and decide whether to accept it or whether he's confused about what list he saw three or four years ago in the midst of a heated election cycle," Pauerstein said.
Lawyers for Ellis and Colyandro demanded a copy of the list from Travis County prosecutors during the court hearing Friday. But Assistant District Attorney Rick Reed told state District Judge Bob Perkins that the list prosecutors wanted to provide the defense was not the one mentioned in the indictment.
Reed said prosecutors had a list of candidates from the business papers of the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority, TRMPAC, that they believe was a precursor to the one given to Nelson.
"Despite the fact that the state cannot conclusively prove that the said document is a duplicate (or copy thereof)" of the document given to Nelson, the "state believes that the document is at least factually related" to the document mentioned in the indictment, Reed said in a court brief filed after the hearing.
The list released by prosecutors contained the names of 17 Republican state House candidates from 2002. Nine of the candidates had dollar amounts listed next to their names totaling $230,000.
[...]
"It's just hard to believe this (list) is central to their indictment," said Colyandro attorney Joe Turner. "They've had this grand jury investigation for over three years now, and they don't have a list, and now they've come up with a document that they say is similar to the list."
More from the Statesman:
In court, prosecutors provided a list but declined to promise it was the same list cited in the conspiracy indictments. They suggested that the list, which included the names of 17 Texas candidates, might have been a precursor to the final list given to the committee.Two Austin candidates, Jack Stick and Todd Baxter, received money from the committee, as did Rick Green of Dripping Springs.
Ellis' lawyer, J.D. Pauerstein of San Antonio, said there might never have been a list.
"In the 1950s, a man named (Joe) McCarthy claimed to have a list of 200 communists in the State Department," Pauerstein said. "And he didn't."
Pauerstein's rhetoric matched the tone of recent attacks that Republicans and their allies are aiming at Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, including a television commercial comparing Earle to an attack dog.
If prosecutors cannot produce the list, Pauerstein said, it would not invalidate the indictment but undercut the credibility of the prosecutors.
Logically, some sort of list must have existed. I mean, there was money distributed, and one presumes it was not done in a random fashion; someone somewhere prioritized who was to get what. I suspect what's key about this isn't so much the names of the recipients but the names of the people who compiled the list, and the names of the people to whom the list was shown prior to that money being disbursed. Without it, you've got your suppositions about who knew what and when they knew it, but unless you've got some damning testimony (tell me again what Warren RoBold is up to these days?), you may not have proof. Which would suck.
Also from the Statesman, another bogus attempt to explain what happened to the disputed TRMPAC cash:
DeLay said the committee sent the $190,000 to Washington because it had surplus funds.Pauerstein, Ellis' attorney, echoed that contention Friday.
"We needed to do something" with the money, he said. "The campaigns were winding down. You don't raise political money and just sit on it."
Austin lawyer Cris Feldman, who won a civil ruling against Texans for a Republican Majority earlier this year, disagreed.
Feldman cited e-mails from DeLay's fundraiser, Warren Robold, who was still trying to raise donations, including corporate money, even as Election Day approached.
"TRMPAC was rasing corporate money hand over fist right up to the election," he said. "The evidence is very clear."
First of all, if that money was sent to DC because it wasn't needed in Texas, then what was the purpose of that $190K that came back from the RNC? And second, lest we forget, 2002 was the year the Republicans took over the State House, giving them complete control of the Texas government for the first time ever. In that environment, there was no such thing as surplus cash. They were playing to win, and that meant they used every resource they had available. Try again, Tom.
Meanwhile, from the Morning News, former TRMPAC treasurer Bill Ceverha has joined the hordes who are taking advantage of the soon-to-be-gone bankruptcy laws.
Dallas businessman Bill Ceverha filed for personal bankruptcy this week under the weight of lawsuits that accuse him of wrongdoing in his role as treasurer of the Tom DeLay-sponsored Texans for a Republican Majority.Rep. Delay, the former U.S. House majority leader, and three of his lieutenants continue to fight a flurry of criminal charges stemming from how the political action committee used corporate money during the 2002 statehouse elections.
But Mr. Ceverha was the lone defendant in a lawsuit lost by TRMPAC earlier this year.
A state district judge found that TRMPAC improperly raised and spent $600,000 in corporate contributions to help GOP candidates in Texas House elections. The suit was brought by three Democrats who lost in those elections, and the court ordered Mr. Ceverha to pay $196,000 in damages.
With attorney fees, that award could cost more than $1 million. A similar suit is pending.
"I've already been messing with this for almost three years," Mr. Ceverha said Friday. "There was no end in sight unless I took this action."
[...]
Mr. Colyandro and Mr. Ellis were defendants in the civil cases as well, but were stripped from those proceedings because their criminal charges – on similar facts – took precedence. That left Mr. Ceverha alone to defend TRMPAC.
David Richards, an attorney who helped win the suit against TRMPAC, said the bankruptcy freezes the case. He and others have not been paid their attorney fees.
"They raised a lot of money to defend the case," Mr. Richards said. "I can't believe the people who got him into this would drop him in the grease. He's been such a stalwart guy for them."
I can believe it. The phrase "there's no honor among thieves" would seem to apply here. Don't sit by the phone, Bill, it's not going to ring for you.
What exactly is one to make of a story like this?
A student has filed an Americans With Disabilities Act complaint against a university because it won't let her keep her pet ferret at her dormitory.Freshman Sarah Sevick, 19, said in a complaint filed with the U.S. Justice Department that she needs the ferret, named Lilly, at Our Lady of the Lake University to calm her during panic attacks.
"I'm not suing the school, and I'm not asking for money. I'm just trying to get her here," she said.
Sevick said she has been diagnosed with psychiatric problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. She takes medication for depression and anxiety, she said.
She said her problems are related, legally, to a physical disability.
"It's something inside my body that I can't control," Sevick said.
That's a new one on me, I gotta say. Actual ferret owner Ginger agrees that ferrets have a nice, calming effect on a person, but wonders why she didn't just hide hers in the closet like a normal college student. I suppose this is another example of the principle that it's always easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. Let that be a lesson, kids.
Time for a little lighter fare: Amanda asks the question "What makes you laugh every time you see it, no matter how many times you see a movie?" I can think of several movies that always work for me, but the one that's guaranteed to make me convulse, every single time, is The Pink Panther Strikes Again. The entire sequence of Clouseau trying to get into the castle, followed by his extraction of Dreyfus' tooth, slays me every time. Some day, I'm going to make Olivia watch this with me so she'll know, down to the last digit, just how big a spaz her father is.
That's my true confession for the day. What's yours?
I know there's a lot of screwed up stuff going on at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, what with their cost-ineffective privatization and all, but you'd think they could still get the basics right. As detailed in a letter to Albert Hawkins by State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, that's not a safe assumption to make. Read all about it at the Chris Bell blog.
Here's the Chron story about Sam Malone replacing Roula and Ryan on Mix 96.5, which as you can see from the comments here is generating a lot of complaints from R&R fans. I'll admit that you won't get rich betting against Ken Charles' programming acumen in Houston, but I'm still a little skeptical of this:
"What Sam Malone brings to the table is 12 years of experience, a huge audience and passion," says Ken Charles, regional vice president of programming for Clear Channel Houston. "Listeners who started with him many years ago still listen to him. What this does is put Sam in a position to talk to our entire audience."After nearly three years the Roula & Ryan Show, whose ratings in July fell out of the top five in the key demographic of women between the ages of 25-44, will have to find another place on the dial.
"There is nothing bad to say about the job Roula and Ryan did. They worked hard and we wish them well," says Charles. "Sometimes these decisions are easier. This was one of the hardest I've ever had to make."
No radio station ever makes a change without pissing off some loyal fans, so take all the spleen-venting with some salt, since it's not exactly a representative sample of the local radion audience. I do wonder, though, if Malone will prove to be as popular without his longtime sidekick from KRBE, Maria Todd. He may have been the headliner of that act, but a partner with whom he had chemistry is not something to dismiss out of hand. I don't know, and I can't say I really care - I enjoyed R&R the times I listened to them, but my radio stays on KACC these days, so this doesn't really affect me. I'm just wondering is all.
By the way, given some earlier comments Malone once made, it's interesting to see him on a Clear Channel station.
When KRBE's Sam Malone and Maria Todd first went on the air in 1993, most radio stations in Houston had a flashy, larger-than-life morning show. Now they're among the dwindling number of megawatt morning personalities.Malone and Todd consider themselves lucky to work for a relatively small company -- Susquehanna Radio Corp. -- that runs its 29 stations the old-fashioned way, with on-air personalities around the clock and a full-time production, marketing and promotion staff that concentrates on only one station and touts its program at every opportunity.
"The tables have turned in 10 years," Malone said. "(Back then) people were saying, 'Don't go to KRBE in Houston, because they're a mom-and-pop operation.' Now everybody wants to work for a mom-and-pop operation."
"Instead of an evil empire," Todd added.
Welcome to the Dark Side, Sam Malone. Hope it's what you wanted.
UPDATE: Apparently, Metroblogging Houston has also been inundated with comments on an older blog entry. They have some constructive suggestions for those who whish to let Clear Channel know about their displeasure at this move, which I daresay none of the people currently leaving those comments will ever read. Don't let that stop you, though.
Tom DeLay may want a speedy trial for the money laundering charges on which he's been indicted, but that's not the case for his codefendants.
Two associates of Rep. Tom DeLay were released today on $10,000 personal bonds as their attorneys indicated they may split from their former boss on legal strategy.Lawyers for defendants Jim Ellis and John Colyandro are pressing in Texas appeals courts to have their charges dismissed before going to trial. They made it clear today they would be willing to wait weeks or months for those appellate decisions.
DeLay's attorneys, however, have said they want his trial as soon as possible.
[...]
The posting of bonds came a day after it was learned that DeLay is being forced to turn over home and campaign phone records from the period in which he is charged with conspiring to launder illegal corporate donations. A later auto purchase also is being investigated.
Attorneys for Ellis and Colyandro asked State District Judge Bob Perkins today to rule on their motion seeking proof of an alleged document that detailed the names of Texas legislative candidates who were to receive contributions from the Republican National Committee. Defense attorneys questioned whether the document exists.
Perkins said he would consider the motion Nov. 8.
The judge also clarified Friday that the latest indictments against the men — alleging criminal conspiracy — were new charges and did not supercede previous indictments.
More from the Statesman:
[A] lawyer for Ellis demanded in a pre-trial motion that prosecutors produce a list that Ellis is accused of giving the RNC showing how much money to give to seven Texas candidates."It doesn't exist," said Joe Turner, who represents Colyandro. "I asked the prosecutors for the list, and they say they don't have a copy."
According to the indictment, Ellis gave the list to RNC officials in Washington and two weeks later RNC gave $190,000 of political donations to the seven candidates.
Although a copy of the list might not have survived from 2002, RNC officials who testified before a Travis County grand jury could have told prosecutors about the list.
However, J.D. Pauerstein, a San Antonio lawyer representing Ellis, said RNC officials would be wrong to attribute the list to Ellis or Colyandro. He suggested that the RNC's field representative in Texas, Kevin Shuvalov, created the list, if it ever existed.
"Ellis was in Washington focused on congressional races," Pauerstein said. "He wouldn't have known which (state) candidates in Texas should be supported."
Well, if that list can be produced, it's likely to be pretty damning. Even without it, the size of the RNC contribution to Texas candidates that year is unusual.
The Republican Party's $190,000 in donations to seven Texas politicians in 2002, which are at the center of criminal charges against Representative Tom DeLay, dwarfed all other contributions the national party made to state legislative races that year, federal records show.The size of the donations -- five times more money than the national party gave to other state legislative candidates -- may bolster a prosecutor's accusations that DeLay channeled funds through the party to skirt a Texas law banning corporate contributions to political races, campaign-finance experts say.
The money was distributed on Oct. 4, 2002, to Republican legislative candidates backed by DeLay's political action committee, Federal Election Commission records show. That was about two weeks after the national party got $190,000 from the PAC. An indictment obtained by Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle charges that DeLay's PAC sent a list of the candidates to the party along with $190,000 raised from companies.
"It's just more evidence that these were earmarked contributions," said former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble, now executive director of the Washington- based Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political giving. "It just adds to the case if there was no history in giving money to state legislative candidates."
Those last two links come via The Stakeholder.
Notice a name missing in all this? That would be Warren RoBold, the professional fundraiser who was indicted with Ellis and Colyandro months ago. I've no idea at this point what his strategy is, but there's been some speculation that he's already flipped on DeLay. Given that the evidence against all three of these characters is likely to be the strongest in this case, one can only wonder when Ellis and Colyandro's interests will veer sufficiently away from DeLay's that a deal for them will start to look good.
On a side note, Ellis and Colyandro don't approve of the anti-Earle ads.
Pauerstein and attorney Joe Turner, who represents Colyandro, also said they had no part in television ads that a national conservative organization began running this week criticizing the prosecution of DeLay. Turner said the ads were inappropriate and should be stopped."If there was money out there for those kind of ads, we'd ask that it be given to the defense fund and not for some attack ads," Turner said. "We don't think that has any place over here."
Well, you can't blame a defense attorney for wanting to make sure he gets paid. But still, kudos for seeing those ads for what they are.
Local Voter has a summary page of the nine Constitutional amendments on the ballot this November, along with a more in-depth section on Prop 2, the Double Secret Illegal Anti-Gay Marriage amendment, which the Harris County Democratic Party now officially opposes.
That's the easy one. I'm still working my way through some of the rest, and unfortunately there's not much out there right now. The University Democrats are the first to come out with a comprehensive list of endorsements; unfortunately, they don't explain their positions, and I'm not sure I agree with all of them.
Bucky has a lighthearted take on the amendments, in which he separates them into three groups. At least there's some verbiage there to go with the "yea" or "nay". If you know of other analyses beyond what's on the Secretary of State page, please let me know.
Should have linked to these sooner, but here we go now. On Tuesday the Harris County Democratic Party hosted a debate between Jay Aiyer and Sue Lovell, both of whom are candidates for the open City Council At Large #2 seat in November. Greg Wythe, Stace Medellin, and Lyn Wall all have writeups from the event, which I hope will help you decide who'll get your vote. Check 'em out.
There are nine finalists, including one familiar name, for the job of Texas Lottery Director.
A special search committee will begin Friday to interview nine finalists for the position, whittled down from 126 applicants. Only one of the nine people has experience working at a state lottery.The diverse pool includes several candidates with extensive military experience, one with management experience at another state agency, two lawyers and the president of a lottery consulting company.
[...]
the one applicant getting the most publicity, who may have the most understanding of the Texas Lottery, is Dawn Nettles, the lottery's most vocal critic.
Nettles publishes the online lottery newsletter The Lotto Report and has spent several years criticizing the Texas Lottery for inflating jackpot estimates and bad management decisions that led to dwindling sales.
She is responsible for revealing the $1.3 million discrepancy that resulted in Greer's resignation.
"It took me a long time to make the decision to apply," Nettles said. "I know I've been a thorn in their side for so very long. I know I'm not their favorite person because I've caused them a lot of grief.
"But the players know I'm honest," she said, "and I know I'm more than qualified."
The question of honesty may arise more in this search process than it has before.
Lottery officials say the recent problems with the jackpot estimates have brought more attention to trustworthiness than experience.
"It is my intent to examine carefully each person's reputation," said Texas Lottery Commission Chairman Tom Clowe, the only commissioner who is a member of the search committee, "to look closely in regard to their understanding of integrity and honesty."
[...]
Lottery officials won't say if there is a clear front-runner.
There's a list of the nine finalists at the end of the piece. I'll bet these are some interesting interviews.
Speaking of Dawn Nettles, the Morning News has a feature on her and her assessment of her chances of getting the job.
"They're not going to hire me," the 54-year-old Garland woman said. "They hate me with a passion."
Gotta respect that kind of bluntness.
Lottery Commission spokesman Bobby Heith says Ms. Nettles is a serious candidate for the job, one of only eight of the more than 110 applicants to get this far."I guess you could consider her a critic, but she has been helpful with some of her criticism," Mr. Heith said. "She calls things to our attention."
Like minor errors on the commission's Web site. And that letter she wrote to the attorney general in June about the inflated jackpot estimates.
"It's something we discovered first. But her letter brought media attention to the situation," Mr. Heith said. "The resignation of Executive Director Greer followed about a month after that. That was one of the things going on at that time. Whether it was a direct cause, I'm not sure."
Hmmm..."we discovered it, but she did us the favor of making sure the media knew about it so the whole state would know what a bunch of schmendricks we are". Yeah, I can see why she's not so sanguine about her chances.
It's a good piece, and without knowing much if anything about the other candidates, I'm rooting for her. Read it and see if you agree.
The subpoenas continue to fly in and out of Travis County.
Travis County prosecutors subpoenaed telephone records for DeLay's home, mobile phone and campaign office from Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2002.District Attorney Ronnie Earle also sought telephone records for DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro, who served as a fundraiser for both DeLay's national Americans for a Republican Majority, ARMPAC, and the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority, TRMPAC.
This AP wire story has more on this.
The subpoenas list telephone numbers, but not whom they belong to. They ask for information about the calls and the numbers' subscribers, voice mail service, billing information, long-distance calls made from or charged to the numbers and special features."The thing is no big deal," said Bill White, Austin attorney for DeLay.
Earle's office declined to comment on the subpoenas. He has said the investigation is continuing.
Earle is seeking the records and information from Sept. 1, 2001, to Dec. 31, 2002, the period when a political committee founded by DeLay, Texans for a Republican Majority, was raising money for the 2002 election cycle.
He also wants Toyota Motor Credit Corp. of Torrance, Calif., to turn over records on a 2004 Toyota Sienna Earle alleges was bought by DeLay. White said the minivan was leased as a campaign car in 2003, well after the fundraising for the Texas committee.
[...]
This is not the first time a subpoena has been issued involving DeLay's daughter, a political consultant. She was subpoenaed in early 2004 to appear before a grand jury and bring records of work she did for TRMPAC.
Calls to one number for Ferro seeking comment went to voice mail. A man who answered a second number for her declined comment.
Earle also subpoenaed records from a phone number for Ellis' 12-year-old daughter and for CAD Affiliates, a technology company in a town near Sugar Land, a Houston suburb that is DeLay's hometown.
Ed Crowell, owner of CAD Affiliates, said DeLay's campaign office shared a building with him once but his company was not associated with DeLay. He said he was not a contributor and has heard from DeLay only when he gets recorded campaign calls at home.
"I've never seen the man. I may have seen him in the grocery store," Crowell said.
Getting back to the first story, the FEC has released some documents from another of DeLay's PACs which indicate they spent corporate money to influence Congressional elections elsewhere in the country in 2002.
Federal Election Commission audit documents released Thursday indicate U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay's national leadership committee pushed the limits of federal law in 2002 by spending almost $100,000 in corporate money to affect the outcome of five congressional races.[...]
ARMPAC was cited for reporting violations by the FEC in August in an audit indicating the committee may have spent more than $200,000 in restricted corporate money in 2001 and 2002 on federal political activities.
The audit made no recommendations on whether the FEC should pursue an enforcement action against ARMPAC.
Records from the audit were made public Thursday by Political Money Line, a tracking service, showing ARMPAC paid $96,551 in restricted corporate money to Federal Capital Communications Corp. on Nov. 7, 2002, to pay for 145,348 direct mail pieces that were sent in five congressional races. It is unclear whether the money was included in what the FEC cited as reporting problems.
The mailings were sent a week before the elections in races in Florida, Kansas, Iowa and two in Indiana. A sample of one mailing was included in the documents.
You can see the documents here and here.
Federal law forbids the use of corporate money to specifically advocate for a candidate.But numerous political organizations got around the so-called soft money rule by using corporate money to pay for "issue advocacy" advertisements that told voters how a candidate stood on a specific issue.
Federal election law has since changed to severely limit such issue advertising, and federal courts have ruled that the FEC can look at the totality of circumstances to rule whether issue advertising was meant to affect the outcome of an election.
Political Money Line co-founder Kent Cooper said it would be up to the FEC to determine whether the ARMPAC ads violated federal law.
ARMPAC Executive Director Jim Ellis and lawyer Donald McGahn did not return calls for comment. DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said the latest documents prove nothing.
"These items were all disclosed in compliance with federal campaign law, the transactions were legal, and this happened three years ago," she said. "This is just a flashback masked as breaking news."
Always breaking new ground, that's our Tommy.
Meanwhile, a different gray area in campaign law is allowing an anonymous group to give DeLay a taste of his own medicine.
Using new technology to exploit gray areas in election law, a mystery group has been making anonymous, automated calls to voters in Republican congressional districts across the country, telling them that their representatives should return money received from Rep. Tom DeLay's political action committee.Officials from national Democratic and Republican organizations say they cannot determine who is behind the group, which calls itself We the People. The calls began shortly after DeLay was indicted by two Travis County grand juries on a conspiracy charge and a money-laundering charge late last month and forced to step aside as House majority leader.
"Although we don't have a face behind the name, it seems to go along with the Democratic strategy" of targeting DeLay, said Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the Sugar Land Republican.
Under federal election law, caller identification is typically required for political calls that solicit contributions, advocate support for a candidate, or are paid for by a candidate or political committee.
Unless We the People falls into the last category — which is unknown because the group has no Web site, phone number or organizational listing — the calls would appear to be legal, said Federal Election Commission spokesman George Smaragdis.
Joe Birkenstock, an attorney who specializes in election law at the Washington, D.C.-based firm of Caplin & Drysdale, said that "people have the right to do anonymous political activities, but there are some open questions. There are gray areas all over election law."
Former FEC Commissioner Brad Smith said there recently has been "quite a bit of concern about this type of behavior, but (federal law) really limits the ability of the commission to do much."
I sure hope this is being done in a legal fashion, whoever's behind it. I don't like anonymous attacks, and if it turns out We the People are breaking the law, then they deserve whatever punishment they get. I don't have any sympathy for the targeted Congressfolk, who should be outed about their continued support for DeLay, but this is not the way I'd have chosen to do it.
Meanwhile, Karl-T reports on those anti-Earle ads now running in Austin, where I'm so sure they'll have a great effect. Think Progress has some context.
Finally, John Dean reviews the charges and countercharges so far, and finds things for people on all sides to worry about. Link via Avedon.
Local radio DJ Sam Malone is about to be a very busy guy. He already does his thing on 740 AM from 10 till noon on weekdays. And now, as seen on the KHMX home page, he'll be their new morning show personality from 6 to 9 starting tomorrow. That's gonna be a lot of yakking to do every day.
I don't know what brought this on, but I figured it out because I've been getting deluged by Google searches by fans of the now-displaced Roula and Ryan morning show on Mix 96.5, several of whom have left agonized comments on this post. I swear, people, I know nothing more about the whys and wherefores of this than you do. I don't think I've ever tuned into Malone, but obviously the folks at Clear Channel think he's pretty hot stuff to work him this hard. We'll see how he does, since he'll likely be speaking to two very different audiences on the two stations.
UPDATE: Turns out that Roula and Ryan have a webpage, which currently has this on it:
Unfortunately, Clear Channel decided to terminate the Roula and Ryan show today. We knew this was coming, ever since Sam Malone left KRBE back in March but hoped, for the sake of our listeners, this would not turn out to be the case. We appreciate all the support our listeners have given us. Stay tuned to this web site for more information.
There's a voice message (MP3) as well if you want more.
Plans to build a branch of Texas A&M University in south San Antonio have hit a snag over concerns about how committed A&M is to building it.
Mayor Phil Hardberger said Tuesday he wants a solid commitment from Texas A&M to bring a campus to the South Side before he'll get behind the city's proposed $15 million buyout of homes and businesses for a land donation.The city, he said, still doesn't have a binding agreement with the university, as called for in a City Council resolution in January offering to hand over the property by December 2006.
"I want to firm this up before we actually start buying things," Hardberger said.
He's proposing a public meeting where university officials would lay out their plans directly to the council for a four-year campus on the city's proposed site — which Hardberger says hasn't happened yet.
"We should invite A&M to come here and put everything on the table," the mayor said. "Then we can make a motion to go ahead and proceed."
State Sen. Frank Madla, who's led the drive to bring A&M to the South Side, said he didn't know what to make of Hardberger's questions about the university's commitment.
"The A&M board of regents has made it very clear that they accept the city's proposal," the San Antonio Democrat said. "I don't know what else the mayor wants. I don't know what he's looking for."
The Jeffersonian wants this to move forward already. DC9 thinks slowing things down and making sure of what's what is prudent.
I don't have an opinion on the timing, but I do hope this campus gets built. I've long been of the opinion that San Antonio is underserved in terms of undergraduate capacity. UTSA only dates back to 1969, and back in the 80s when I was at Trinity it was a smaller, mostly commuter school on what was then the far edge of town. Having a second public university, especially one a little closer to downtown, is something that would greatly benefit the Alamo City.
We're finally starting to see some GOP challenger action in the State House. The Quorum Report gives a two-sided look at HD03, which was one of the closest races from last year:
Former Franklin County GOP chairman Kirby Hollingsworth is planning another bid for House District 3, which will be his second attempt to unseat state Rep. Mark Homer (D-Paris).Hollingsworth, 39, was defeated in the last election cycle by 218 votes in a race that attracted 48,444 voters from six counties. He said in 2004, he was considered an underdog and many folks in Austin – including the moneyed political action committees and GOP leaders – didn’t expect his campaign to come so close to edging out Homer. This time, he said, he’s got the 2004 legacy of grassroots support and he doesn’t feel like an underdog. He anticipates more Austin support in 2006.
"If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times, ‘We just really didn’t know you had that great of a chance. But if you’ll run again, we’ll do everything we can to help’," Hollingsworth said he’s been told.
Equal time is then given:
State Rep. Mark Homer (D-Paris) in 2004 faced a ballot topped by Republican President George W. Bush and newly-minted GOP member Congressman Ralph Hall. Despite some straight-ticket GOP voting, Homer retained his seat, but it was a tight 218-vote margin over opponent Kirby Hollingsworth.That year, the statewide voting index in House District 3 favored Republicans 71.7 percent over Democrats at 28.3 percent. But, in the 2002 race for lieutenant governor – often considered a solid benchmark of a region’s preferences – Democrat John Sharp carried the district 51.6 percent over current Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst at 48.4 percent.
The State House member pages finally have district election analyses from 2004 now - here's how it looks in HD03. If the statewide GOP index looks a bit high to you, it's because they appear to be including vote totals from all races, regardless of whether or not there was a candidate from each party on the ballot. This strikes me as less than useful, given that there were four statewide races in every district which featured no Democrat. If you do the math for the contested races in HD03 (which is what I've always done every time I've looked at a district), you get 145,444 R to 87,982 D, or 62.3% R to 37.7% D.
The key question is whether the 2004 result, with President Bush at the top of the ticket and practically zero statewide campaigning done by any Democrat, represents a highwater mark or the new reality. If it's the former, Homer is probably safe; if not, he's very vulnerable. I subscribe to the highwater theory, but that's more a guess than anything else. 2006 will definitely put that notion to the test.
Oh, and by the way, Homer ran unopposed in 2002. Think that might have cost Kirby Hollingsworth a few votes in 2004, since he was probably not as well-known in the district as he otherwise might have been? There are many reasons why some of us keep harping on that Run Everywhere concept.
Elsewhere, Rio Grande Valley Politics writes about HD41, where first-term Democrat Veronica Gonzales has several potential opponents lining up against her.
Although the 41st is currently held by a democrat, the House seat was redrawn to pack in voters from the affluent north McAllen and Sharyland areas. In the 2004 presidential race between Bush and Kerry, Bush won the 41st with 56.6% of the vote. The overall statewide ballots cast were 52% republican and 47% democrat. In 2002, the overall statewide ballots cast in the 41st were reversed; democrats took 52% of the vote while republicans took 47%.
Once again - highwater mark or new norm? Here's the election analysis for HD41. As before, disregard their statewide indices; counting only contested races, it's 79,498 R to 75,067 D in votes, or 51.4% R to 48.6% D (I'm not sure what method RGVP is using). Notice also that Gonzales, like her predecessor Roberto Gutierrez in 2002, ran unopposed last year.
QR mentions a couple of other races as well, and I'm sure we'll keep hearing about more of them as Filing Season approaches, so stay tuned. If I haven't made it clear already, this is going to be an interesting year.
I know that the ads shown during the Super Bowl are popular and all, but I'm not so sure about this.
The NFL plans to pull together a half-hour show consisting of this year's Super Bowl television ads for its video-on-demand platform, according to AdAge. A similar Super Bowl commercial show has been run on the NFL Network's cable channel for the last two years. However, that show did not appear until mid-week after the game, while the VOD show will be available just hours later.Rights issues are complicated, particularly for movie studios, because they have to "pay the talent, and for them the cost means it's just not feasible" to give VOD rights to the NFL, said David Pattillo, director-media sales, NFL Network. But overall, around 80 percent of the advertisers involved in the Super Bowl have supplied their ads for the show.
The main question I have is whether they plan to make this freely available, or if they intend to charge people for the privilege of watching advertisements. If it's the latter - and I suspect it is, since the NFL doesn't do anything for free - I can only marvel at the prospect. I don't know what demographic they think will be willing to shell out $19.95 or whatever they'll have to cough up, but I'll bet it's one that advertisers will really love. Would it be overkill to suggest the NFL sell some ads for this production? It's not like they'd be out of place, after all.
Thanks to Banjo for the link.
Mary Beth Harrell made the official announcement of her bid to unseat Rep. John Carter in CD31 on Tuesday. Eye on Williamson has the details.
UPDATE: Ah, good, there is press coverage of this. BOR has more.
Via PinkDome, Josh Marshall and email to me, I see that an outfit called the Free Enterprise Fund is going to be running anti-Ronnie Earle ads on TV, starting in Austin and going nationwide. Here's a story in Roll Call with the scoop.
The Free Enterprise Fund will launch a saturation television ad buy in Austin, Texas, Thursday that accuses Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle (D) of indicting Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) purely for blatant political purposes.FEF, a conservative, Washington, D.C.-based think tank, declined to disclose the cost of the buy, but said it would run for seven days in Texas’ state capital, where Earle is based, before branching out to other media markets around the country.
“It will run so much, the only way Ronnie Earle will not see it is if he watches PBS, because they don’t let you run ads there,” said FEF Vice President and Political Director Peter Roff.
The 30-second ad features a barking, salivating Rottweiler, with a voice-over that recounts Earle’s alleged prosecutorial misdeeds. It ends by flashing the district attorney’s phone number while encouraging people to call Earle and tell him he’s wrong.
“A prosecutor with a political agenda can be vicious. When liberal Democrat Ronnie Earle went after Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, the judge threw out the case. But now Earle’s after another Republican, Tom DeLay,” the voice-over begins. “Earle’s even exploited the DeLay case to raise money for liberal politicians. That’s wrong. Bad, Ronnie, bad.”
Roff said the ad has more to do with protecting the ability of free market principles to flourish on Capitol Hill than it does with defending DeLay, who was forced to step down as Majority Leader in late September after Earle indicted him for conspiring to skirt Texas election laws.
“Tom DeLay is the leader of the free-market agenda in the House, and any move to sideline DeLay is about sidelining that agenda,” Roff said. “It’s winning with the jury box what they can’t win at the ballot box.”
Whatever. As the Quorum Report says:
Critics in Austin question whether running TV ads taking sides in a criminal proceeding amounts to jury tampering. Of course, the flip side is that it makes it more difficult for Mr. Delay's attorneys to seek a venue change by claiming that the jury pool in Travis County has been unduly influenced by supposedly pro-Earle local media. Mr. DeGuerin would argue that the change of venue and the use of a visiting judge were crucial to his success in the Hutchison case.
As with other tactics by Team DeLay, this is all about the PR war. It'd be funny if a motion to change venue were denied because of this, but it's not about the trial. If these guys really do think they can affect that, then I hope there is a countercharge of jury tampering levelled at them.
So is this going to be helpful to DeLay? Well, consider this: According to Survey USA, the percentage of respondents who say DeLay should "resign from Congress" has stayed steady between 32 and 37 percent since May. It hit an alltime high of 40% in the latest iteration, dated October 10. Given that DeLay's national approval rating is abysmal but his name recognition is still fairly low, I'm not so sure that keeping his name out there in front of everyone is such a hot idea. I guess we'll find out.
UPDATE: The Public Campaign Action Fund has labelled these ads as jury-tampering and is calling for them to stop being aired. Their statement can be found here.
The Chron gives some coverage to the HISD I open seat race and the three candidates in it, all of whom attended a candidates' forum at Hamilton Middle School on Monday night.
Richard Cantú, 36, director of Mayor Bill White's Citizens' Assistance Office, has unsuccessfully sought public office on the school board and City Council before. He attended District 1 schools, and so do his children.Natasha Kamrani, 37, left Ohio 15 years ago to become a Teach for America teacher in Houston. She later served as the organization's Houston director and is now an attorney. Her husband, Chris Barbic, is a Teach for America alum and founder of YES College Prep, a Houston charter school. They are the parents of two toddlers.
Anne Flores Santiago, 38, grew up in District 1 and is the daughter of Yolanda Flores, a Houston Community College board member. Santiago owns a private ambulance service. Her daughter attends Catholic school.
Natasha Kamrani and a representative from Anne Flores Santiago's campaign were at the Woodland Heights Civic Association meeting last night, so I've had the opportunity to get a little more informed on this race. One thing I can say here is that Santiago has three kids, one of whom is in college, one is 11, and the other is a preschooler - I presume the daughter in question here is the middle child.
Each candidate has a different opinion on tax-funded charter schools, many of which operate within HISD with the school district's support.Santiago said she opposes charter schools because they "take funding away from our HISD schools." Cantú said he supports some charter schools but not those that recruit HISD students. Kamrani favors charter schools because they offer parents more options.
They also have different ideas about preparing students for college. Kamrani said HISD should assume every student will enroll in college.
Though she agrees college is important, Santiago said she would concentrate on expanding HISD's partnership with Houston Community College to help students get job skills while earning college credits. Cantú said HISD needs a better balance between vocational programs and college preparation.
"I don't think college preparation and vocational studies necessarily need to compete," he said.
All three candidates said they favor merit-based pay for teachers but have different ideas on how it should work.
"I favor merit pay for our teachers," Santiago said. "Not necessarily for administrators."
Kamrani said she likes the idea of tying teacher and principal pay to their students' performance but not on an individual basis.
Cantú said he wants across-the-board teacher pay raises and to do away with the big bonuses being paid to principals and high-ranking administrators.
Several weeks ago I sent a questionnaire to these three folks, in an attempt to get more information about them and this race, which will be on my ballot in November (the HISD trustee map is here if you're not sure which district you're in). Richard Cantu's answers are here. I still hope to get responses from the other two - I followed up with them last night - and will print them when I do.
Via Scott, I see that the ACLU of Texas has its own blog now. I think that's great - really, at this point, I have a hard time understanding why any advocacy group wouldn't have a blog of some kind. Your issues are only going to get so much coverage in the regular media; blogging is an excellent format for in-depth coverage of complex and/or ongoing issues, since it can be done in small pieces and in a timely fashion. This blog's still a work in progress - no RSS feed yet, for example - but if you want to know what's happening on the civil liberties front around here, the Liberty Blog would be a good place to start. Check it out.
(And a belated happy one year blogging anniversary to you, Scott. Here's to many more.)
As previously noted, Chris Bell's plan for ethics reform is now available. Many of these ideas have been floated before, some of them in the 2005 legislative session. All of them strike me as common sense, but they've never had a Governor to advocate for them before, and that's the key. As long as Rick Perry or someone like him is in office, these items will remain on the wish list. Reform requires commitment, and that won't happen until there's a change at the top.
Stuff relating to lobbyists, pay-for-play, and special sessions should be the most straightforward and least difficult to pass. Contribution limits and a Texas Ethics Commission with real enforcement and audit powers would be tougher, since they'd have the most direct impact on the Legislature. On the other hand, they're pretty easy to frame, so a good and aggressive PR campaign in their favor ought to be able to get public opinion on their side. Succeeding on these two items would be a significant achievement, and would have a profound and long-term effect on how candidates run their races.
As for redistricting reform, I'd wager it would take a constitutional amendment, and that's likely too high a bar to clear. It would, however, provide an appealing opportunity to reach across the aisle, since Republican State Sen. Jeff Wentworth has been its champion for the past half-dozen sessions or so. This one is of a different class than the other items, all of which are really about money and access, and I think it might be better to argue for it separately.
(By the way, for what it's worth, I think the focus of redistricting reform should be on ensuring that communities of interest are kept together. Splitting them up, as was done to Travis County, or joining together disparate areas like Austin and Corpus Christi, solely for political considerations, is what I want to see done away with. This is true at the neighborhood level as well - I say it's wrong that Montrose and the Rice/Medical Center area were shoved into John Culberson's district. Make drawing boundaries that make geographic sense the goal. If that results in some competitive districts and some safe ones, so be it.)
What's been the response to all this from Rick Perry? Typically, to seize upon a minor error (since corrected) and ignore the rest. I guess when you've got nothing to say, you say nothing. Here's a more focused article on what Bell proposed.
Other reactions, from BOR, Eye on Williamson, The Jeffersonian, and Dos Centavos. This earlier post of mine has more information on some of the points raised here.
No one would ever accuse Dick DeGuerin of being fainthearted.
Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay's attorneys turned the tables on a Texas prosecutor today, delivering a subpoena to compel his testimony about his conduct with grand jurors. The prosecutor refused to accept the subpoena, a defense lawyer said.Attorney Dick DeGuerin wants Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle and two of his assistants to testify, alleging prosecutors had improper contact with two grand juries that indicted DeLay and one that refused to file charges.
[...]
DeGuerin said acceptance of the subpoena was voluntary today because it had not been stamped by a court official, but added the defense team would go through the court procedure Wednesday and redeliver it. He said Earle, district attorney for Travis County, would then be obligated to accept the subpoena, but could file a motion to have it dismissed.
The defense lawyer, who is trying to get the indictments dismissed, said an assistant district attorney also refused to accept her subpoena, but a second assistant accepted the subpoena delivered to him. Acceptance simply involves signing a paper acknowledging delivery.
The subpoenas asked that the prosecutor and the two assistants appear in court or submit to a deposition in which the defense lawyers would question them.
DeGuerin also asked that grand jurors be released from their secrecy oath so they could answer questions about the prosecutor's conduct.
Earle's office said in a written statement, "Because of laws protecting grand jury secrecy, there are limitations to what we can say at this time, but we fully expect to prevail in this matter."
DeGuerin wants Earle to answer 12 questions about conversations he had with grand jurors, including whether the prosecutor became angry when a grand jury decided against an indictment of DeLay and why that decision was not publicly released.
He also wants to know the details of Earle's conversation with William Gibson, foreman of a grand jury that indicted DeLay on conspiracy charges, whose term has since ended.
"If you did nothing improper, you should not be concerned about answering these questions," DeGuerin said in his letter to Earle.
He'd have made a good prosecutor, wouldn't he? I have some serious doubts about a judge allowing this to happen, but that's not really the point. In fact, I'd bet that DeGuerin is hoping to get rejected here. It'll fit their poor-persecuted-Tommy story line that much better.
Keith Hampton, a lobbyist with the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, said that a defense attorney is entitled to get testimony of a witness who appeared before a grand jury to use in examining that same witness at a trial."But the communications between prosecutors and grand jurors are not subject to a subpoena," said Hampton.
Hampton said that the Legislature has repeatedly rejected bills that would allow inroads into grand jury secrecy.
That's from the later Chron version of the story. I'm not sure what DeGuerin will argue to make this case the exception, but again, I think the whole point was making the claim. Anything they actually get out of it from an evidentiary perspective is gravy.
It's not like we shouldn't have seen this coming. This subscription Roll Call article from when the indictment against DeLay first came down spells it out:
DeLay’s allies privately suggested that they would seek retribution against Earle, although DeLay himself will have no role in that effort. Charges of prosecutorial misconduct may be lodged against Earle, and a public-relations effort to discredit Earle personally had already begun on Wednesday, with GOP insiders repeatedly pointing out that Earle unsuccessfully attempted to prosecute Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) in the midst of the 1994 Senate race in Texas."Everything will be in play," said one high-ranking House Republican aide. "We will throw everything we can at Ronnie Earle."
They have brought it on. I can only wonder what else they've got in their grab bag. Their "Earle took illegal contributions, too!" gambit didn't work too well, but that clearly hasn't discouraged them.
More at In the Pink, Talking Points Memo, and TalkLeft.
UPDATE: Always check Quorum Report...Here's the subpoena, here's the 12 questions DeGuerin is asking, and here's the motion to quash the disputed indictment. All are PDFs.
Why is Astroworld staying open through October 30 now that it's announced its closing? Because October is a busy time at theme parks, thanks to a surge in interest for Halloween and haunted houses in recent years.
Not so long ago, Halloween was merely a one-day holiday, observed primarily by kids dressed in fake blood, plastic teeth, ballerina tutus or superhero costumes, who traipsed from door-to-neighborhood door dragging pillowcases full of candy.Not anymore. Over the past five years or so, the nation's $11 billion amusement park industry has appropriated the holiday as its own, helping transform Halloween into a monthlong celebration.
"If there are still theme parks out there that aren't celebrating it, they need to get their heads examined," said James Zoltak, editor of Amusement Business, a trade publication. "It's a moneymaker, almost universally."
Although the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions keeps no figures, industry experts estimate that millions of people go to Halloween celebrations at parks around the nation, generating tens of millions of dollars in extra revenue for them.
[...]
Nationwide, Halloween has grown by leaps and bounds as a holiday, and this year consumers were expected to generate $3.3 billion in Halloween spending, according to the National Retail Federation. Celebrations also have spread abroad to amusement parks in places, such as Mexico and Brazil, without strong Halloween traditions.
"One of the things we know is that this is a worldwide trend. It's not just in the United States," said Beth Robertson, a spokeswoman for the amusement park association.
I think the reason why Halloween has become so popular is that in some ways, it's nature's perfect holiday: It's secular, it doesn't memorialize anything, gifts are not required, and there's no pressure to spend it with family or a date. It's nothing but the fun. As an added bonus for you extroverted types (and you know who you are), it's a rare opportunity to give full flower to your self-expression needs, without the inconvenience of that whole societal-disapproval thing. What more could you want?
Dwight writes about the "hardcore offline" - folks who don't use the Internet, either from never trying it or from trying it and not liking it. There's an interview here with the scoop, and his post and comments have some interesting insights.
I've been online since 1989, back when Usenet ruled the world. At this point, just about all of my family is online - the main exceptions are Tiffany's grandmothers, both of whom are over 80. Everyone else at least uses email, and thanks to the proclivity of us kids to put pictures of our children on the web, most of them fire up their browser once in awhile. I just want to highlight one thing here, which I think is a key difference-maker:
Internet users who remain on dial-up connections are less likely to go online on a typical day than those who have a fast, broadband connection at home. Further, dial-up users are less likely than broadband users to have used the internet for a host of activities.
My in-laws still use dialup at home, despite some not-so-subtle hints from Tiffany and me about the wonders of cable modems. Both of them are into email now, and of course they love seeing pix of Olivia, but neither of those are incentive enough to switch. I think they're approaching a tipping point, though, because Tiffany tells me her mom is beginning to learn the joys of online shopping. Given Sharon's prowess in these matters, I figure the rest will follow naturally. We shall see.
Thanks to Kimberly for the link.
The Chron takes a closer look at the law used to indict Tom DeLay on criminal conspiracy charges.
Tired of absentee ballot fraud in his races for the Texas House and in his wife's first race for Dallas mayor, then-Rep. Steve Wolens pushed a bill in 2003 making it a crime to mark a mail ballot without a voter's consent.Wolens, a Dallas Democrat, said his bill was written to address an ongoing problem in Dallas County where campaign workers went to nursing homes and the residences of elderly voters and told them how to mark their ballots. The ballots often were delivered in bulk to the county's election office and may have affected the outcome of some low-turnout races.
That bill, which made conspiracy to violate state election laws a felony, was made law Sept. 1, 2003. It has become a key point of contention in an indictment of Congressman Tom DeLay, accusing him of conspiring to violate a century-old ban on corporate contributions to political candidates.
Lawyers for DeLay said that before Wolens' conspiracy bill became law, the alleged crime did not exist, and the charge should be dismissed.
Other charges are pending against DeLay, R-Sugar Land, who was forced to give up his position of House majority leader because of the indictment.
Wolens said fraud involving mail-in ballots occurred in one of his races for the House in the mid-'80s.
"We continued to have problems in my race and other races. When it happened in Laura's first race for mayor, I decided that was enough," said Wolens, referring to his wife, Laura Miller, who was elected mayor of Dallas in 2002.
Wolens, who did not seek re-election last year, said he wrote the bill to make sure there would be no question that conspiring to commit ballot fraud could be prosecuted. So the bill included language linking the Penal Code conspiracy charge to the Election Code.
In this Statesman story from Friday, Wolens makes the Lege's intentions clearer:
"We thought conspiracy for violation of the election code was already covered," he said. "But we wanted to make sure there was no question about it. I included it to make it clear."
Wonder if he'll get called as a witness at the hearing for DeGuerin's motion to dismiss. That should be relevant, shouldn't it?
My uneducated guess is that this particular indictment will stand, though if I'm reading this correctly even if it were tossed there would still be charges pending against DeLay. More troubling, though also amusing, are the allegations Team DeLay has made about the actions that prosecutors took in securing that last indictment. I'll let you read their laundry list in the Statesman article, but I got a good chuckle out of this:
DeLay's lawyers offered no evidence to back up the allegations, but they promised to provide it."It doesn't stop here, for sure," said Bill White, an Austin member of DeLay's defense team.
Sounds to me like they've been taking lessons from the Andy Taylor School of Irrefutable Evidence. Can't wait to see what they come up with this time.
As a side note, Dwight looked up the relevant statutes a little while back. I'll leave it to the lawyer types to sort it out from here.
Speaking of US Rep. Kevin Brady, it looks like he had a bit too much fun at Homecoming Weekend.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands, was arrested and charged with driving under the influence Friday night in South Dakota.Mr. Brady, 50, was pulled over by a state trooper for a problem with the taillights of his vehicle, said Clay County Sheriff Andy Howe.
Sheriff Howe said law enforcement officials were being especially vigilant about driving violations, including manning sobriety checkpoints, because it was homecoming weekend at the University of South Dakota.
"It's like the busiest night of the year here," the sheriff said.
Mr. Brady, who was born in Vermillion, S.D., is a graduate of the University of South Dakota.
The offense is a misdemeanor with a penalty up to a $1,000 fine or year in county jail or both. A typical penalty for a first offense is "generally in the neighborhood of $300 to 400," Sheriff Howe said.
He said authorities were waiting for results from a blood test to determine Mr. Brady's blood-alcohol level at the time of the arrest. In South Dakota, the legal blood-alcohol limit is .08.
Sarah Stephens, a spokesman for Mr. Brady, said the congressman was in East Texas for meetings Monday and could not be reached for comment.
As noted in my previous entry, Brady is wearing a bulletproof vest to those meetings at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety due to a reported death threat against him. This has probably not been the best week of his life.
The people of East Texas are not happy with the assistance they have gotten from FEMA since Hurricane Rita devastated their cities.
Widespread confusion and inconsistency over who is entitled to grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is inspiring Chambers County officials to tell residents affected by Hurricane Rita to appeal to statewide assistance for help.“There’s no rhyme or reason why some are getting it and some are not,” said County Commissioner Judy Edmonds. “I think it all depends on who you get when you fill out an application.”
County Judge Jimmy Sylvia appealed to residents who had experienced problems in dealing with FEMA to contact senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, along with Congressman Ron Paul, who represents Chambers County.
“We were declared 100 percent disaster county, and I was told we would be treated just like Katrina victims and that all households in Chambers County would receive $2,000 in emergency funds,” Sylvia said in the press release. “Some have received it, others have not. I encourage those of you who have had problems with FEMA to contact your federal representatives…”
[...]
Jeanette Rhame, a resident of Hankamer, said it seemed FEMA phone representatives had been inadequately trained.
“First they said I was not under an mandatory evacuation, then it was that we have insurance so we’re not entitled to the $2,000,” she said. “But I had expenses too. I had to leave, find food to eat and a place to sleep.”
Ross Fredenburg, a FEMA public affairs officer, acknowledged that some applicants had been given incorrect information concerning the availability of financial assistance to them.
“Some people are being inappropriately told they are being denied assistance and that’s something that shouldn’t be happening,” Fredenburg said.
[...]
“I know some that have home insurance have no damage to their house and yet they receive $2,000,” Edmonds said. “I have seen others that had damage but they have been denied.”
“I got word that our people are going to be treated just like Katrina evacuees because there was a mandatory evacuation,” Sylvia added. “We’ve talked to FEMA officials and I don’t know — there’s still a lot of confusion, so we’re going up ladder to elected officials.”
[...]
Chambers County is not the only area that has expressed frustration over FEMA assistance.
U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, who wore a bulletproof vest while he attended meetings in Jasper, Newton, Deweyville and Buna on Monday. He plans to visit Orange, Vidor, Kountze and Woodville on Tuesday.
Brady spokeswoman Sarah Stephens said Brady had received a death threat, but wouldn’t go into specifics. She said the Texas Department of Public Safety asked Brady to wear the vest.
As Brady stepped up to the church altar, four DPS troopers lined up in front of the lectern, separating the congressman and other federal officials from the rural residents who say their needs have been neglected.
Calvin Ebner, 78, said those who were honest on aid applications have been denied $2,000 in FEMA money while those who cheated got a check. Ebner ran a Deweyville Christmas tree farm and restaurant before Rita hit.
“The problem seems to be that some of those who answered questions truthfully are not getting the $2,000,” he said, adding that a FEMA representative told him some had been denied because of information entered into a computer program that figures a formula upon which aid amounts are based. “Is there not someone who can circumvent a stupid computer program and do what is right?”
I recognize that any relief effort like this will have bumps in the road, and I recognize that FEMA's resources are strained due to Hurricane Katrina. That said, it's been more than two weeks since Rita made landfall, and we all knew that it was coming for quite some time before that. They need to do better than this.
I had the pleasure of meeting Tammi Wallace of the Houston Equal Rights Alliance at an anti-Prop 2 meetup a couple of weeks ago. She gave what I thought was an excellent and broadly appealing talk about why Proposition 2 is so wrongheaded, so I asked her to write it all down and let me publish it for my audience. Here it is:
All Texans including gays and lesbians deserve the right to protect their relationship, assets, and families.
I talked to a voter in Bellaire last year while exit polling. I asked her what she thought of a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and her thoughts on give gay and lesbian couples the right to civil marriage. Her response was that her husband was an attorney and he had indicated that gay and lesbian couples can create legal documents that would allow for the same protections as civil marriage. I asked her she felt it was fair that heterosexual couples can get a marriage license for $41.00 in Harris County and gay and lesbian couples have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees. She thought about this for a moment and responded that this did not seem fair. I proceeded to educate her as well on the aspects of legal contracts in that they can be contested by family as well as they do not necessarily have to be honored in other states. At that moment, you could see the light bulb going off.
I posed another scenario to her. We know that $41.00 versus $1,000+ dollars is clearly unfair. What about gay and lesbian couples that cannot afford $1,000+ dollars to simply protect their relationships? Gay and lesbian couples that struggle to keep the lights on, put food on the table, buy school supplies and clothes, pay medical bills, etc., are penalized twice. Once because they are gay or lesbian and also because of their financial situation. Again, we are talking about protections that can be granted to heterosexual couples for $41.00.
A couple of other examples (there are many, many more) we've shared with voters over the past year and a half in an effort to educate people on the harmful impacts on this legislation:
Constitutional Amendment #2 penalizes and hurts real Texas families. Gay and lesbian couples will continue to have and support children regardless of whether Constitutional Amendment #2 passes. The difference is that children with gay and lesbian parents will not have the same rights and protections that children with heterosexual parents enjoy. Don't these children deserve the same rights and protections as children with heterosexual parents? Voting for Constitutional Amendment #2 absolutely hurts Texas children!
I work all my life and contribute to the social security system. Shouldn't I be able to designate my beneficiary? I cannot designate my partner of 9+ years to receive my social security benefits in the event of my death.
Right after right....the ability to make medical decisions for your partner, burial rights, right to inherit property, health insurance, etc....so many rights and responsibilities as well! Yet, I don't have access to these simply because of the person I love.
Constitutional Amendment #2 amends the state Constitution for no other reason than discrimination. Marrying a person of the same sex was not allowed by Texas law prior to the start of the 2005 legislative session. Voters need to ask their legislators why they chose to spend time and money on this amendment when school finance, healthcare and other pressing issues continue to be ignored at the expense of ALL Texans.
ALL Texans deserve full and equal rights. Regardless of personal opinion, denying people fundamental rights and responsibilities to protect their relationships, assets, etc., is wrong.
Tammi provided a document (Word doc) which enumerates many of the rights that would be denied not just to gay and lesbian couples but potentially to all unmarried couples who wish to protect them through contracts. If you know someone who plans to vote for Prop 2 because they think they're standing up for traditional marriage, I urge you to show this to them and to ask if that's what they really want to do.
I'm pleased to note that more newspapers are joining the anti-Prop 2 drumbeat: both the Statesman and the Victoria Advocate clearly understand what's at stake. I just hope their readers do, too. Links via BOR.
Here's another look at the massive traffic jam that took place during the Rita evacuation, focusing on households that left with more than one car.
Although no statistical data is available yet on the massive evacuation, "there were certainly more vehicles utilized than were necessary to carry these individuals out of town," said Janelle Gbur of the Texas Department of Transportation office here."It probably shouldn't surprise us. For many people a car is the second-biggest investment in the household," Gbur said.
[...]
Mayor Bill White said he repeatedly asked that people with space in their vehicles take other riders along. He and County Judge Robert Eckels also did what they could to provide mass transit on Metropolitan Transit Authority buses or Amtrak train lines, he said.
"I doubt whether the government can or should tell people or mandate how many vehicles can get out," White said, "but we do need to educate people and ask that they be considerate to their neighbors."
Eckels said he and other officials will study how many vehicles it takes before a route becomes congested, and future evacuation plans will be designed with that information.
According to a Houston Chronicle/KHOU-TV Channel 11 poll, almost half of the evacuees said they stayed in caravans of more than one car.
Thirty percent who said they left with three companions or fewer, a group that could have fit into most cars, left in multiple vehicles, the poll found.
For what it's worth, during the many hours that we sat on I-45 south of Spring, I saw a lot of people exiting vehicles and walking around on the highway. Some were probably just stretching their legs, but many of them appeared to me to be going from one car to another. For a variety of reasons, it never occurred to us to take both cars - among other things, we wanted to ensure that we had one nondriver to deal with Olivia when she fussed. The car we did take was packed full, including a spot in the back for the dog. If we'd had a second kid with us, we probably would have needed two cars. I just hope like hell I'll never have to find that out.
Regarding the poll finding that 42 percent of residents evacuated from areas that were not in storm surge zones, White said that was "perfectly reasonable for many people, based on the information known to all of us on Tuesday and Wednesday and well into Thursday."We need to have better plans, particularly at the state level, to allow people to have fuel and more exit lanes and better traffic control," he said.
Eckels said he wasn't surprised that 53 percent of the evacuees said they left Thursday, Sept. 22, since traffic became so much worse then, nor that 61 percent said they would evacuate again if a Category 4 hurricane were coming.
"I think people will leave a lot earlier next time, and I think the system will work a lot more smoothly next time," he said.
If there is a provision in place to ensure adequate fuel supplies and more available lanes, and if the evacuation itself can be spread out over more time, with no single day bearing the majority of it, then I agree that things will work more smoothly next time. Without those items, I fear we'll have a rerun. Alternately, we may see fewer people than appropriate leaving, which risks greater problems in the event that we're not so lucky about where the storm hits. I'm glad there's still a lot of talk about this, but I want to see specifics. Stace, for his part, is unimpressed.
Last week, I had some correspondence with a local attorney named Bruce Moldovan, whose firm is representing a dog owner in a lawsuit against the city of Houston. It's an interesting case, and as I'm a dog owner myself, I thought I'd write about it.
The case is Pam Wilson v. City of Houston, et al., Cause number 2005-61295, in the 281st District Court, Harris County, Texas. The facts are pretty simple. The plaintiff, Pam Wilson, has two dogs and works at home with an employee. She has a sign on her property that reads “Do not Enter – Please Ring Bell – Beware of Dog”. A courier, whom I'll call C, coming to her house to pick up a package, ignored the sign, entered her front yard through a closed gate, and knocked on the door. The employee answered the door, and both dogs ran into the yard when he did so. As C departed, he claimed to be bitten by one of the dogs. He showed his leg to the employee, who reported seeing no signs of any injury.
Later, C called the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care (“BARC”) and complained of the alleged dog bite. No formal complaint was filed, no formal statement taken, no affidavit made nor requested. He simply made a call and said he'd been bitten. At this point, Houston City ordinance 6-17 (a) (PDF) takes over. It's a scanned-in printed page, so I can't copy and paste text from it, but what it says is that any animal that is alleged to have attacked someone "shall be impounded at once" and held for ten days to ensure that it doesn't have rabies. Upon its eventual release, Section 6.17-1 calls for the dog to be permanently tattooed with an identification number, so that any repeat offenders can be quickly determined.
What's the big deal about that? Compare to the relevant state law:
§ 822.0421. DETERMINATION THAT DOG IS DANGEROUS.(a) If a person reports an incident described by
Section 822.041(2), the animal control authority may investigate
the incident. If, after receiving the sworn statements of any
witnesses, the animal control authority determines the dog is a
dangerous dog, it shall notify the owner of that fact.(b) An owner, not later than the 15th day after the date the
owner is notified that a dog owned by the owner is a dangerous dog,
may appeal the determination of the animal control authority to a
justice, county, or municipal court of competent jurisdiction. An
owner may appeal the decision of the justice, county, or municipal
court in the same manner as appeal for other cases from the justice,
county, or municipal court.
Emphasis mine. The state requires a sworn statement in order to remove and confine a dog. It also allows for the dog's owner to appeal the confinement order to an appropriate court. The City of Houston will seize a dog based on an anonymous phone call, and makes no provision for any kind of appeal. Needless to say, I find that pretty alarming.
Based on that, the lawsuit seeks to overturn Houston's law. In addition to the lack of any kind of due process, the lawsuit claims that the confiscation and tattooing of the dogs represents a violation of the taking clause of the state constitution. From a copy of the plaintiff's petition that Moldovan emailed to me:
For well over a century, the state of Texas has considered dogs to be property protected from unconstitutional takings and condemnation without affording the owner due process of law. See Lynn v. State, 33 Tex. Crim. 153, 25 S.W. 779 (1894) (noting, with specific respect to an owner’s dog, “That towns, cities, or even the legislature, has not the authority to authorize the wholesale destruction of property, without due process of law, we think, is not open to discussion in this state.”). Id. at 780. In enacting provisions relevant to dogs that are a danger to persons in the Texas Health and Safety Code, the Texas Legislature clearly envisioned dog owners being afforded basic notions of due process.
The petition then cites the Texas statute that I highlighted earlier. What's curious about all this is that the Houston statutes were enacted in 1968. How, I asked Moldovan, is it that no one has successfully sued over it before? His best guess is that any time someone had threatened to do so in the past, the city simply gave them their dogs back, thus removing the incentive. In this case, Ms. Wilson did get her dog back in time for them all to evacuate for Hurricane Rita - the city agreed to let her "home quarantine" the dogs while the suit was pending. In turn, she did not seek an immediate restraining order on enforcement of the statute, so the status quo is still in place for now.
The city has not yet filed an answer to this lawsuit - one is not yet due - so that's where things stand now. I'll be keeping an eye on this case and will report back as it progresses through the system.
Well, it's pretty clear that Tom DeLay has been listening to the damage control experts, isn't it? He's got his attack points down, and he's got a little wind at his back now, thanks in part to the efforts of his defense attorney and in part to the nature of the latest indictment plus recent comments by the first grand jury's foreman. I don't think those things will amount to much in the long run, barring a ruling in favor of the defense on the motion to dismiss the indictments, which I also don't think will happen, but DeLay doesn't need much to work with to be effective.
Though he's talking about a different subject, I think Josh Marshall raises a point that's worth considering as the DeLay Defense sets up its perimeter.
We tend to think that the real key to a scandalee's fate is how many mobilize against him or her. Usually, though, the key issue is whether and how quickly they can find some committed group to mount a defense. If that happens, and quickly, a scandal equilibrium can be reached, and an embattled pol can often withstand merciless attacks and revelations. With no true base of support, however, a career can rapidly collapse even if the opposition itself isn't all that intense.
Obviously, DeLay has a sizeable base of support at this time. Very few people on his side of the aisle have said anything (on the record, at least) against him, and the activists are firmly in his corner. What I'm wondering is whether or not anyone prominent - say, Ken Mehlman or Roy Blunt - will take a turn on the talk show circuit to aid in DeLay's defense, or if the only person out there on TV doing the talking points thing will continue to be just DeLay himself.
What I'm getting at is that the more time, energy, and especially money that DeLay has to spend on himself, the less he can spread around to other Congressfolk. That's been the basis for the loyalty he's built up over the years. How far will it go before more self-involved concerns take over? If he's not making deposits in campaign bank accounts, how much personal capital does DeLay have to withdraw? How much will that change if the Abramoff investigations start to go south for him? That feels like a pretty big wild card to me, and as the Chron article notes, it's not something he has direct control over.
There is one bit of good news for DeLay - his buddy Tom Craddick appears to be officially off the hook for any indictments that may be remaining for Ronnie Earle to pursue.
Roy Minton of Austin, said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle relayed the news to him last week."He called me ... and said, 'It's good news.' I said, 'What's ya got, Buddy?' And he said, 'We're not going to indict Craddick.'"
A spokesman for Earle, Rudy Magallanes, refused to comment.
I continue to be slightly puzzled by this, just based on past revelations of what Craddick knew and when he knew it, but that's the way it goes.
Finally, look for Chris Bell to give a detailed proposal on ethics reform in Texas tomorrow. Lord knows we could use some of that.
Damon linked to this story about some layoffs in the Kinky Friedman campaign on Saturday. You can go argue in the comments over there about what it means for him to hire a consultant that once worked for Dan Quayle, but I found this tidbit to be the more interesting:
Two of Friedman's longtime friends, Cleve Hattersley and Steve "Beano" Boynton, also were taken off the payroll, [campaign manager Dean] Barkley said, but they are continuing to work for the campaign as volunteers.
What exactly were two "longtime friends" doing on his campaign payroll in the first place, and how much were they getting paid? Given the amount of resources he's going to have to expend just to get onto the ballot, you'd think they'd have best served him as volunteers from the beginning. If I were a Friedman supporter (which I'm not), I'd be a little worried about his burn rate. Remember in 2004 how all of a sudden the Howard Dean campaign was broke, despite its fundraising prowess? I'm curious to see what his latest quarterly report will look like.
Prop 2 is the easy one. Proposition One is giving me a headache.
Proposition 1 would amend the Texas Constitution to authorize the creation of the Texas Rail Relocation and Improvement Fund in the state treasury. The Texas Transportation Commission would administer the fund and could issue bonds pledged against it.The proposal includes no funding, and it doesn't specify how much should be set aside for the effort.
If voters approve the amendment, the Legislature would have to provide initial funding in 2007.
The fund could be used to relocate or improve private or publicly owned rail facilities to relieve congestion on highways, improve public safety or air quality, or expand economic opportunity.
Earlier this year, [Governor Rick] Perry signed separate agreements with Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway Co., pledging the railroads' and the state's cooperation in moving freight rail out of densely populated urban areas.
The governor said the initiative would lead to safer rail crossings, less hazardous cargo carried through populated areas and faster movement of products to market because freight trains no longer would have to slow down in congested areas.
More than 5,500 people have been killed or injured in vehicle-train collisions in Texas since 1984, Perry said.
Supporters of the amendment also say old freight lines could be upgraded for urban commuter trains.
The proposed relocations tie into the Trans-Texas Corridor concept, Perry's long-range proposal for a dedicated transportation network stretching across Texas.
Perry's agreements with the railroads, however, didn't say how the relocations, which could cost untold millions of dollars, would be paid for, except that the agreement with Union Pacific ruled out additional taxes or fees on the railroad industry.
Proposition 1 would provide a funding source, although Perry spokesman Robert Black emphasized, "I don't think it was ever determined for the state to do (pay for) all of it."
Union Pacific spokesman Joe Arbona said the railroad's financial contribution to rail relocations would depend on the project. "If it's something that would be beneficial to the railroad, we would pay for that part that's beneficial to us," he said.
On the one hand, I support the idea of rerouting freight train lines outside of urban areas, and I support the idea of freeing up those tracks for commuter rail. What's bothering me is mostly that there's no price tag being given (the earlier post mentions $100 million as a figure) and no clear agreement on who's paying for how much. Given the large amounts that rail interests have donated to various Republican campaigns (including $25,000 to Perry by Union Pacific) and the predeliction of the current Lege to hand out tax-funded goodies to their corporate masters, I want more specifics before I sign on the dotted line.
As with other propositions, it's not clear to me why this couldn't be done by a regular act of the Lege. In February, TxDOT Chairman Ric Williamson expressed reluctance to ask the Lege for more money when there was still the issue of school finance unresolved. I don't know what the state's financial picture will look like in 2007, but I'm a little hesitant to force this onto the agenda without knowing what else we'll have to be paying for. Is that too much to ask?
And sadly, Mayor White isn't much help to me this time:
Spokesman Frank Michel said Houston Mayor Bill White is concerned about traffic congestion and safety issues involved with a large number of rail crossings, but he said the city hasn't formally taken a position on the amendment.
I need to think about this one some more. Feel free to offer your guidance in the comments.
This Chron article gives the best reason why those who oppose the Double Secret Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment, also known as Proposition 2, need to get out and vote on November 7:
"This is unique, historical. Nothing like this has happened in Texas. Most people don't know it's going to occur, and that's the fear," said Kelley Shackelford, one of [Texans for Marriage Political Action Committee]'s founders.Similar measures against same-sex marriage were on the ballots of 11 states last November, and all passed. Texas is the only state this year where voters will consider measures defining marriage.
"If you had a huge turnout, there's no doubt in my mind, Texans are solidly behind keeping marriage between a man and a woman," Shackelford said. "I can't tell you whether they will show up or not. Anyone can win."
Don't wake up on November 8 with a case of the coulda-shouldas. This is important.
And this is the saddest thing I've read about the Prop 2 debate:
Shackelford says support for banning same-sex marriage crosses usual political and philosophical lines. Though socially conservative issues often are associated with Republicans and white evangelicals, this measure appeals to people regardless of their party affiliation, economic status and ethnic background, said Shackelford, who is white.Willie Davis, the senior pastor at Greater St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church and a supporter of the amendment, agrees. "This is not the normal right, evangelical fight. We are supporting it because of our biblical beliefs," said Davis, who is black. "That's not a principle we adopted because it's on the ballot. That's something we always believed in. I would hope we do not rewrite history as to what the creator has already defined."
How many members of your congregation have common law marriages, Reverend Davis? Can you say for certain that the broadly-worded Prop 2 will not affect any of them? What will you say if you find out that it does? Remember, the ballot language includes a reference to "any legal status identical to or similar to marriage". You tell me what that means.
(Putting aside, of course, the obvious possibility that there might be gay people in his flock. The point I want to make here is that Prop 2 isn't just about gays, though they will certainly feel the brunt of it.)
Oh, and to respond to Shackleford, opposition to Prop 2 also cuts across various political boundaries.
Besides get-out-the-vote efforts among potential opponents of the measure, Houston's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Political Caucus PAC is trying to get candidates and officeholders on the record about the amendment.Houston Mayor Bill White took no official stance but suggested the amendment is divisive.
"As mayor, I avoid commenting on state and federal laws and policies I do not influence," White said. "I intend to vote 'no' on the proposed state constitutional amendment to protest its use as a wedge issue."
Some responses, including at-large Position 5 City Council candidate Michael Stoma's, were more vague:
"I support everyone's right to pursue life, love and happiness under the law. I support political involvement to change the laws to reflect increased civil rights and enhance our constitutional rights to pursue a happy, prosperous life, with increased quality of life."
"There are a lot of answers that are nonanswers," said Maria Gonzalez, president of the caucus.
Sorry, Michael, that doesn't cut it. Tell me how your voting and why, or I can't respect you. If what you're afraid of is giving a "wrong" answer, then go back and read what Mayor White said. It's that simple.
Kudos also to DMN colunnist Jacquielynn Floyd for getting to the heart of the issue. If you need to know more or want to get involved, just remember these four words: No Nonsense In November.
Far be it from me to offer any advice to the right-wing crowd that's currently frothing over the not-what-they-wanted nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, but I'm getting a little tired of seeing stuff like this in the papers.
"This president is saying 'trust me,' and people don't want to just do that," said a conservative activist with ties to the White House. The activist was particularly upset about Miers' contributions to Democrats in the late 1980s."How do you explain this?" he said, referring to Miers' 1988 contributions to then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, and then-Sen. Al Gore, D-Tenn. "She was in her 40s; it's not like she was in college and drunk at the time."
Listen to me closely, because I'm just going to say this once: Rick Perry, our beloved-by-the-conservative-base Governor, a man for whom anyone who is anyone in the Republican Party was doing their level best a few months ago to persuade Kay Bailey Hutchison to stay away from next year's gubernatorial primary, was the Texas state chairman of Al Gore's 1988 presidential bid. He was 38 years old at the time (how sober he may have been is a question I am unable to answer adequately). I'll freely admit we know a lot more about what Rick Perry stands for than we do about Ms. Miers, though there's a pretty simple way to resolve that particular conundrum. My point is just that Texas was a very different place in 1988 than it is today. If you don't understand that, you should probably yield to someone who does.
(For extra credit, buy yourself a copy of Fifty Years of the Texas Observer and read about what the liberal wing of the Texas Democratic Party thought of Lloyd Bentsen in 1970, when he successfully ousted progressive hero Ralph Yarborough in the primary.)
You may live for the playoffs, but if you do so at the office, you're part of a $225 million problem.
Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that the playoff schedule will cost employers about $225 million this year, as employees either talk about the games or try to follow their progress during working hours."Right now, the divisional playoffs will have at least five games played during business hours. This could lead to unscheduled absences, early departures or, at the very least, a significant workday distraction," said John A. Challenger, CEO of the firm.
[...]
Challenger's estimate of a $225 million cost to employers is based on an average of a half-hour of lost worker productivity in each of the eight playoff cities, using the average pay in those cities. He said that while not every employee is going to follow or talk about the games, that could be balanced by employees who closely follow the action during working hours.
Challenger said that the lost productivity shouldn't make a dent in the economies of the eight cities involved, however.
"A little downtime – even three hours' worth – is unlikely even to register a blip on the economic radar for these cities, all of which are in the top 25 in terms of gross metropolitan product," he said. "Together, these cities manage economic output of more than $1.6 trillion in products and services every year. It would take a major business shutdown lasting several days or weeks to put these economies at risk."
Hey, maybe these employees will all be talking about the games during the time that they would normally be goofing off by other means. You never know.
By the way, the firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas seems to pop up with an analysis of productivity losses every time there's a major cultural event happening. Any guesses how much time and revenue they lose doing that instead of what they normally get paid to do? Maybe someone will ask John Challenger that next time he sends out one of these press releases.
An anti-toll road organization has filed a lawsuit alleging that two toll road related authorities are illegal.
A lawsuit filed in Travis County contends the Metropolitan Planning Organizations in San Antonio and Austin — which dispense tens of millions in federal gas taxes annually — are illegal.Lately, some of the money in both cities has been allocated for toll roads. That's a burning issue for People for Efficient Transportation, which had the Texas Legal Foundation file the lawsuit Wednesday in district court.
"It's a double tax," PET spokesman Sal Costello said in a statement. "It's morally and ethically wrong."
The lawsuit, which targets Gov. Rick Perry, the Texas Department of Transportation and the two planning organizations, doesn't actually say tax money can't be spent on toll roads.
Instead, the suit claims the planning organizations have no legal footing in Texas to spend at all.
Perry's spokeswoman, Kathy Walt, said the suit is a bunch of huffing and puffing.
"This is a frivolous lawsuit that amounts to nothing more than a public stunt," she said.
The suit hammers out several arguments:
There's no state law to create the planning organizations, and the governor has no authority to do so as called for in federal law.
State law doesn't authorize the planning organizations to allocate federal gas tax money.
State legislators serving on the planning boards, two in San Antonio and seven in Austin, violates the Texas Constitution's separation of powers.
The San Antonio planning organization noted, however, that federal law says boards should include local elected officials, officials with transportation agencies and "appropriate state officials."
Rather than seek an injunction, PET wants to use a court ruling to help push for legislation to fix the flaws.
At the same time, members will seek changes to make the planning organizations more accountable.
"A supermajority of Texans oppose tolls on taxpayer-funded highways and want government to be accountable for toll decisions, but those desires have been ignored by government," said David Rogers, the legal foundation's policy director.
I'll come back to that point in a moment. In the meantime, here's PET's press release with a fuller statement of their arguments. I don't have anywhere near the expertise to evaluate their claims, but as any success on their part would have a dramatic effect on a lot of road construction planning around the state, I want to keep an eye on this.
Now then. Regarding that "supermajority" opposition to toll roads, it depends to a certain extent on how the question is phrased, as the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority recently found when it commissioned a poll on attitudes towards toll roads.
•Half of Central Texans said "no" when asked whether "there is a need for toll roads" here. But that includes toll roads cut through the prairie, like the Texas 130 bypass east of town and five other entirely new roads that will have tolls, and expansions of existing highways, like Ed Bluestein Boulevard, where the new lanes will have tolls and there will be free access roads. Some might accept one kind of toll road and reject the other.•When the question is narrowed somewhat and people are asked if they approve of adding toll lanes to existing highways, 60 percent say that's a bad idea. That's precisely what would happen in the "phase two" toll road program that caused so much controversy over the past year and a half. The mobility authority would operate those five roads: Ed Bluestein, Texas 71 east of Interstate 35, U.S. 290 East in northeast Travis County, U.S. 290 West in Oak Hill, and Texas 45 Southwest, the only completely new road.
•As for conversions — taking an existing road and simply slapping tolls on it without making further improvements — 78 percent are against that. The only two pure conversions bandied about locally over the past two years — short stretches of MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) and U.S. 183 — were abandoned after public umbrage.
•So, if most of us don't like paying tolls for these roads, then it follows that we must support raising gasoline taxes to build road improvements, right? Well, no. Asked how to pay for improvements, 38 percent said tolls were the answer, 37 percent opted for a gas tax hike and 25 percent had no response.
"It shows us we have a lot of work to do" in the public relations and education area, said Mike Heiligenstein, executive director of the mobility authority.
In the abstract, I don't think there's anything illegal or immoral about toll roads. My objections largely have to do with the way they're currently being pushed as a panacea to all our transportation needs, from the utter unaccountability of toll road authorities like HCTRA, to the fraudulent claims being made by TxDOT officials about how much more the state gas tax would have to be in order to properly fund road construction the old-fashioned way, and back to the clear lack of concern about building toll roads through established residential areas. (Go back to Christof's post and read carefully the letters highlighted in red in the third bullet point from the bottom for an example.) If HCTRA were subject to the same requirements about public meetings and regulatory oversight that TxDOT is, I'd be a lot more sanguine about the whole thing.
Any comment from the more-qualified-than-me crowd as to the merits of this suit?
Amazing, isn't it how one man can be responsible for so many coincidences?
Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.
All of these things happening at the same time, and in the same place, with the same people involved. What, you thought "coincidence" meant something else?
DeLay and Ellis have so far given slightly different accounts of the substance of their discussion. Ellis's attorney, Jonathan D. Pauerstein, said that Ellis recalls that their Oct. 2 discussion did not concern or involve Texas or Texas candidates. But DeLay, interviewed last weekend on "Fox News Sunday," said that during a "scheduling meeting" with Ellis in October, Ellis said while they were leaving his office that "by the way, we sent money" to Washington.DeLay's lead attorney, Dick DeGuerin, said in an interview this week that "there is no question that at some point Ellis told him," but that DeLay does not recall the precise timing. DeGuerin said "it could have been that day" -- Oct. 2, the day the same arm of the RNC began to process the seven checks for printing two days later, on Oct. 4.
But DeGuerin said that this does not mean DeLay was "the one who made those decisions" about collecting the funds, sending them to Washington and returning the same total amount to candidates in Texas. "It wasn't his role or his authority" because DeLay was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the committee.
Ellis, who still directs DeLay's Washington-based Americans for a Republican Majority political action committee (ARMPAC), "is the kind of guy who would say, 'I did this, how about that?' " according to DeGuerin. DeLay may have responded, DeGuerin said, by saying, "Hey, that's great," but "that does not make him a part of the agreement to do that."
It's nice to know that amidst all the misspeakings and allegations of rampant partisan vindictiveness, Team DeLay is still keeping the Some Other Dude Did It defense in its back pocket, just in case. I wonder when JD Pauerstein is going to respond in the kind of fashion that one might expect from an attorney whose client is being set up as a fall guy by one of his coconspirators. He may want to hurry, or Warren RoBold might beat him to any good deals that may be available.
Even more amusing is the attempt by DeLay to claim that Ronnie Earle broke the same law he did. No stone, no matter how ludicrous, will be left unturned.
Meanwhile, the Chron is following the shifting winds of DeLay's explanations.
DeLay and his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, have changed their stories this week about what DeLay knew about the money and when.DeLay told talk show host Rush Limbaugh that in August, he mistakenly told prosecutors he knew about the TRMPAC check before it was sent to the Republican National Committee. He said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle would not allow him to change his statement.
"I misspoke one sentence — one sentence — and they have based all of this on one sentence," DeLay said during a radio interview with Limbaugh on Tuesday. "They think that before the (TRMPAC) check was cut and sent to the national committee that I approved this check. I didn't know this went on until well after it happened."
On the same day, DeGuerin told the Houston Chronicle that DeLay likely found out about the check at an 10:15 a.m. Oct. 2, 2002, meeting with Ellis. DeGuerin said what DeLay learned was informational and did not put him into a decision-making process.
"The bottom line is DeLay didn't have any decision to make, and he didn't make any decision. He might have been informed about it, but it was kind of as, 'Hey, I got this done,' and he might have said, 'Sure, that's great,' " DeGuerin said.
But on Thursday, DeGuerin told the Chronicle that Ellis and DeLay did not talk about the TRMPAC donation to the RNC during that meeting. He said DeLay remembers Ellis telling him about it at a later meeting. DeGuerin said he clarified what happened after talking to DeLay and Ellis' lawyer.
"He has a recollection ... as he was leaving the scheduling meeting of Ellis simply saying, 'We've sent $190,000 up from TRMPAC.' And that was it," DeGuerin said.
You'd think for all the money that DeLay (or more appropriately, all the contributors to his legal defense fund) is paying DeGuerin, they could get their stories straight before they tell them to the press. And just for the record, there's plenty of documentation to indicate that DeLay was in fact involved.
I see also (via The Daily DeLay) that the Brazosport Facts has a nice anti-DeLay editorial, which boils down to this:
Unfortunately for DeLay and his defenders, politics are not at the center of the charges. It is DeLay’s conduct.
Last but not least, I think we've officially reached the point where Tom DeLay has become a Newt Gingrich-like character in the minds of the American people. I love this line from David Letterman (via the Whitmarsh mailing list):
Yesterday down in Washington, D.C., they shut down Pennsylvania Avenue due to a suspicious package. Turned out it was a bag of laundered cash for Tom DeLay.
Sweet.
Remember the Sugar Land Kiddie Roundup, in which a bunch of kids who were attending a parentless party at which alcohol was present but who were not drinking got busted for minor-in-possession by the overzealous SLPD? (See here and here if you need your memory refreshed.) The good news for them is that their charges have been dismissed.
With too many defendants, attorneys and court-watchers to fit in Sugar Land's municipal courtoom, the teens went to trial today in city council chambers, but after a morning of testimony, prosecutors asked that the case be dismissed because it was proving too difficult for police to indentify by face those they arrested.[...]
Testimony got under way today with Officer Tod Cox describing how he was sent to the home to investigate a loud noise complaint.
Cox said he saw five or six young people standing outside the home and the people fled when they saw the officer approaching him.
After entering the home and seeing there were no adults present, Cox and other officers talked about what action they should take.
"We began issuing citations to everyone who was there," Cox said.
City and police officials have been defending the actions of the officers, saying teen drinking is a serious offense.
"We have all seen the tragic aftermath of underage drinking," said police chief Steve Griffith.
And here we see the tragic aftermath of lazy, overreactive policing. Maybe next time, if it's not too much trouble, you could make an effort to distinguish between lawbreaking and innocent bystanding. Might save you some embarrassment later on.
(By the way, the original story identifies Lisa Womack as the Sugar Land Police Chief. Anyone know what happened to her?)
Once again, Houston has lost out on landing a second Super Bowl.
Houston and Atlanta may want to get out of the Super Bowl business after being rejected a second time in less than five months in favor of a Florida city.In May, Houston and Atlanta were considered the favorites to land the 2009 Super Bowl that was awarded to Tampa, Fla. — the long shot going in.
On Thursday, NFL owners voted the 2010 Super Bowl to Miami, even though the city has been awarded the 2007 Super Bowl as well.
Once again, Houston and Atlanta were considered the favorites. South Florida media were so certain that Miami had no chance that not one outlet sent a reporter to suburban Detroit for Thursday's vote.
"I was feeling pretty good until (Dolphins owner) Wayne Huizenga said everybody was going to get a yacht for a week," Texans owner Bob McNair said, laughing at a South Florida bid enhancement. "And he guaranteed they'd all be over 100 feet long.
"I offered quail hunting, but that didn't quite compete."
Owners representing the three finalists made five-minute speeches to their partners Thursday morning. During his presentation on Miami's behalf, Huizenga disclosed that the other 31 owners would be given free use of a yacht at Super Bowl XLIV.
"When Wayne said it, a collective gasp kind of went around the room," McNair said. "That was a last-minute addition that kind of changed the dynamics.
"We're not giving up, though. Hopefully, the next time there's a vote, we won't run into another regatta."
Well, so much for the notion that the city's actions during Hurricane Katrina might sway the vote in our favor. But at least we're probably in a better position for the next time than Atlanta is:
Falcons owner Arthur Blank was frustrated because, once again, Atlanta's weather was the biggest factor working against his city. The owners haven't forgotten that freezing temperature and icy conditions put a damper on Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta."I guess the only way we might get another Super Bowl is if we build a stadium in Puerto Rico so the weather won't be a factor," Blank said. "It's very clear that the ownership wants the game where the weather's generally warmer."
Knowing the outcome of Thursday's vote, Blank was asked what he would have done differently.
"I'd take Atlanta and move it to the Caribbean," he said.
And yet the 2006 Super Bowl will be played in that balmy island paradise known as Detroit. Methinks the owners could use a geography lesson. Will someone please tell Bill "The Sports Wimp" Simmons that he'll need to pack his thermal undies for this one? Thanks.
Here's an I-45 update from Jim Weston of the I-45 Coalition:
You may recall reading an article by Rad Sallee in the Houston Chronicle on 9/1/05. The headline was “North Freeway expansion back to drawing board”. (ed. note: See here.) The article reported that Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) was considering moving some, or none or all of the 4 managed lanes planned to go on I-45 to the Hardy Toll Road. (that could be good news!) Gary Trietsch, district engineer for TxDOT was quoted as saying “That will probably take us at least a year. We’ll see where we are a year from now.”Now fast forward “a year” in 30 days!
On late Friday afternoon, 9/30/05, Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) modified their agenda and added the I-45 revised project to their action item to be considered at their Technical Advisory Committee (TAC). This TAC meeting [was] scheduled to be held on Thursday morning, 10/6/05.
(TAC normally reviews projects and recommends their approval or disapproval to the Transportation Policy Committee (TPC). The TPC must approve the project before it is permitted to progress to the next phase.)
This gave us less than a week to review and analyze a 335 page report. There was not enough time to get that done.
The Mayor’s office and Councilmember Adrian Garcia’s office set up a meeting on Monday afternoon. Participants included neighborhood representatives, TxDOT, CM Garcia, the Mayor’s office, Dr. Carol Lewis (Planning Commission), Congress member Sheila Jackson Lee’s office, Representative Jessica Farrar’s office, Alan Clark from H-GAC and several others. The quick synopsis of the meeting was the community representatives were asking for a 30 day postponement on the consideration of the project, in order to give folks an opportunity to review the revised report.
Bottom line – TxDOT would not agree to postpone the I-45 presentation before TAC.
So elected representatives and their staffs started to work on our behalf. And thanks to probably hundreds of phone calls from dozens of people, TxDOT agreed to reschedule the TAC meeting. It is now going to be held on Friday, October 21st. Then the following week, on Friday, October 28th, it will be presented to the TPC for their approval. Then if approved, it will go to the next phase which will be Schematic Drawings and Environmental Studies. In this phase, TxDOT will start coming up with actual roadway layouts and start to consider alternatives, like a tunnel. This phase is estimated to take 2 to 3 years and public meetings will be held by TxDOT. (And if not … the I-45 Coalition will hold them!)
We are in the process of setting up a small working meeting to have TxDOT go over their changes with us & answer our questions. Plus we will now be having a TxDOT representative attend a portion of our Steering Committee meetings on a monthly basis to help foster better communications.
What are some of the “major” changes? One change was mentioned before – the possibility of moving managed lanes to Hardy Toll Road.
Another major change – TxDOT has re-evaluated the conceptual capital cost of the project. The new estimate has now increased more than 5 times the original - from $404 million to $2.1 billion! At $404 million, the estimate per mile worked out to be $13.5 million a mile (a 30 mile project). Even at $2.1 billion, the new estimate is now $70 million a mile … which may be accurate … it’s definitely closer to a realistic number. (The current Katy Freeway project is around $100 million a mile.)
There are numerous other changes – but we have not had a chance to review and analyze them yet.
If you would like to see the report for yourself, you can find it in two locations. It is a very large file (25+ meg file) and can be found either on the H-GAC website (scroll down to the North Hardy Study) or you can go the TxDOT site and scroll down to Houston then to IH45 / US 59 – (it seems that the H-GAC site downloads quicker).
You do have an opportunity to speak at both the TAC and the TPC meeting. Public comments are heard at the beginning of the each meeting. Concerned residents are encouraged to attend the meeting and sign up to speak. The TAC meeting begins at 9:30 a.m., Friday, October 21, in the second floor conference room of the HGAC offices at 3555 Timmons Lane in the Greenway Plaza area. Speakers must register before the meeting is called to order. The TPC meeting, same place at 9:30 a.m., Friday, October 28.
We will continue to try to make this a cooperative venture – one that can be a win-win for everyone. With continual improvements in communications, we hope that the entire project will improve and these kinds of hurdles will not need to be jumped in the future!!
Well done, I-45 Coalition!
Meanwhile, things are afoot for US290 as well. Christof Speiler has the details. I note with interest that TxDOT seems to be taking an uncharacteristically open approach with this one. Either someone lives out that way that they don't want to piss off, or they've finally learned their lesson. Whichever is the case, good on them for that.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has a bad idea for border security that she wants to make into law.
With complaints mounting about lax border controls, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison called Wednesday for giving local police the power to arrest illegal immigrants and for creation of a "border marshal" program to let local peace officers help patrol the border."Our borders have been hemorrhaging for too long. It is a national security and safety threat to our nation," said the vice chairwoman of the Senate Republican Conference. "I just don't think we'll ever have enough Border Patrol agents."
The proposal is one of a slew of proposals around Congress to tighten borders, and like many of the others, this one drew swift denunciation from immigrant advocates, who warned that police aren't properly trained and have enough to do already.
Ms. Hutchison called her plan a direct response to the Minuteman Project, the controversial group that has sent hundreds of volunteers to deter illegal crossings in Arizona, Texas and other states, and said "the Minutemen have shown that citizens are now really wanting to be helpful in patrolling borders."
But, she added, it's not safe for untrained volunteers to take on those duties. Her bill would let the Homeland Security Department create a "Volunteer Border Marshal" program involving police, sheriffs and other licensed peace officers. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was noncommittal about the idea during a 45-minute meeting in her office Wednesday, the Texas senator said.
The bill would give cities and states the option to enforce and prosecute federal immigration laws.
Immigrant advocates warned that local authorities are more likely to injure or kill non-Anglo people – immigrants or citizens. And they predicted sweeps of construction sites and day-laborer pickup areas across the country, deterring immigrants from reporting crimes.
"They'll be easy victims. No one will protect them," said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
He called the proposal a sign of an immigrant-bashing spiral.
"They're getting more and more aggressive, more and more outrageous in the proposals. It's like immigrants are all mass murderers," he said.
"You could turn the whole country into a police state and that still won't solve the problem. People come here for jobs that are offered by American employers."
This Lufkin Daily News editorial hits the nail on the head.
As columnist Cynthia Tucker pointed out recently, anti-immigrationists rarely attack those who hire illegal immigrants. If they were truly serious about stopping illegal immigration, then they ought to pass laws and start prosecuting folks who hire undocumented workers.Our failed drug war offers an analogy. If there were no demand, there would be no drug problem. If there were no demand for undocumented workers performing jobs that American citizens are unwilling to do — hotel maids, poultry workers, landscapers, bricklayers — then people wouldn't be streaming across the border to fill those jobs.
If Sen. Hutchison is serious about solving the immigration problem, pushing to pass the president's guest-worker plan is a solid step in that direction. Deputizing local police to enforce immigration laws is hardly the solution.
It should also be noted that the people Hutchison seeks to solve this federal problem don't want the task.
[A] top officer in a statewide law enforcement group in Texas said state and local officers may be hard-pressed to pitch in with immigration enforcement."We all have our own jobs to do," said Chris McGill of El Paso, vice president of the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas and president of the El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association. "I don't think a lot of them are going to volunteer their time to stand around on the border to assist a federal agency to do their job."
This, like Rep. Culberson's much-derided anti-immigration bill HR3622, is an attempt to solve a complex and costly federal problem on the cheap. Here's a response to the Hutchison bill I received in email from Barbara Radnofsky:
The Hutchison immigration bill is a grandstanding effort. Local law enforcement and volunteers should not be asked to do the federal government's job.Passing the buck to Texas cities and counties who are already struggling to balance their budgets and control crime with an out of control deficit and burdens of unfunded mandates is wrong.
We must solve this problem at our borders and with a national security policy. Asking local law enforcement or groups of "volunteers," which is a nice word for vigilantes, to hunt down and imprison alleged immigrants, does nothing to stem the flow of people into this country.
The bill's sloppy wording alone will generate controversy. It empowers anyone by the nonsensical, yet broad language describing volunteers as "licensed by a state authority to enforce State or local penal offenses."
It's only a matter of time before someone is killed, and then Ms. Hutchison will wonder how things got out of hand with vigilante proposals. Until we gain control of our borders, we cannot begin to face the tragedy of ten million - far more than ten million - mothers, fathers and children - who are already here. Ms. Hutchison's grandstanding proposal fails to protect our borders or our national security.
As The Jeffersonian notes, even Hutchison's Texas colleague John Cornyn has problems with her proposal.
"I am not a fan of volunteers doing — no matter how admirable their intentions — a job for trained law enforcement professionals," Cornyn said.With volunteers and militias, Cornyn said, "somebody is going to get hurt, who shouldn't get hurt, who I don't want to see get hurt."
Other people you should read on this topic: Dos Centavos, Grits for Breakfast, Rio Grande Valley Politics, and especially State Rep. Aaron Pena, who's been blogging up a storm on the subject of immigration, border security, and the Minutemen. His account of meeting with the Texas State President of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is one of the best things I've read this year. If you're only going to click one of these links, that's the one.
Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt, two peas from the same rotten pod.
Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture.
[...]
The government's former chief election enforcement lawyer said the Blunt and DeLay transactions are similar to the Texas case and raise questions that should be investigated regarding whether donors were deceived or the true destination of their money was concealed.
"These people clearly like using middlemen for their transactions," said Lawrence Noble. "It seems to be a pattern with DeLay funneling money to different groups, at least to obscure, if not cover, the original source," said Noble, who was the Federal Election Commission's chief lawyer for 13 years, including in 2000 when the transactions occurred.
None of the hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations DeLay collected for the 2000 convention were ever disclosed to federal regulators because the type of group DeLay used wasn't governed by federal law at the time.
[...]
Noble said investigators should examine whether the pattern of disguising the original source of money might have been an effort to hide the leaders' simultaneous financial and legislative dealings with Abramoff and his clients.
"You see Abramoff involved and see the meetings that were held and one gets the sense Abramoff is helping this along in order to get access and push his clients' interest," he said. "And at the same time, you see Delay and Blunt trying to hide the root of their funding.
"All of these transactions may have strings attached to them. ... I think you would want to look, if you aren't already looking, at the question of a quid pro quo," Noble said.
There's more, much more, so do read the whole thing, as well as this handy timeline of events. And please note the compelling defense that's being offered for Blunt's behavior:
Blunt and DeLay planned all along to raise more money than was needed for the convention parties and then route some of that to other causes, such as supporting state candidates, said longtime Blunt aide Gregg Hartley."We put together a budget for what we thought we would raise and spend on the convention and whatever was left over we were going to use to support candidates," said Hartley, Blunt's former chief of staff who answered AP's questions on behalf of Blunt.
Hartley said he saw no similarity to the Texas case. The fact that DeLay's charity, Christine DeLay's consulting firm and Blunt's son were beneficiaries was a coincidence, Hartley said.
[...]
On May 24, 2000 — just before DeLay left with Abramoff for the Scottish golfing trip — DeLay's convention fundraising group transferred $100,000 more to Blunt's group. Within three weeks, Blunt turned around and donated the same amount to the Missouri Republican Party.
The next month, the state GOP began spending large amounts of money to help Blunt's son, Matt, in his successful campaign to become Missouri secretary of state. On July 25, 2000, the state GOP made its first expenditure for the younger Blunt, totaling just over $11,000. By election day, that figure had grown to more than $160,000.
Hartley said Blunt always liked to help the state party and the fact that his son got party help after his donation was a coincidence. "They are unrelated activities," he said.
So many coincidences, so little time. Our Mister Hartley here reminds me of someone...
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things.""I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Sounds about right to me. Links via Josh Marshall and The Daily DeLay.
The Chronicle does a poll about the Rita evacuation.
If a Category 4 hurricane had a bead on Houston, 62 percent would leave — a slightly higher percentage than actually did flee ahead of Rita, according to the poll.[...]
"You would have thought that people who had spent more than 10 hours on the road, would say, 'This is crazy, I won't do it again,' " said Bob Stein of Rice University, who conducted the poll along with Richard Murray of the University of Houston. "When the hurricane doesn't hit and doesn't do a lot of damage, people reconsider evacuating. But people don't have any regrets."
The poll is consistent with official estimates that about 2.5 million people left the area, Stein said.
About 70 percent of those who left were afraid of the storm — fearing for their safety from wind and flooding — as Rita seemed poised for a near-direct hit. Only one in five listed evacuation orders as the primary motivation for taking flight, according to the poll of residents in Harris and seven adjacent counties.
Yep, that's why we left. And yes, we'd do it again.
Sixty-two percent of people living in Rita evacuation areas left, compared with 42 percent not living in those areas.But Stein said his analysis of poll responses showed that people who left non-evacuation zones feared the hurricane's effects slightly more than those who left more vulnerable areas.
"If you were in an evacuation zone you accept that risk and don't assess it as very high," he said. People who live in Galveston, for example, may accept higher risks in exchange for enjoying the island city's seaside amenities.
Officials requested residents in storm surge areas to leave their homes on Wednesday, Sept. 21. About a third who evacuated heeded the warning then and hit the road.
That evening's forecast, the most ominous of the week, brought a larger response: More than half who evacuated left Thursday.Almost half of the evacuees said they stayed in caravans of more than one car, a factor that likely contributed to the traffic congestion. Thirty percent who said they left with three companions or fewer — a group that could have fit into most cars — left in multiple vehicles, according to the poll.
"People in the most vulnerable areas clearly anticipated their cars, like their homes, would be at risk," Stein said. "It's suggestive of people taking their cars, not because they had a lot of people to protect, but because they were taking their second-most valuable possession."
Half of the evacuees headed for small towns in Texas. Dallas and Austin were the next-most popular destinations.
So most people left on Thursday, many of them went to Dallas, and many of them were in multi-car caravans. Yeah, that would explain why traffic sucked.
Bottom line, as I've said before: Any reevaluation of the evacuation plan must take into account the fact that more people will leave than you expect. Take any approach you want to that problem, from staging the evacuation differently to opening contraflow lanes more quickly to trying to convince some people to not leave, but expect the roads to be fuller than you think.
Via DC9 and email from Judge Susan Criss comes the following tidbit gleaned from the current newsletter of the Galveston County Democratic Party:
The rumors are strong around the state that Ted B. Lyon will seek the Democratic Party¹s nomination for Governor in 2006.A very successful 57-year old Dallas trial lawyer, Lyon has a very distinguished career of public service. The former police officer served four years as a member of the Texas House of Representatives and eleven years in the Texas Senate. His legislative career earned him numerous honors for his successful efforts in behalf of consumers, education, the environment, and law enforcement. Ted Lyon is a progressive who will come to the Texas Governor’s office with all of the necessary qualities that are lacking in the last two who held that office.
He has the ‘know how’ to win and to govern effectively. Texas could benefit by a man like Ted Lyon in the Governor’s office.
Here's a bio from his law firm's webpage. I confess that beyond what I've been reading here I don't know much about Ted Lyon. I've heard from more than one person that he's a good guy and also that he could self-finance his campaign, admittedly a nontrivial point these days despite our recent track record for such things at the gubernatorial level. I daresay he'd have about the same name ID quotient as Chris Bell, so I don't think that would be a consideration.
I'm happy with Bell, but as I've said before, anyone who wants to jump into the Democratic primary and make the case that he or she is the best person to take out Rick Perry is welcome to do so by me. As with John Sharp, I'll believe these reports when I see the words come from the mouth of the purported candidate himself. In the meantime, have fun speculating about it.
(On a side note, the new design for the GCDP's website is pretty sleek. Their blog is still in the works, so check back on that later. Kudos to all involved for the nice work.)
Following up on all of the bloggage about that Zogby Interactive poll, the Chris Bell folks did a little research into other attempts to quantify Texas gubernatorial races a year or more out from the election. Here's what they found (see it also at BOR or in table form at Greg's place): In the last three campaigns, the level of support indicated for the incumbent, even at this early juncture, matched up pretty closely with the final result.
Now those were all done by different outfits, and there certainly is room to carp about Zogby's methodology and/or track record. But let's keep two thing in mind: One is that five years and countless special sessions into office, there probably aren't many likely voters who don't have an opinion about Rick Perry. He's a known quantity. Generally speaking, incumbents ultimately don't do very well among the undecided; usually, that's code for "I'm not too happy about voting for this guy, but I want to know more about my alternatives before I commit myself." Which is why lesser-known challengers start out in a hole against even unpopular incumbents.
Secondly, whatever the merits or lack of same may be regarding Zogby Interactive, their finding that 40% of the voters would cast a ballot for Rick Perry while 45% would push the button for someone else tracks pretty darned closely with his approval ratings for the past several months - if anything, the Zogby numbers compare favorably for Perry, given his three-month run of 50%+ disapproval. (He's gotten his Katrina bounce, by the way - he's all the way up to a magisterial 49%, against 45% disapproval. Check the crosstabs and see if you find anything that's unlikely to be still true thirteen months from now.) Given that, the Zogby result should not be a surprise.
Which brings us back to the question of Kinky Friedman's level of support. Without seeing a straight up Perry/Bell poll, any conjecture about where Friedman's support is coming from is just guesswork. I can't say right now whether Kinky is hurting one candidate more than the other or not, or if he's just a recognizable name that otherwise-undecided people have latched onto so as not to be an "I don't know" answer. Heck, I can't even say what his level of name ID really is. I still believe that in the end, Friedman will take more support from Perry than from Bell. I just wish I had a better idea now of how much that might be.
(That's still assuming that he gets on the ballot, of course. Here's another question for Kinky supporters: Don't you think it would have made sense for him to have supported Ralph Nader's lawsuit in 2004 to overturn Texas' ballot access laws? For a guy who was already talking about running long before Nader filed his suit, that strikes me as poor strategic planning.)
Anyway, bottom line is that the more I think about this particular poll, the more I think it's at least within shouting distance of reality. I still want to see more, but this is a decent enough starting point.
Following up on the earlier news about the very critical state audit of claimed savings by privatizing HR and payroll functions of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (THHSC), we have this Chron story which adds some more details.
The commission says it never expected to save money in the first year but concedes it has sliced its own projected cost savings in half since the private contract was awarded last year.The auditor sharply criticized the agency for "significant errors and omissions" in its assumptions about how much it would cost a private company versus the government to perform the administrative duties.
The inaccuracies resulted in overstating what it would cost for an in-house consolidation of payroll and human resources functions while understating what it would cost for a private company running the system, the auditor found.
The commission awarded the contract to Convergys in October 2004 after conducting an analysis it said showed the company could save the state as much as $21.7 million over five years.
"As of August 2005, the commission reported that it had not yet achieved any cost savings from outsourcing this function," the auditor said.
Commission spokeswoman Jennifer Harris said state officials never expected cost savings in the first year.
However, she added that the commission now expects cost savings over five years from outsourcing to be about $10.9 million, roughly half what it originally estimated.
[...]
The auditor said commission officials overestimated the cost of a government-run system by $19 million while omitting $24 million in start-up costs and not counting other costs for the private contractor.
"Because of the magnitude of these discrepancies, documentation available at the commission was not sufficient to determine whether outsourcing was cost effective," the auditor said.
Even so, the commission insists it will save $32.7 million over the next five years as a result of consolidating payroll and human resources, with roughly a third of that the result of private contracting.
You may note that the original story cited a claimed $45 million cost reduction. It's no wonder no one can say for certain what we're supposed to save. There's too damn many numbers floating around.
More damning is this story, a followup to the original Express News piece, in which we learn that THHSC cannot abide bad news.
A dispute remains unsettled between the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the state auditor's office over how much would be saved by privatizing the commission's human resources and payroll functions.Last year, the commission, which oversees all of the state's health and welfare services, said it was beginning its effort to privatize some services now provided by state workers as a cost-saving move.
Because the commission disagreed with the auditors' preliminary analysis that only $1.1 million would be saved, the figure was dropped from the auditors' final report, released Tuesday.
Instead, the figure was replaced with a statement that auditors were unable to quantify what savings would come from outsourcing.
Responding to the critical audit, HHS Commissioner Albert Hawkins acknowledged "errors and omissions" in its cost analysis, but said the errors were not significant enough to change the commission's calculation.
As Casey Stengel once said, can anyone here play this game? The Jeffersonian is right. This is outrageous. There were two justifications for privatizing THHSC's functions: The private sector can do them more efficiently and less expensively. Neither one is proving to be true. At what point are we going to reexamine our assumptions and take corrective action?
If we don't do something soon, the feds may force our hand. Via the Quorum Report, states may soon face limits on how much they can privatize food stamp programs.
The U.S. Senate passed a $100 billion Agriculture Department annual funding bill on Thursday that would prevent states from privatizing the food stamp program by sending some administrative jobs to overseas call centers.[...]
Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin sponsored the ban on replacing state workers with outside firms to handle food stamp applications. Otherwise, he said, low-paid workers in an overseas call center might decide if poor Americans got aid.
As noted by Waco Trib columnist John Young, the House version of this bill doesn't have that provision, so nothing is certain yet. That said, this passed the Senate by a 97-2 margin.
This mess is getting attention within Texas. Chris Bell has sent a letter to the USDA, which regardless of the above legislation is still required to approve any privatization deal involving food stamps, urging it to reject this one. The following is from a press release I got from State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos:
In a letter to Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst co-authored by Senator [Eliot] Shapleigh, Senator Barrientos expressed his concerns over findings in the audit which described the Commission's inability to accurately estimate savings and properly document their actions as required by state law. "In anticipation of an unsatisfactory outcome, I wrote the Commission in February 2004 asking that they reconsider the push to privatize payroll and human resources, and was assured in a response that 'as good stewards of taxpayer dollars' the Commission would 'carefully establish their criteria' and 'focus on performance and accountability'," wrote Barrientos. "In light of the Commission's response, I find the results of the State Auditor's report particularly disappointing." Barrientos continued by saying "(a)s news of the audit has spread, I have begun to field reports from state employees who are unable to access the HR system, check and use their vacation time, and in some cases, even receive a paycheck. This is simply unacceptable. We need increased legislative scrutiny before we move further down the often one-way street of privatization."
We have not heard the last of this.
For previous entries on this, see here and here. There's more at BOR and PinkDome.
The word from the Travis County DA Ronnie Earle's office regarding the latest indictment against Tom DeLay was that it was the result of new evidence.
Earle said the grand jury that indicted DeLay last week on the last day of its term "declined to indict" on charges other than conspiracy to violate the election code.Earle said in a statement that "additional information" that he would not detail came to him during the weekend, leading him to present the money laundering charges to a new grand jury Monday.
DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, of Houston, dismissed Earle's statement as spin.
"This is crazy," DeGuerin said. "I doubt he got any evidence of any kind other than we were going to bring this motion to dismiss."
The new indictment was returned Monday shortly after DeGuerin filed a motion to quash and dismiss the original indictment based on the claim that the state's conspiracy statute did not apply to the election code until a year after the alleged events of 2002.
Earle did not address the issues in DeGuerin's motion other than to say they will be "resolved by a judge."
[...]
DeGuerin said Earle was caught flat-footed with the original indictment because it alleged a crime that would not be illegal at the time it occurred.
"We researched very carefully to make sure that the law Ronnie Earle charged was violated had not come into effect until Sept. 1, 2003. We confirmed it top, side and bottom," DeGuerin said.
The September 2003 law applying the conspiracy statue to election laws was part of a House bill designed to prevent fraud in absentee balloting by making it a crime to mark a person's ballot without the person's consent.
The author of the bill, former state Rep. Steve Wolens, D-Dallas, did not return telephone calls Tuesday by the Houston Chronicle to discuss why the language was needed.
Several Republican lawmakers co-authored the bill.
Earle's full statement about the new indictment can be found here (thanks, Juanita). That'll be an interesting issue for the judge to rule on in the pretrial hearings. We have the opinion of other legal experts who say that this isn't a problem for Earle, but as always, it's what the person in the black robes says that matters. So we'll see.
This Statesman story provides more details and a timeline (via BOR).
More interesting to me in this story is the following:
Also Tuesday, DeGuerin criticized Earle at a Houston news conference, accusing him of offering "a sweet deal" to DeLay's co-defendants, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, to get them to testify against his client.Ellis' lawyer, J.D. Pauerstein, of San Antonio, said prosecutors made offers but they were inadequate.
"I didn't perceive anything they offered as acceptable, let alone sweet. They were talking in terms of wanting to put these poor guys in jail," Pauerstein said.
So, um, does that mean that there is an acceptable offer which would make thse guys be willing to roll over and spill the beans about Tommy? Like, say, probation and a fine? I'm just wondering.
And Dick, please, spare me the outrage here. In a similar situation, you'd advise your client to grab a deal like that as if it were a double mochachino being dangled in front of a caffeine-starved IT worker.
Speaking of DeLay's defense, Jeralyn notices a shift in strategy. DeLay's new tactic? "I misspoke." Please do keep talking, Tom. The rest of us are taking notes.
Finally, for your amusement, Ted presents "Laverne & Shirley Republican Bingo".
Well, at least there was a pretty good explanation for why Padres ace Jake Peavy stunk up the joint yesterday.
Jumping up and down in a close knot of teammates during San Diego's celebration of the NL West championship, Jake Peavy felt a sharp twinge in his rib cage.The Padres' ace tried to pitch in Game 1 of the NL division series anyway, an 8-5 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, and now he will miss the rest of the postseason with a broken rib.
An MRI exam at Barnes-Jewish Hospital revealed a fractured eighth rib, and doctors were still trying to determine if the ninth rib was fractured, too.
"The next day I just thought I had some bruised ribs, caught an elbow or something," Peavy said. "I never would have imagined it would have been this."
I can believe that. If only explaining how it is that the wrong Sox put up a football score in their Game One could be that simple. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - between that and the result in Orange County, yesterday was a good day.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that he will lay off 3000 municipal employees due to lack of any revenue stream for the city.
Nagin announced with "great sadness" that he had been unable to find the money to keep the workers on the payroll.He said only non-essential workers will be laid off and that no firefighters or police will be among those let go.
"I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people," Nagin said. "The problem we have is we have no revenue streams."
Nagin described the layoffs as "pretty permanent" and said that the city will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to notify municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago.
The mayor said the move will save about $5 million to $8 million of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks.
"We talked to local banks and other financial institutions and we are just not able to put together the financing necessary to continue to maintain City Hall's staffing at its current levels," the mayor said.
I'm sorry, but this just feels wrong to me. Congress has already allocated over $50 billion for rebuilding New Orleans. Less than 0.2% of that would be more than enough to meet the city's full payroll for the next year. I can't think of any good reason why that small piece of this money isn't being used for that purpose. Let's give New Orleans a little time to figure out what it's going to be like post-rebuilding before forcing it to permanently cut half its municipal workforce.
With the lack of a high profile race at the top of the ticket this year, we're unlikely to see any real polling done for the municipal elections - checking my archives from 2003, the first one we got then was in mid-September, so there's obviously no urgency here. There is an unscientific reader poll being done by Houston Business Connections which is worth a look. It may be meaningless but I'm still disappointed to see Prop 2 leading by a healthy margin. Beyond that, no real surprises to me. I do think At Large #2 will ultimately require a runoff, so I'll be a little surprised if Jay Aiyer wins a majority on Election Day to avoid it as this suggests he would. Click around and see for yourself, but don't put too much stock in any of it. Via Carl Whitmarsh's mailing list.
I should also note that the deadline to register for this election is this coming Tuesday, October 11, and that early voting will begin on October 24. You can check the voter registration database at HCVoter.net to verify that you're registered or to get a form to fill out if you need to. Lyn has all the details on early voting times and locations. This election may not be generating a whole lot of media attention, but it's as important as all the others, so be prepared and get ready to vote.
Mary Beth Harrell's official announcement of her candidacy in CD31, originally scheduled for September 27 but postponed for obvious reasons has been reset:
Campaign Kick-Off Rallies – Tuesday, October 11, 2005Killeen Civic and Conference Center, 11:30 am till 1:30 pm
Meet the Candidate! Food and Refreshments will be served.
Louisiana Longhorn Cafe, 4 till 6 pm200 W. Main St. in Round Rock
Meet the Candidate! More Food and Refreshments will be served.We’ll be waitin’ on y’all, so don’t miss it!
If you're in the area, check it out. I've had the chance to talk to Ms. Harrell and I think she's going to run a fine race. Thanks to Eye on Williamson for the information.
Well, if you took any joy at the generally negative reaction among conservative pundits and bloggers to the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, this will serve as a little cold water to the face. Link via Avedon. Liberal Oasis has some thoughts on what to do about it.
Well, at least we're starting to hear about some interesting topics for discussion when her confirmation hearings begin. There's this, of course (via Atrios), and there's the by now widely-blogged-about lawsuit against Locke, Lidell, and Sapp, which occurred on her watch as co-managing partner. These are some of the things that are left to talk about when a nominee has no paper trail, I guess. And I daresay there'll be more of that to come.
Haven't written much about baseball lately, have I? Well, as a Yankee fan, I spent much of this season holding my breath. Things looked pretty grim in May, and even as late as Labor Day, the Bombers didn't quite have the look of a team that could win as many as 90 games. Their turnaround is as weird as it is exhilarating. You'd have gotten pretty good odds in Vegas with a bet on Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon, and Chien-Ming Wang going a combined 25-8 - as in, bet a quarter and win a pot the size of the national debt.
It's quite an accomplishment for the Astros to have made it back to the playoffs as well. Never mind their historic rise from 15 games under .500, their offense stinks. Fortunately for them, the air freshener that is their starting pitching is more than enough to cover that up, and that's even before we get to Brad Lidge and Dan Wheeler.
There should be some excellent series as well. The Battle of the Soxes presents two teams that couldn't be more different, with the Yankees and the Greater Orange County Metropolitan Area Angels a close second. The Astros and Braves are a rematch from last year. Even the lowly Padres and the 100-win Cardinals offer some intrigue, with the schedule allowing San Diego's Jake Peavy (the best National League starter not wearing an Astros uniform) the chance to do to the Cards what Kevin Brown did to the 'Stros back in 1998. I suspect my TiVo's gonna get a workout over the next couple of weeks. Play ball!
UPDATE: Oops. So much for Jake Peavy. Thanks, Patrick!
Some interesting poll numbers from Zogby at the Wall Street Journal (link via Kos). Let's start with the Texas Governor's race, where a three-way battle shows Rick Perry at 40.1%, Chris Bell at 27.2%, and Kinky Friedman at 18%. A separate poll shows Carole Keeton Strayhorn topping Bell 34.6% to 26%. Any numbers for Friedman are not included in that matchup, though the accompanying blurb alludes to Kinky getting "at least 18%" in "various potential three-way matchups".
Let's start by saying, once again, that Rick Perry's poll numbers suck. Forty percent? That number represents a drop from August, too, though whether it's due to him, Bell, Friedman, or random noise is anyone's guess. And while I believe Perry will get a bounce in approval ratings from his handling of Katrina, I don't think that will necessarily translate into votes. If this isn't rock bottom for him, I don't know what would be.
As for Bell, I think Greg is correct to suggest that this is mostly a function of name ID. It'd be nice if there were a Perry/Sharp pairing for comparison purposes, but there isn't. (A straight-up Perry/Bell poll would've been useful, too.) I note that Strayhorn does considerably worse against Bell than Perry does. I've heard a lot of people suggest that Rick Perry is the most vulnerable Republican statewide candidate. That's a view that I generally subscribe to, so seeing Perry do better against his likely Democratic opponent than Strayhorn makes me wonder. I suspect name ID is in play there as well, however, so I won't read too much into it for now.
Bell certainly has room to grow, once he has the money to run some advertisements and get his name out there. If one believes that this number represents Rick Perry's base of support, then what follows is that he ought to focus on the undecideds and the Kinky voters. That doesn't mean he should let up on Perry - it means he needs to convince the 60% of voters who are apparently already open to voting for someone else that he's the best alternative. I think for the most part his message is well tailored for that, but until more of the audience hears it we can't know for sure.
As for Kinky, eighteen percent is perhaps a little higher than I'd have expected for now, but it's in line with what I think he'd get if he does actually run. My reason for this is based on what I think the unshakeable support is for each party's candidate. For Democrats, I think it's in the vicinity of 35%, based on the results of the 2000 Senatorial race (Hutchison 65%, placeholder Dem 32%) and the 2002 Comptroller race (Rylander/Strayhorn 64%, placeholder Dem 33%; Lib and Green candidates combined for about 3% in each). For Republicans, I'll go with the 40% that Perry is currently pulling - obviously, they've done considerably better than that in real elections of late, but they've never had anyone quite as battered as the 2006 version of Rick Perry on the ticket.
The bottom line here is that if I'm right, that puts Kinky's ceiling at about 25%, which needless to say isn't going to be enough to win. I'm guessing that he didn't do significantly better than that 18% cited in any other "potential" (read: ain't gonna happen) three-way race, or Zogby might have played it up a bit. I also don't have a good feel for what his name ID actually is. Sure, he's a celebrity, but he's a niche celebrity, best known for raunchy music and mystery novels - in short, Schwarzeneggar, hell even Jesse Ventura, he ain't. I think he has the potential to go up, especially if Perry's baseline support isn't as solid as I think and/or if Bell can't get his name out there, and if he can steal some more disillusioned Perry voters away he could even make this a 30/30/30 kind of race, but I have serious doubts about that. I think he'll be more like Ross Perot, superficially attractive but ultimately someone who peaks early and tails off as the race wears on. Of course, that means he could have an effect on the race, especially if he cracks 20% at the end.
Let's move to the Senate race, where there's good news and bad news for Democrats. The good news is that Senator Supposedly Popular gets a maximum of 51.6% in the matchups they polled. Forgive me if I seem underwhelmed by that, given her alleged status as an electoral juggernaut. I suppose Zogby could be undersampling Republicans, and given that KBH pulled 55%+ in August, maybe this too is just random chance, but still. Fifty-one percent?
The bad news is that Zogby, for reasons unclear to me, is polling Hutchison against three Democrats who are known to be not running against her: Ron Kirk, who announced his non-candidacy months ago; John Sharp, who is now apparently a non-candidate for Governor; and Kirk Watson, who is a candidate for Senate, just not that Senate. Why they chose to do this and not ask about the one person who absolutely is running against Hutchison is one of life's little mysteries. I guess it's possible that they did do such a poll, and the numbers were so awful for Radnofsky that they chose not to publish the results on the free WSJ link. Call me crazy, but if that's true, then it sounds more like news to me than the equivalent of three fantasy football matchups for KBH. Given that, I'm sticking with the oversight explanation until I'm told otherwise.
Nationally, the news is pretty decent overall for Democrats, both in gubernatorial and senatorial races. Check it out, and check back next month so we'll know if we have any honest-to-goodness trends on our hands.
UPDATE: The Jeffersonian and DC9 weigh in.
Here's the fuller story on the new DeLay indictments.
A new Travis County grand jury hurriedly reindicted U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on a charge of conspiring to violate state election laws and added two charges related to money laundering Monday after DeLay's lawyers challenged the validity of an indictment returned last week.Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle's office described the reindictment as procedural, but DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin portrayed it as an effort to correct what he described as an embarrassingly flawed indictment against the Sugar Land Republican.
"Apparently, no one cracked a book before they issued that first indictment," DeGuerin said. "This is a mess. This looks like Keystone Kops."
[...]
Earle offered little comment or explanation of the new indictments, and refused to take calls from the Houston Chronicle.
"This indictment consolidates previous charges against John Colyandro and Jim Ellis ... and adds Congressman DeLay as a party defendant to money laundering," said a statement issued by Earle's office.
[...]
DeGuerin said the new indictment was returned after he filed a motion to dismiss the original indictment against DeLay. The original indictment alleged DeLay was involved in a conspiracy to violate state election laws in a scheme to convert corporate money into cash that was available for 2002 Republican state House candidates.
DeGuerin said the problem with that indictment was state law was not changed to make the conspiracy indictment apply to the state election laws until 2003 — a year after the supposed violation. He said the quick turnaround with a new grand jury showed Earle's case against DeLay was improvised.
"It proves a district attorney can lead a grand jury around like a bull with a ring through its nose," DeGuerin said.
[...]
Two criminal defense and election law experts interviewed by the Chronicle said Earle's original indictment of DeLay is likely to be upheld by the courts.
University of Texas law Professor George Dix said he wasn't sure why a new indictment was necessary because the Penal Code in 2002 made it a crime to conspire to commit any felony.
Dix said it was a felony in 2002 to use corporate money to try to influence the outcome of an election.
He said the fact the law was changed in 2003 to specifically include the election code under conspiracy should be irrelevant. "I don't see the necessity for the 2003 law," he said.
Austin attorney Buck Wood, who represents losing Democratic candidates in a civil suit against corporations that contributed to TRMPAC, called the new charges a "belt and suspenders indictment. It means you don't take any chances."
Wood agreed with Dix that the conspiracy charge already was covered by the penal code in 2002 but also noted that all nine members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which would review any convictions, are Republicans.
"With the Court of Criminal Appeals, it is probably not a bad idea to go ahead and have all your bases covered," Wood said.
So one way of putting this would be that Ronnie Earle secured these subsequent indictments to ensure that those judicial activists on the Court of Criminal Appeals don't take matters into their own hands. I like a little irony to go with my morning Cheerios. Don't you?
Other matters: Via TAPPED, DeLay's troubles may be just beginning.
DeLay may not have seen the worst of it yet. Sources tell TIME that while Earle was closing in on DeLay from Austin, Texas, a federal investigation into the spreading scandal around disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, accused with Michael Scanlon (a former press secretary of DeLay's) of bilking their Indian-tribe clients out of $66 million, has begun lapping at the edges of the former majority leader's operation. A former Abramoff associate who was questioned by the FBI in August says, "They had a lot of e-mails, a lot of traffic between our office and DeLay's office." Many of those exchanges involved lavish travel by DeLay arranged by the lobbyist but requested, the e-mails suggest, by aides in DeLay's office. (House members are allowed to accept gifts under limited circumstances but not to solicit them.) Says the source: "There was nothing I saw that hit DeLay personally, but there was a lot of questionable stuff that was going on with his staff. 'Tom wants this. Tom wants that.' Was it really him or just the staff that was being aggressive?" DeLay's office wouldn't comment on the Justice Department investigation, and neither would the FBI.
It's so bad that even Maggie Thatcher is feeling the pinch. This is beginning to approach high comedy.
Mark Kleiman looks at the possibilities for DeLay's defense and suggests that beating the rap on what amounts to a technicality is likely his best bet. Via PGL.
Finally, as I suspected, DeLay's frontal assault on the documentary The Big Buy has been a huge boon to the filmmakers. From an email I got from Jim Schermbeck:
It's been a very busy five days. ABC, CBS and CNN have called and we're negotiating appearances on morning shows and even maybe Nightline with Ted. We were the objects of scorn on FOX and Rush and countless blogs. Sundance has called and at least two companies with a track-record of theatrical releases for docs want to talk to us. In short, Tom DeLay has been "bery bery good" to us.
They have a website up here which has some clips from the movie, so check it out.
(My apologies for the title. It just came to me, and I couldn't resist.)
This is a bit of a surprise, since I hadn't realized there was another grand jury in session.
A Texas grand jury today indicted U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay on a new charge of money laundering.A different grand jury whose six-month term ended last week indicted him on a conspiracy charge, forcing DeLay to temporarily step down as House majority leader.
Both indictments accuse DeLay and two political associates of conspiring to get around a state ban on corporate campaign contributions by funneling the money through the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to the Republican National Committee in Washington. The RNC then sent back like amounts to distribute to Texas candidates in 2002, the indictment alleges.
The new charge was the first action from a new Travis County grand jury, which started its term today. Another grand jury, which ended its term Sept. 28, handed up 41 indictments in the three-year investigation.
I presume this is a companion indictment to those handed down last September to the Colyandro/Ellis/RoBold triplets, as the original conspiracy indictment against DeLay is a bookend to the consipracy charges against Colyandro and Ellis. Looking back through my archives, I see that this is something for which Travis County DA Ronnie Earle does have jurisdiction, so that question is answered. I suspect the year-apart timing on these charges will fuel the speculation that someone (RoBold? Sears Roebuck?) flipped on DeLay. Stay tuned, as this is just the early wire-story version of this story - there's sure to be more soon.
Via Atrios, the Internet Archive has added movies and other "moving images" to its list of freely-downloadable files. You can get everything from government-financed war propaganda films to classic cartoons - I'll be grabbing a copy of Falling Hare when I get home - to TV commercials. I have a feeling this could be a serious time-waster, not to mention hard drive-filler.
Seeing a couple of Bugs Bunny cartoons in there convinces me once again that the best thing which could have happened to this character (among others) would have been for it to fall into the public domain so that any artist with the means and inclination could tell new stories about him. I mean, it's not like the actual copyright holders have any clue what to do with him, and maybe, just maybe, a free-to-use Bugs Bunny would mean those of us who remember cartoons like "Falling Hare" from our wasted youth would get to experience him anew as adults. Since I'm unlikely to ever get that, I'll go get the classics while I still can. Happy downloading, everyone.
I'm not much for following the Supreme Court nomination battles - there are plenty of other bloggers who do a far better job of it than I would - but I do have a couple of thoughts now that we know that Harriet Miers has been tapped to replace Sandra Day O'Connor.
1. Is it OK if we ask this nominee some questions about what she thinks about past rulings and how they might affect her judicial philosophy in the future? I mean, given that she has no track record at all from which to judge for ourselves, maybe just this one time?
2. Is she really the best person available for this job? I don't want to complain too much here, since we could have gotten an obvious ideologue like Edith Jones instead, but when someone like Tom Kirkendall is scratching his head, I have to wonder. I'll reserve judgment until the confirmation hearings, again assuming that she actually answers a few questions.
3. I agree with Greg:
I've got to wonder if the Rove/Bush machine have truly lost their last remaining connection to the political radar that has, up till Katrina, served them fairly well.I mean, when you're being dogged for cronyism, is it really smart to name someone who's only qualification for the office is her personal relationship with the President?
Have I mentioned that maybe if she answers a few questions we could put these doubts to rest? Yes, I think I have.
That's about it. My hope for this nominee is the same as it was for John Roberts; namely, that we'll get someone more in the Anthony Kennedy mold than Antonin Scalia. I really don't think there's much more we reasonably can hope for than that.
This story doesn't use the word, but I'm wondering how many times we'll be reading articles on Tom DeLay that include the word "defiant" in the near term. Quite a few, I'd venture.
Next question: Which of these people are kidding themselves?
DeLay, R-Sugar Land, said he has arranged a way to work with Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., that will comply with the spirit of the House regulation that forced DeLay to relinquish his post.Hastert has said that DeLay no longer will attend official meetings of the Republican House leadership while he faces the felony charge of conspiracy for allegedly violating Texas election law by funneling corporate donations to candidates for the state House.
But, DeLay remarked, "The speaker certainly asked me to continue our partnership."
DeLay's statements seemed to fly in the face of remarks made earlier in the day by Rep. David Dreier, a California Republican selected by his congressional colleagues to help Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., serve as majority leader while DeLay's criminal case is pending.
On CBS's Face the Nation, Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee, said of DeLay: "He's not going to still run things. He knows he's not going to run things. But he's clearly a member of Congress and he's a very important part of the team."
Also, moderate Republican Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut told CNN on Sunday he was no longer comfortable with DeLay as party leader.
"We got elected basically by saying we would live by a higher moral standard, and I don't think recently we have," Shays said. "Tom's problem ... is continual acts that border and go sometimes beyond the ethical edge."
On the same program, Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, said the DeLay affair "isn't just an embarrassment for the Republicans. It's the Congress itself that's on trial."
Shays and Leach often speak against the grain of the Republican leadership.
DeLay, however, told the Chronicle that his clout in Congress has not been diminished.
One of these things is not like the others. The Stakeholder has been keeping an eye on Zach Wamp of Tennessee as a potential skunk at the garden party for DeLay and his still-loyal followers, but I'm willing to bet he's not the only one.
I'm glad to see that the idea that DeLay himself is just a part of the problem, a problem that won't be fixed by his departure, is getting some play on the op-ed pages. This is the man who has stepped in for The Hammer.
Although the two have very different personalities, [Roy] Blunt has modeled his political career on DeLay's, becoming in many respects a replica of the former majority leader. Like DeLay, Blunt quickly set up multiple political committees to establish a power base in the House.Blunt has strengthened and enlarged DeLay's "K Street" alliance with Washington lobbyists. The two have a similar network of major corporate donors. Both have extensive financial ties to the Washington lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group. Some of Blunt's actions have raised ethical issues.
Different person, same misplaced priorities, same ethical void. It's as simple as that. As Ezra says:
In some ways, losing him is worse, as DeLay was an easy stand-in for the corruption he'd created, and his personal proximity to scandal and ethics allegations sometimes proved a useful, if minor, check on his behavior. Blunt will have no such restrictions; if anything, he's worse than his predecessor. And that should be the message. This is not about Tom DeLay, it's about the house that DeLay built. The job for Democrats is to convince the public that it's time to tear it down.
If they can do that (no guarantees, that's for sure), the Dems can put themselves in a position to make big gains in 2006 as the Republicans did in 1994. It's a big if.
Well, okay, there is at least one Democrat talking about this in broader terms.
Taking out Tom DeLay would boost the morale of the Democratic Party and, I dare say, improve the representation for the 22nd Congressional District — but it would prove a pyrrhic victory on its own. Everyone but the scoundrel wants fair elections we can all trust. Everyone wants a democracy to hold the corrupt accountable. Taking on Tom DeLay without accomplishing these goals is an empty pursuit.I worked for ethics reform long before Tom DeLay and I crossed paths, but our stories have become inextricably linked. I'm sure that I will have to answer questions about Tom DeLay for the rest of my life. Someday, I would like to be able to say that even though he has
repeatedly demonstrated his passion for power at the expense of ethics and integrity — to the detriment of those he serves — we all owe him a great debt. Without the scandals he caused, the people of Texas would not have demanded real ethics reform and reclaimed our government from the stench of corruption and special interests.
And I hope he gets to say that some day, too.
Finally, for a little finely honed sarcasm to go with the outrage, one turns to Julia. Enjoy.
Folks are returning back to Port Arthur and Sabine Pass to see how bad the damage from Hurricane Rita was in their neighborhoods. Sadly, it was very bad.
Teresa MacLelland expected some damage to her Sabine Pass home as she returned Saturday for the first time since Hurricane Rita forced her to evacuate."I saw other people's houses and thought they were bad," the office manager for Black Offshore said. "Then I saw my house."
Or what was left of it.
Rita struck the Sabine Pass community Sept. 23 as a Category 3 hurricane with 130-mph-plus winds and a 10-foot storm surge that left most of the shrimp-fish-
ing fleet on dry land."Sabine Pass is 99 percent gone," Port Arthur Mayor Oscar Ortiz said. "I don't know of one home that doesn't have severe damage."
[...]
The storm surge, which also deposited a 100-foot, steel barge from the Intracoastal Waterway in the yard of a home about a quarter of a mile away, cut the heart from the economy.
The hurricane devastated the shrimp industry and damaged oil refineries, the mainstays of this blue-collar community. Hebert said many of the residents have said they may not return.
Yet a school board member sees the seeds of the community's revival. Trustee Sam Garrison, 75, said oil rigs damaged by Rita in the Gulf will be coming to Sabine Pass docks for repair.
"Jobs will revive anything," Garrison said. "Sabine Pass will come back."
I hope so, and I hope they'll get all the help they need to do so. Houston and Galveston may have "dodged a bullet", as everyone keeps saying, but that doesn't mean that bullet vanished into thin air. It just hit someone else.
On a related note, here's an update on the Houston apartment market from Nancy Sarnoff.
More than 17,600 apartments have been absorbed since Labor Day, according to preliminary estimates from O'Connor & Associates, a real estate research firm. They also show that Houston landlords will absorb more than 10 times the normal level of apartments in September.While no one knows how long these units will stay leased as some hurricane evacuees will return to New Orleans or other areas, the bump in leasing already is affecting the multifamily sales market.
"Expectations have increased as far as the pricing sellers are expecting," said David Wylie, an apartment broker with Apartment Realty Advisors in Houston.
Wylie hasn't sold a complex since Hurricane Katrina hit, but the number of offers coming in for properties on the market is more than doubling, he said.
The increased leasing activity is also expected to increase rents, giving property owners the upper hand for the first time in a while.
"Now it's a landlord's market," Wylie said.
Will developers rush to build more apartments to take advantage of this market as long as it lasts, or will they wait to see how many of those new residents will be here longer term? I'm just glad I don't have to make that kind of decision.
Remember six months ago when the investigation of Henry Cisneros by independent counsel David Barrett was approaching its tenth anniversary and people got upset because Barrett was still spending boatloads of money for no apparent purpose? Well, six months later he's still at it.
This spring, Republicans and Democrats voiced outrage over the news that independent counsel David M. Barrett was still pursuing a decade-long, $21 million investigation into a crime long confessed and paid for. Without debate, the Senate unanimously agreed to strip Barrett of further funding for his inquiry on former housing secretary Henry G. Cisneros.But, prodded by conservative commentators, House Republican leaders grew convinced that Democrats were trying to suppress embarrassing revelations about the Clinton administration. The Senate provision was ditched behind closed doors, and Barrett and his staff continue to work -- at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $2 million a year -- on an inquiry that seemingly ended 13 months ago.
In its semiannual audit, the Government Accountability Office said yesterday that Barrett spent $930,742 from October 2004 to March 2005, six years after Cisneros pleaded guilty to the charges Barrett was appointed to investigate -- and more than a year after Barrett submitted his 400-page report for final judicial review. The GAO did not indicate what Barrett has been doing since he finished his report, other than maintain staff and office expenditures that have continued to rise since the investigation ended.
John Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said yesterday that Congress has no business intervening in an independent counsel's investigation -- which, after all, is supposed to be independent.
Besides, he said, moves to strip Barrett's funding amount to "legal assistance from Democrats trying to cover up a report that would tar them."
[...]
In a break from previous audits, the GAO report included language saying it was not expressing an opinion on the reasonableness or appropriateness of the expenditures. But in an interview, U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker, a political independent who heads the agency, said he has requested additional information on Barrett's activities, given the sums involved and the state of his investigation.
It is not clear what Barrett's office is doing on a day-to-day basis, but the audit provided broad categories of expenditures. Barrett spent $464,009 on pay and benefits over six months; $24,014 on travel; $236,316 on rent, phone bills and utilities; $103,233 on contractors, mainly lawyers on retainer; and $74,178 on administrative services.
"These are pretty substantial numbers," Walker said.
Let's review the bidding here:
1. This investigation has gone on longer than those into the Iran/Contra scandal and Whitewater.
2. The main target of the investigation pled guilty to a crime in 1999, and paid a fine for it. No one else has ever been named as a subject of investigation.
3. The independent counsel released his "final" report last year, several months and many dollars after it had been written. Nobody knows what he's been doing since, other than spend more money.
4. Yet the House Republicans refused to remove his funding, on the grounds that there might be some nugget of Clinton misbehavior still buried out there somewhere.
As Houtopia points out, it's a little hard to take seriously any claim by the pro-DeLay crowd that Ronnie Earle's investigation is just a partisan witch hunt when DeLay himself is unwilling to allow David Barrett to be decoupled from the government teat. If in 2015, after all the trials and appeals have run their course, the Travis County DA is still convening grand juries to investigate the 2002 elections, then maybe I'll have some sympathy. In the meantime, please spare me. Thanks to Rhetoric and Rhythm and The Jeffersonian for the link.
I was unfortunately not able to make it to Friday night's Johnson-Rayburn Dinner, but Greg and Stace were, and they both provide detailed recaps for your reading pleasure. Perry was also there, and he brings a little good news from the Barbara Radnofsky campaign. Finally, the Progressive Texan has a coda to Greg's remarks. Check 'em all out and see what you and I missed.
Here's a new line of deflection that Tom DeLay is trotting out.
Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Friday a documentary film crew's behind-the-scenes access to the Travis County prosecutors who indicted him proves Ronnie Earle is little more than a publicity seeker."He's got a film crew that has been following him around for two years to document how he's going to get Tom DeLay," DeLay said on a Houston radio talk show.
[...]
Independent filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck began making their documentary, The Big Buy, in February 2003. Schermbeck said the movie follows Earle's investigation to show how corporate money was used to fuel Republican efforts to win the 2002 Texas House elections.
Earle and his staff members sat for interviews, as they have with the news media, the filmmakers told the Houston Chronicle.
They said the only special inside access they received was being allowed into Earle's office in the minutes before he came out to announce indictments last October against DeLay associates John Colyandro, Jim Ellis and Warren RoBold.
Schermbeck said they never saw any legal documents or evidence before they became public. "Ronnie is too ethical a person to allow that to happen."
As it happens, I have a review copy of this documentary on DVD - in fact, I just finished watching it. (Nothing like a relevant news story to make a deadline come alive.) There's not really much in this that one wouldn't already know if on were following this story all along. It's well-presented and easy to follow, but there's no secrets revealed. Earle himself is featured more than any other person in the movie, but since the filmmakers talk to a lot of people (including JD Pauerstein, Joe Turner, and Roy Minton, the attorneys for Jim Ellis, John Colyandro, and the Texas Association of Business, respectively), that means he's onscreen for 15 or 20 minutes of the film's one hour length. It's clear that Earle believes this investigation is about bigger things than technical violations of electoral law - namely, about the influence of big money and how it gives unequal access to government based on how much of it you have. Earle's critics - the three lawyers plus State Rep. Terry Keel and State Sen. Jeff Wentworth - all make note of that; basically, they say Earle is prosecuting on what he thinks the law should be, rather than on what it is.
Most of what I got out of this film that was new to me had to do with the civil lawsuit against TAB and TRMPAC. There was some footage from depositions given by Colyandro (who is one tightly-wound dude, though I can't say I'd be any different if it were my ass that was being sued and indicted) and TRMPAC treasurer Bill Ceverha. There was an interview with former State Rep. David Langefeld, who is one of the plaintiffs in that civil suit and who provided a wealth of campaign mailers that attacked him and promoted his opponent (Sid Miller), all paid for by TAB. And I don't think I'd heard much from Joe Turner, Colyandro's attorney, before this. He looks like he'd be pretty impressive in a courtroom - he's younger and more dynamic than either Pauerstein or Minton. He also didn't mumble like Pauerstein did.
As I understand it, filmmakers are still in the process of financing this movie for distribution, so I'd say that DeLay's little tirade is the best thing that could have happened to them publicity-wise. I'm sure if he asked nicely, Messrs. Birnbaum and Schermbeck would be happy to send him a review copy as well, so he could see for himself that he's just being paranoid here. If you get a chance to screen The Big Buy yourself (and I hope you do, it's worth seeing), you'll know what I mean.
On a side note, I thought the report from the DeLay lovefest was pretty funny.
In his first appearance in the area since he was indicted and lost his House leadership post, DeLay, R-Sugar Land, shared hugs, handshakes and, of course, speeches with about 200 people who packed a Galleria-area rally to see him.The people who squeezed themselves into the San Jacinto Room of the Houston Engineering & Scientific Society building on Westheimer were clearly ready for battle.
They pasted themselves with "Tom DeLay for U.S. Congress" stickers and waved fans printed with "I'm a Tom DeLay fan."
They attacked the indictment and the man who will prosecute it, Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat.
Weaving past balloons featuring DeLay's name, they waved hand-lettered signs that bore phrases such as "No proof, no way, we support Tom DeLay" and "Drop it now, Ronnie."
The "United for DeLay" rally was meant to welcome him back to his district, the 22nd, although the event was held in the 7th Congressional District represented by U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston.
I mean, he couldn't find someplace that's actually in his district to show how much his constituents still worship him? As Juanita says, I guess he'll be playing his games on the road now.
I'm pleased to note that I'm the Houston Press pick for Best Local Blog in their annual Best of Houston competition. That's two years in a row, which is pretty darned sweet.
We waited for someone to step up and dethrone Charles Kuffner as the best blogger in town. We scoured the H-town blogosphere, reading what the pamphleteers of the 21st century had to say about sports, politics, music, art and breakfast. We wasted countless hours, time we could've spent paying our bills or cleaning our homes, getting too much information from all the folks out there who've stepped up, sat down and started typing. And we still think Kuffner is the man. He shines when it comes to local and national politics, but he's not above throwing in a random jab at Paris Hilton when the situation merits. And who doesn't like a little bit of that?
Whoever you are at the Press that likes me, thanks very much. And for my next trick, I plan to win the World Beard and Mustache Championship (thanks, Avedon!).
All silliness aside, here's another award winner who richly deserves the kudos.
Best Democrat
Rick NoriegaIt's a cliche that politicians who are so eager to send other folks off to war sit safely behind their desks. Not Rick Noriega. He was sworn in for another term as state rep this January -- not in Austin, but in a wooden barracks building outside of Kabul, Afghanistan. Lieutenant Colonel Noriega was on active duty training the Afghan army. It's true the state legislature doesn't have much to say about sending troops overseas, but it's still home to more than its share of platitude-spouting pols who don't have to back up their glib patriotism. Even from Kabul, Noriega continued his good legislative work though his wife, Melissa, who temporarily filled his seat and was named "Freshman of the Year" by the legislature's Democratic caucus.
Damn straight. Rick Noriega, I salute you.