Off the Kuff | Knowledge Is Good

Flooding in Texas

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

We have a lot. We’re going to get more. Any questions?

The combination of rising sea levels and sinking land along the Texas Gulf Coast has made the region one of the most frequently flooded in the country, according to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The frequency of flooding along the Texas Gulf Coast over the past decade averaged 10.7 days a year, compared with a national average for coastal regions of 6.8 days, the report found. The frequency is a marked increase from the 1950s, when flooding along the Gulf Coast was a relatively rare occurrence and Galveston averaged just 0.1 days of flooding per year, according to estimates compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

While coastal flooding in the United States was at one time largely linked to hurricanes and other larger storms, parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will now flood even on sunny days, potentially turning what is now dry land into wetlands or open water, the EPA cautioned.

The report comes amid growing warnings from scientists that global greenhouse gas emissions threaten to further warm the planet and drive sea level rise up even faster in decades to come.

“Over the last 30 years the rates of sea level rise along the Gulf Coast have been the highest in the nation, and it’s only going to accelerate,” said William Sweet, an oceanographer at NOAA. “Beyond 2050 we’re talking beyond the goal posts, with the potential for some really big numbers if emissions don’t abate.”

While rising sea levels area are a global phenomenon, the Gulf is especially prone to flooding because the land around it is steadily subsiding, through a combination of natural compaction and the extraction of water, oil and natural gas, Sweet said.

NOAA estimates that by 2100 sea levels along the Gulf of Mexico will be between 2 and 6 feet higher than they are now, putting many of Texas’ barrier islands under water and inundating coastal towns and cities. That is likely to compromise sewage systems, roads and water systems, along with other infrastructure, potentially making many communities uninhabitable.

An earlier study suggested up to a foot of sea level rise along the Gulf Coast, but that was for everywhere, not just Texas. The study cited here is about climate change indicators and was sufficiently long that I didn’t scan through it looking for the specific data mentioned in this story. Suffice it to say, we may be seeing significant effects sooner rather than later. Might be nice to try to do something about it, I dunno. Here, here’s the song you’re thinking about now, to ease the mood a little:

I feel like we’re going to have to start rethinking our metaphors, some of this is hitting a little too close to home.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged climate change, Environmental Protection Agency, flooding, Galveston, Gulf of Mexico, NOAA, Texas, videos | 1 Comment

Judge Aguilar back on the bench

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

As expected following the dismissal of the charges against him.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct has lifted the suspension of a Harris County felony court judge after a misdemeanor assault case against him was dismissed.

The chair of the state commission on July 8 signed an order lifting Judge Frank Aguilar’s suspension, explaining that the decision came after the criminal case ended.

“The order of suspension required that such suspension remain in effect until the charge set forth in the information is dismissed…” Chair Gary Steel wrote.

Prosecutors earlier this month contended probable cause exists against Aguilar, of the 228th District Court, who was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property, but there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to their motion to dismiss. A judge signed off on the dismissal.

Aguilar had denied the allegations from the beginning.

See here, here, and here for the background. Not much to add, this is about as good an outcome for Judge Aguilar as he could want. I hope this is the last time he has to go through this.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged domestic violence, Frank Aguilar, Harris County, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | Comments Off

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 8

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The thoughts and prayers of the Texas Progressive Alliance are with everyone in the path of Hurricane Beryl as we bring you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

The power situation

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Rough times for CenterPoint.

Hurricane Beryl “more heavily impacted” Houston’s electric infrastructure than originally anticipated, the area’s primary electricity provider said Monday in an afternoon press release.

The Cat 1 hurricane led to widespread outages affecting more than 2.26 million customers across the Houston metro area, according to the utility’s website.

CenterPoint did not provide a timeline for service restoration in the press release, saying its crews are still assessing the damage sustained by its electric systems during the storm. Beryl pummeled Houston early Monday, causing widespread flooding, infrastructure damage and at least four deaths.

While customers along unimpacted systems may see power restored quickly, others in harder-hit areas “may experience prolonged outages and should prepare accordingly,” the company said. CenterPoint did not identify which areas should expect to remain without power.

That was from midday Monday. On Monday night, CenterPoint sent out an email saying they hoped to have at least one million customers’ power restored by the end of the day Wednesday. The Chron has more.

CenterPoint Energy estimated Monday evening that it would restore power to 1 million customers by end of day Wednesday, July 10.

[…]

CenterPoint’s outage tracker reported nearly 1.9 million customers affected — down from a peak 2.26 million– on Monday night. A spokesperson said Monday evening it restored power to nearly 285,000 customers on Monday; it is unclear how many of those are temporary restorations.

In a statement late Monday afternoon, CenterPoint said it would estimate when power would be restored only after its crews complete a damage assessment. The statement did not address how long the assessment would take; crews must also begin routing power through intact lines and clearing vegetation.

After that damage assessment, CenterPoint said it would begin publishing estimates of when power will be restored, with those projections growing more detailed over time.

At a press conference hosted by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo on Monday afternoon, CenterPoint official Paul Locke said in response to questions that the utility will “have a better idea sometime tomorrow (Tuesday) on the timeline (for) restoration.”

“We understand how difficult it is to be without power for any amount of time, especially in the heat,” said Lynnae Wilson, a CenterPoint vice president, said in the company’s prepared statement. “We are laser focused on the important and time-sensitive work that lies ahead.”

The company’s statement also noted that “customers in the hardest-hit areas may experience prolonged outages and should prepare accordingly.” It did not specify the areas considered hardest-hit.

The number of homes and businesses in the dark is more than double those left powerless during the peak of May’s derecho event, which knocked 922,000 offline. It took six days to restore nearly all of those customers.

Monday morning’s outage is the largest total number of Houston area customers without electricity in CenterPoint history, topping the 2.1 million customers who lost power during Hurricane Ike in September 2008.

It took us three days to get our power back in May. I’m hoping we’re among the lucky ones this time, but we’ll see. The number of affected customers was at 1.7 million on Tuesday morning. I may or may not be able to get an update into this post before Wednesday. Hang in there.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, climate change, derecho, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Hurricane Ike, Texas, trees | 13 Comments

More on the infant mortality study

Posted on July 10, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Mother Jones takes a closer look at a recent study that showed a significant increase in infant mortality in Texas since the passage of SB8 in 2021.

Since then, as wave after wave of post-Dobbs abortion restrictions have been enacted in deep-red states, reproductive rights advocates and journalists have—rightly—focused their attention on the effects of those draconian laws on the health and autonomy of women.

The reports of harm to pregnant patients, however, though wrenching, have been anecdotal, which has limited their ability to move the most conservative hearts and minds. Then there is an additional factor: It’s not clear that many far-right lawmakers and courts actually care about the well-being of women.

But they do claim to care about babies, which is why a new study about SB8 and infant mortality is so important. A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University has spent the two-and-a-half years since SB8 took effect crunching data on infant deaths in Texas and other states, then re-crunching it to confirm their results. They found that as women whose access to abortion was drastically curtailed by SB8 began to give birth in 2022, those infants were dying at much higher rates compared both to the period before the law took effect and to other states that didn’t have near-bans.

The likeliest reason, according to Alison Gemmill, a lead author on the study, is that more women were forced to carry what are sometimes called “medically futile” pregnancies to term. These are pregnancies in which the fetus had catastrophic genetic and other anomalies incompatible with life outside the womb. Unsurprisingly, many of those newborns quickly died. The study’s measured academic language— “Restrictive abortion policies may have important unintended consequences in terms of trauma to families and medical cost”—barely hints at the depth of suffering imposed by SB8.

I mentioned the study in passing here, but haven’t seen much written about it since then. For all the obvious and understandable focus on effects on maternal health, there are very few instances of women dying after childbirth annually, and not all such deaths may be the result of childbirth, all of which makes statistical analysis challenging. But there are a lot more infant deaths, and they are just simply the death of a child under the age of one year, so there are no questions about what “counts”. From the interview with Professor Gemmill:

Once you did your analysis, what stood out?

Overall, we found a 13 percent increase in the number of infant deaths in Texas after the law went into effect. For the rest of the United States, the increase was 2 percent. And deaths due to congenital anomalies—a fancy term for birth defects and the leading cause of infant mortality overall—rose by 23 percent in Texas, while in the rest of the US, there was a decline.

We expected to find an increase, based on the prior studies. But I was surprised at the magnitude of the change, especially the increase in babies who died from congenital anomalies.

We did our analyses in a number of different ways, and the findings were consistent. All of this very much points to a causal connection between the abortion policy and an increase in infant deaths.

Do you have an idea of what might have caused that spike in infant deaths?

No doubt, some deaths were related to complications suffered by the mother. The connection between maternal complications, for example preeclampsia [pregnancy-related hypertension], and the health of the infant is very real. But above and beyond that, there’s a more direct mechanism. Before SB8 parents who got a diagnosis of a serious fetal abnormality had the option to terminate. But after the law took effect, abortion was completely off the table. So you’re going to see more births of babies with congenital anomalies that are incompatible with life. And shortly after birth, those infants are going to die.

Could you explain what kind of birth defects you are talking about?

There are many types of congenital abnormalities, some of which are less serious. But in the case of this study, these were profound abnormalities—things like major heart defects, or vital organs that are missing or incomplete or not functioning properly. These are conditions that wouldn’t be detected before six weeks of pregnancy and once they were detected, might lead many parents to choose termination, because there’s a lot of potential suffering and pain associated with those cases, for the infant and for the families that have to go through that. But because the Texas law didn’t have an exception for fetal anomalies, they had to carry the pregnancy to term, even knowing the baby would die.

[…]

Since Dobbs, 14 states have enacted laws that are more draconian than SB8, including Texas itself, which now has a near-total ban. What would you expect to see as you begin looking at infant mortality data in states that ban abortions at any gestational age with no exceptions for fetal anomalies?

We have no reason to think that the relationship between those abortion policies and infant mortality would be any different in other states. This is something we’re looking into now.

Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of anti-abortion leaders taking up the same message: abortion supporters who talk about pregnancy emergencies and life-threatening complications are just “fear-mongering.” You know, “Complications hardly ever happen, you’re exaggerating the risks.” Your study seems to show the opposite—a big rise in infant mortality is not what I’d call “fear-mongering.”

To be clear, from the maternal health standpoint, pregnancy can be very dangerous for women. While maternal death itself is rare, severe maternal complications are not nearly as rare as people might think, especially if you have risk factors. In the US, a lot of people have risk factors.

And then there are complications like miscarriage, which are a very common experience that people don’t talk about enough. About 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies in the US end in miscarriage. Miscarriage management is an important issue to bring into this conversation because sometimes you need to have an induced abortion to treat that miscarriage.

Another complication that comes to mind is preterm birth. In the US, 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely, and the rate is much higher if you’re Black or live in certain states. About 1 in 12 babies are born too small. These are not rare outcomes, and they have lifelong impacts.

As you study the effects of abortion restrictions on infant health, what are the kinds of things you and your colleagues are looking at next?

We’re looking at the subgroup effects—disparities by race and other characteristics. We’re interested in infant morbidity [complications] because deaths are just the tip of the iceberg. Are abortion bans associated with changes in rates of complications like preterm birth and low birth weight? How long do infants have to stay in neonatal intensive care? For children with severe congenital anomalies, what kinds of medical interventions will they require?

And we’re looking at impacts on pregnancy care—what happens to people who show up to the clinic with life-threatening conditions in states that have bans? Did they experience severe maternal morbidity that potentially could have been avoided if they had received the care that they would have gotten prior to these bans?

There’s more, so read the rest. I’m a little surprised this hasn’t gotten more attention, but who knows why those things do or don’t happen. As the body of research increases, and undoubtedly continues to show the harmful effects of abortion bans, this will get out there.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, Alison Gemmill, infant mortality, maternal mortality, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Tuesday Beryl checkin

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’ve got no power but I do have Internet, so here’s a brief Beryl overview for you. We’re all fine and we do have some battery power to charge devices and keep the fridge and freezer cold, but expect things to be limited for the next couple of days.

Here’s storm coverage from TPR, Space City Weather, the Reform Austin. The main headline is that over 2 million CenterPoint customers in the Houston area are without power. Repair work will start in earnest once the storm is fully clear, so at the time of this writing there’s no estimate for how long it might take.

Mayor Whitmire is asking people to stay off the streets and shelter in place. There were a lot of downed tree branches in our neighborhood, though not as much as with the derecho. No uprooted trees that I saw, at least within a couple blocks of my house. I’m sure the earlier damage reduced the potential for this time. Maybe that will make recovery a little easier.

Finally, Greg Abbott had a Ted Cruz moment on his little junket to South Korea. Don’t hurry home, dude.

Hang in there, y’all. We will get through this.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged blackouts, CenterPoint, climate change, Corpus Christi, derecho, Greg Abbott, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, John Whitmire, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas, trees | 4 Comments

Should we appeal the zombie ReBuild lawsuit ruling?

Posted on July 9, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Controller Hollins says no. Mayor Whitmire seems likely to go ahead anyway.

Houston Controller Chris Hollins has warned Mayor John Whitmire’s administration about potential financial challenges the city could face if it were to appeal a state appellate court ruling requiring the city to put hundreds of millions more dollars toward street and drainage projects.

The yearslong lawsuit started after engineers who helped create a charter amendment affecting how Houston funded street and drainage projects sued the city, arguing that the way officials were calculating funding projects under the amendment was illegal.

In April, the 14th Court of Appeals ruled in the engineers’ favor and told the city it needed to put roughly double the amount of property taxes it currently puts toward its streets and drainage projects. Whitmire’s first budget put only $135 million in tax dollars toward drainage, but the lawsuit’s plaintiffs have said the court-ordered figure would need to be about $100 million more.

City Attorney Arturo Michel previously said the city plans to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court last year before it found its way back to the 14th Court of Appeals. Drainage dollars will be allocated under next year’s budget in the case the court rejects the motion.

City Attorney Arturo Michel previously said the city plans to appeal the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court last year before it found its way back to the 14th Court of Appeals. Drainage dollars will be allocated under next year’s budget in the case the court rejects the motion.

Michel has said the city wouldn’t feel a financial impact as a result of the lawsuit until the next budget in 2026. But if the city lost the lawsuit again, Hollins told the City Council on Tuesday, the city would have to pay back $110 million to $120 million immediately, creating another “big potential expense” in this year’s budget, which already is stretched thin.

“We have to be clear about in the instance that if we were to lose that lawsuit — which we’ve now lost twice in a row on it — how we cover that for the current fiscal year,” Hollins said.

Hollins also questioned Michel’s logic on the city not having to foot the bill this year.

“I haven’t seen any legal standing for that position,” Hollins said. “So we just need to be prepared and have an understanding, again, of how that cost is going to be covered on the downside scenario.”

See here and here for the background. The argument from City Attorney Arturo Michel is that if the city waits till the last minute to file, then given the likelihood of briefings and the Court’s slow pace of proceedings, there probably wouldn’t be a ruling until the end of this fiscal year. As such, any negative effects from an adverse ruling could be dealt with in the next budget. That may be true, and delaying expenditures via various technical means is a tried and true budgetary strategy in Texas (very much at the Legislative level, as Mayor Whitmire knows well), but I didn’t see an argument in there that the city had a shot at winning their appeal, which makes me a little skittish. I Am Not A Lawyer and I don’t know how these things go, but my general world view is that you keep fighting when you have a shot at winning or you have no other choice. I’m not sure that applies here. Am I missing something?

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged 14th Court of Appeals, Allen Watson, Annise Parker, Arturo Michel, Bob Jones, budget, drainage, Election 2010, Election 2018, Election 2023, flooding, Houston, John Whitmire, lawsuit, property taxes, Renew Houston, revenue cap, Supreme Court, Sylvester Turner | Comments Off

Here’s Beryl

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Hoping for the best.

Beryl is on the cusp of regaining hurricane status this evening as it lumbers its way north northwest through the western Gulf of Mexico. At this point, it’s mostly a waiting game as the outer bands of the core are almost ashore near Matagorda.

Beryl has thrown many curve balls at us during its life cycle, and the one curve tonight is whether or not its inner core has completely shed the dry air it took in yesterday off Mexico. Satellite imagery suggests it has not shed this dry air, and that may be what has kept Beryl from looking like it’s ready to take off today. The cinnamon bun look to Beryl on radar is another tell-tale sign of this. It’s organizing and strengthening; it’s just slow and steady. It is somewhat fortunate that it took in that dry air yesterday because otherwise, we would almost certainly have a rapidly intensifying hurricane approaching Texas tonight.

With the storm likely to make landfall between midnight and 3 AM, it has roughly 6 to 8 hours to do whatever it is going to do. This certainly caps the upside of intensity a bit, and it feels a little difficult to think a category 2 will happen here. Category 1? Certainly a possibility, even a likelihood. And really, it becomes mostly a technicality at that point. We still expect hurricane-force winds in the Matagorda Bay region, perhaps into Brazoria County and 10 to 20 miles inland from there. Tropical storm force winds will likely overspread much of the Houston metro. I would say widespread power outages remain a good bet, though the hope will be that the damage is cosmetic enough that restoration will take less than 5 to 7 days for most people. That’s somewhat speculative but that’s the hope.

Meanwhile, the rainfall story will be status quo, Heavy rain is expected along and to the right of Beryl’s track into Texas. This will lead to a pretty healthy flash flooding event in the Houston area and beyond. The limit is on how quickly Beryl will move, which should help cap rain totals somewhat. Still, travel will be difficult in Houston and other parts of Texas overnight and Monday morning.

The flash flooding threat will lift quickly into northeast Texas and parts of the Piney Woods tomorrow afternoon. Beryl will assist in bringing heavy rain all the way north into parts of the Midwest, including near Chicago and into Michigan and Indiana. The remnants will be absorbed into a front and system that moves into New England by Wednesday or so as well, so a flooding threat from Beryl may extend far from where it comes ashore tonight.

That was the update from last night at 9:30. By now, as you read this, you have some idea of how bad this storm is. Hopefully, its effects will be mostly in passing. Stay safe and we’ll keep an eye on the recovery.

UPDATE: Beryl made landfall near Matagorda as a Cat 1 hurricane. It could have intensified more on its way here but was limited by drier air. It’s still on its way to the Houston area at this time.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged climate change, Corpus Christi, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas | Comments Off

Bond spending so far

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

HISD is presumably going to spend some amount of money to get its bond passed. It has already spent some money putting the bond package together.

Houston ISD has spent at least $700,000 developing and promoting its $4.4 school bond proposal that it plans to put on the ballot in November, according to district records.

HISD said in a statement that it has paid at least three different firms between February and April to “research, explore and engage the community on the need for a potential bond,” which includes conducting a facilities assessment, holding focus groups and meetings, developing websites and presentations, and analyzing enrollment and facility utilization data.

The district said it has budgeted to pay for all of its bond-related expenses through its general fund, but it did not say how much it plans to spend in total on the bond before a potential vote. If the bond is approved, the appointed Board of Managers approved a resolution that would allow HISD to reimburse itself with bond funds for any eligible bond expenses spent after April 12.

“If the Board does not decide to put the bond on the ballot, or if the voters do not approve the bond, all of these initial expenditures will inform future decision-making and drive the ongoing work to improve the facilities conditions for all students,” the district said in a statement.

First, as a matter of full disclosure, I’m friends with Mustafa Tameez, the CEO of Outreach Strategies, which is one of the three firms mentioned in this story.

The main issue I have with this story is that I don’t know how to evaluate it. It’s not surprising to me that HISD would spend some money putting the bond proposal together. That seems like a fairly normal expenditure, the sort of thing you hire consultants for since you don’t have that expertise in house. What I don’t know is how this compares to previous bond issuances. Is the amount spent on the development of this proposal in line with earlier ones, with adjustments made for inflation and the size of the proposal, or is it not? How does it compare with other large urban/suburban school district issuances? I have no idea. It would be nice to know. This is something that should be checked as a matter of course, but especially for this no-oversight administration, which has extensive transparency issues and deserves zero benefit of the doubt.

Now, assuming the bond does go forward, there will be more spending to come. HISD will spend some amount of money promoting the bond, though they are limited in what they can say. Others can set up PACs to support or oppose the bond, and it remains to be seen how much money will be spent on those efforts. With the lack of competitive races locally, this could be the big ticket item on the ballot. We’ll know for sure by mid-August.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 2024, HISD, Houston, Mike Miles, New Education System, schools, Texas Education Agency | Comments Off

The answer to “who watches the watchers” is “Ken Paxton”

Posted on July 8, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I don’t think even Molly Ivins could have found a way to make this funny.

Still a crook any way you look

For more than a year, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has owed the state over $11,000 in fines for filing late campaign finance reports. Now, his office is charged with collecting the money.

The situation presents a clear conflict of interest for enforcement of the state’s campaign finance laws, said Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, a government watchdog group.

“If I didn’t pay a parking ticket and incurred a fine as a penalty, most Texans would find it absurd if I also got to review my fine and have a role in deciding whether any action should be taken to collect that fine,” he said.

The Texas Ethics Commission can levy fines against candidates who miss the deadline to disclose their campaign donors. If they don’t pay, it’s up to the attorney general’s office to file suit to collect the money.

The ethics commission referred Paxton’s unpaid fines to the attorney general’s office in April, public records show. The office has not yet filed collections litigation against him and did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did his campaign.

The office, as of mid-June, has only filed one collections lawsuit this year against a state House candidate who owed more than $40,000, the fourth-highest delinquent fine in the state. Before that, the office had not filed any suits since September 2023.

[…]

Campaign finance enforcement isn’t the only state process in which the Texas attorney general’s office is its own overseer. The office’s open records division has the ultimate say over what is exempt from disclosure under state law — including when the public records requests seek information about Paxton or his agency.

The office has said in previous interviews that it institutes a firewall within the agency to make sure that all requests are treated fairly. Gutierrez said that’s not enough.

“It just isn’t realistic to expect any state agency employee, who serves at the pleasure of the person elected to lead that agency, to be able to be truly independent in making judgment calls about their boss,” Gutierrez said. “There is no firewall that would make this process workable. We simply need a different process.”

Paxton’s just ahead of the curve as usual, correctly anticipating a world in which immunity for “official acts” that were once naively seen as “crimes” is baked into the system. The man is nothing if not in the right place at the right time.

As the story notes, Paxton’s co-insurrectionist First Assistant Attorney Brent Webster also owes a $1,000 fine for campaign finance violations from 2016. That has also been referred to the AG’s office, and I’m sure they’ll get right on it now that it’s in the papers. Other states have less stupid means of enforcing campaign finance laws, such as having an independent agency be responsible for enforcement, or just not letting campaign scofflaws file for election until they resolve the complaints against them.

The Lege of course could resolve this, but of course they won’t. The traditional reason for this was that they didn’t want to empower any potential future consequences against themselves. The modern reason is that after the impeachment fiasco last year followed by the GOP primary revenge tour, there’s absolutely no reason for any Republican legislator to try to do the right thing. It’s one thing to make a sacrifice for an accomplishment, and another thing to self-immolate. I’d have some sympathy if they weren’t all complicit in creating the conditions that led to this.

Some future government that is not like this one could deal with this problem when it gains power. Perhaps a future electorate will care enough about this sort of thing to make it a driver of their voting behavior. Perhaps the most expedient route to a solution at this point is to invent a time machine, go back to when these laws were first being passed, and convince those guys to do it better, given what we now know in the future. This would also work for quite a few other pressing issues of our time. Someone please get started on that.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged Brent Webster, campaign finance reform, ethics, impeachment, Ken Paxton, Texas, Texas Ethics Commission, The Lege | Comments Off

Weekend link dump for July 7

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

“Gotta bring back the bootleg DVD man. This shit ain’t right.”

“If that sounds like the narcissism of small differences exemplified in the classic Emo Phillips joke — “I said ‘Die heretic!’ and I pushed him off the bridge!” — that’s because that’s exactly what it is and exactly how it still functions today.”

“If you are opposed to abortion, you should be opposed to the practice of IVF.”

HBO >> MAX. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

RIP, Orlando Cepeda, MLB Hall of Fame outfielder mostly for the Giants and Cardinals. I only saw this after last week’s roundup was published or it would have been in there.

“As we finally reach the end of another harrowing US Supreme Court term, one overarching theme has emerged: this Court doesn’t believe in the separation of powers.”

“The truth is that Trump has been getting the criminal justice system’s “platinum door” treatment from the start. His cases are unusual in that he’s a former president. But his status and political position have helped him far more than they have hurt him.”

The state of Louisiana owes Cecil B. DeMille royalties. Or an apology. Possibly both.

“It is unclear, after Monday’s decision, what constitutional checks remain to stop any president from assuming dangerous and monarchical powers that are anathema to representative government.”

“Democrats have no affirmative responsibility to listen to columnists. They don’t have to hold a symposium about everything. Sometimes you simply need to dive into a fight even if that means setting aside some of your own doubts. Democrats don’t have anything to prove on this front. It’s just dumb and self-defeating and if you want to know why no one bothers to write editorials about why Trump should drop out, again this is why.”

“Giuliani disbarred in New York for lies about Trump’s 2020 loss”. About damn time.

“Second, it’s important to notice that Colin’s desire for Penelope isn’t even addressed. Only the implausibility of that desire is mentioned. The truth is, though, that Colin wants Penelope, right? He’s not a prisoner in this romance, right? Yet, it’s not Colin’s desire that’s being pathologized or chided at all. It’s Penelope’s body.”

“Here’s a non-comprehensive list of longstanding precedents the Supreme Court has tossed aside recently”.

RIP, Charlotte, the stingray in North Carolina who became famous for her miraculous pregnancy that probably wasn’t.

“Former Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman, head coach Joel Quenneville and assistant general manager Al MacIssac have been reinstated by the NHL more than two years after they stepped down from their roles following an investigation into their handling of sexual assault allegations made by former forward Kyle Beach.”

“What Is a Safe Amount of E. Coli for a River?”

“It is a decision of surpassing recklessness in dangerous times.”

“MTV News Lives On In Internet Archive”.

RIP, Robert Towne, Oscar-winning screenwriter for Chinatown and Oscar nominee for Shampoo.

RIP, Glen Gondo, businessman and leader in Houston’s Asian community, known as the “King of sushi”.

Target will not take your personal check any more.

Meet Nikki Hiltz, a transgender nonbinary runner who just made the US Olympics team for the women’s 1500 meter race.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | Comments Off

Keeping an eye on Beryl

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

From Space City Weather:

In brief: Although we cannot be certain at this time, it increasingly looks as though Tropical Storm Beryl is on track to make landfall somewhere between Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay on Monday. For the greater Houston area this will result in higher winds, some storm surge, and heavy rainfall, with the greatest impacts likely on Monday. This post goes into what to tentatively expect, and when.

There is understandably a lot of consternation about the forecast for Beryl, which shifted considerably northward during the last day or two toward Houston. However, overnight the majority of our model guidance has stabilized on a landfall along the Coastal Bend of Texas, somewhere between Corpus Christi and Matagorda Bay.

Given the unpredictability of Beryl to date, I don’t blame anyone for being skeptical about this forecast. However there are a couple of reasons for increased confidence. Most importantly, we are only about 48 hours from landfall, and the average track error at this point is approximately 60 miles. And secondly, the models have stopped swinging about wildly and begun to consolidate on a solution.

In this post, we will discuss the effects of this “most likely” storm path on the greater Houston area, from Katy to Baytown, and Galveston to Conroe. For effects across the entire state of Texas, I would point you to The Eyewall.

That was the morning post yesterday, and there have been updates since. Go check both sites for the very latest. Even though Beryl is likely to be a fairly modest hurricane by the time it hits our coast, it’s notable because it was such a big storm so early in the season. We know how active this season is going to be, and that’s what it means. It’s not just about the number of storms, it’s about their size and intensity and frequency, and how early in the season they start and how late in the season they linger. Welcome to the future. I just hope the reservoirs get what they need. The Chron has more.

UPDATE: The Sunday morning report concludes as follow:

Beryl will be an impactful storm for the Houston region. This is far from a worst-case scenario hurricane for our area, but it will be significantly disruptive tonight and on Monday. Beginning this evening, you should shelter in your home. The worst of the winds and rains will come tonight and into Monday morning, with improving conditions thereafter. Due to the likelihood of street flooding on Monday morning, you should carefully consider any plans before noon.

Take heed.

Posted in Hurricane Katrina | Tagged climate change, Corpus Christi, Gulf of Mexico, Houston, Hurricane Beryl, Matagorda County, Mexico, NOAA, Texas | 3 Comments

The HISD bond committee has some feedback

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Don’t we all.

Houston ISD should provide more communication and transparency around its $4.4 billion school bond proposal, including plans for pre-K expansion and co-locations of several campuses, before a potential vote in November, according to a recent advisory committee report.

After conducting community meetings and surveys in June, the district’s 28-member Community Advisory Committee shared a report with the appointed Board of Managers last week outlining more than 20 recommendations that address “challenges, opportunities, and questions” with the largest proposed bond in Texas history.

The committee’s list of suggestions for district leaders includes conducting regular public meetings about the bond, providing transparent project timelines, establishing internal officials who can be held accountable for work on the bond and clarifying how the district will address health and safety concerns at campuses if the bond does not pass.

“This is part of the beginning stages of a conversation,” said Judith Cruz, committee co-chair and former HISD board president. “We heard loud and clear from the community … how important that transparency piece is. What we’re recommending is making sure that there’s transparent systems in place and that there’s controls based on lessons learned from previous bond recommendations.”

The bond, if approved, would allocate about $2.27 billion for expanding, rebuilding and renovating campuses with “poor facilities and learning conditions,” with 40 schools set to receive significant overhauls. Of those funds, $580 million would go toward renovating or rebuilding seven campuses to accommodate eight other campuses that would “co-locate” their students.

The committee’s report states that HISD should explain how certain schools were selected for investment, including how the seven co-locations will “address the specific needs and concerns of the affected communities.” The co-locations also should take advantage of common areas and roles while retaining each campus’ unique identity and culture, the recommendations said.

Some of their other suggestions include asking the district to incorporate student enrollment projections and pre-K classrooms in building designs. The district also should explore options to share underutilized space with community partners that could provide services to students, the report says.

The report comes as several HISD teachers, parents and community members have said they are planning to vote against the bond due, in part, to a lack of trust in state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and his reforms, such as the New Education System, with some adopting the rallying cry of “No trust. No bond.”

Let’s put a pin in all that for a minute and zoom in on one specific aspect of the bond, which Houston Landing gets into.

A Houston ISD committee advising the district on its proposed $4.4 billion bond is questioning a big piece of the project: investing about $425 million in career and technical education centers.

District officials want to build three new CTE centers and renovate the district’s current CTE center, Barbara Jordan Career Center, which students across HISD visit during the school day for industry-focused classes. The new centers, which would be spread throughout the district, would give students more access to career and technology classes and shorten travel time for students.

But HISD’s bond advisory committee, a group of 28 community members responsible for providing feedback on the district administration’s bond proposal, pushed back in recent days on the plan. Committee members suggested the $425 million could be spent on existing schools, questioned how the centers fit into HISD’s overall CTE plans and called for more details on the proposal.

The committee didn’t oppose building the CTE centers, but it recommended the district consider delaying them until a future bond. The district’s state-appointed board of managers will decide in the coming weeks whether to ask voters to approve a bond package, which would be the largest in Texas history.

“We recommended it primarily because when we looked at the number of them and the amount of the bond proceeds going to the CTE centers, it seemed to be a large amount of money, compared to other priorities of the bond,” said advisory committee co-chair Garnet Coleman, who served three decades in the Texas Legislature.

[…]

HISD administrators, including state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles, said the district doesn’t have enough CTE centers to prepare kids for high-paying and high-tech jobs in the modern workforce. Most of the district’s high schools have career-focused classes, but few offer expensive technology and specialized training often found in CTE centers.

In a presentation to HISD board members last week, Miles said HISD needs to immediately build CTE centers to give students the resources they need.

“Even if the bond passes, it’s going to be three years from that time when the first career tech ed center is up and running,” Miles said. “We’re talking about a timeline here. I don’t think our kids can wait.”

This article has a good graphic that shows how the bond money would be allocated, as currently defined. Have a look while I hit on the three things that I thought about while reading these two stories.

1. If this version of HISD had been good at “provid[ing] more communication and transparency” about literally anything, we’d have far fewer problems now than we do. I mean, among many other things Mike Miles royally sucks at communications, to the point where the only reasonable conclusion is that he just doesn’t think it’s worth his time and effort. All I can say is that if the Community Advisory Committee is any better at providing more communication and transparency from Miles and his minions, can we please throw out the Board of Managers and replace them with the CAC? Pretty please?

2. It’s not really the CAC’s problem to manage, but whoever runs the pro-bond campaign really needs to understand the depths of the “no trust, no bond” movement and figure out a way to deal with it, or I believe they will have a hard time passing it despite the electorate’s normal propensity for supporting such bonds. I have no advice to offer here. I’m not sure how much of that contingent is persuadable. I’m just saying they ignore it at their peril.

3. There’s been a debate within HISD and at large for some years now about college readiness versus vocational readiness, which is a way larger discussion than I can deal with in this post. I don’t know enough about CTEs or the reasons why HISD needs more than one of them (unlike other large neighboring districts). I’m just going to note that I find it a little weird to see Mike Miles loudly advocating for them. I know he’s the Superintendent for all of HISD, but I don’t think I’m alone in seeing him first and foremost as a turnaround specialist with a limited mission, specifically to improve the performance of a set number of schools and a set of specific student populations. His main priority is that mission, and anything else he does should be viewed through the lens of whether or not it furthers that mission or distracts from it. I’m not saying we can’t have the CTE stuff in this bond, but to me the default position should be the one taken by the CAC, which is that it would be better to defer this to a later bond. If there’s a compelling reason for it, fine, but if not it’s a distraction and should be put aside.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, CTE centers, Election 2024, Garnet Coleman, HISD, Houston, Judith Cruz, Mike Miles | 1 Comment

Sheriff’s office looking at AI solutions

Posted on July 7, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This actually sounds pretty reasonable to me.

With thousands of hours of body camera footage and non-emergency calls and not enough staff to tackle it all, Harris County Sheriff’s officials are thinking of turning to artificial intelligence to handle some of the load.

Officials with the office named finding ways they might use AI as one of their chief goals for 2024, becoming one of the agencies on the forefront of the technology in law enforcement. But while some agencies are turning to technology like facial recognition software, administrators at the sheriff’s office said they see the biggest benefits are AI’s ability to parse through vast quantities of data.

“We are exploring the potential of AI to enhance public service by facilitating faster and more efficient data retrieval on our website,” said Gary Spurger, director of information technology for the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office has not any contracts for the technology, but are testing its use in several different areas, according to Spurger. Those include using it to sort through body camera video and helping people find incarcerated family members.

Spurger gave an example of a deputy looking into a case involving more than 100 hours of body camera video to sort through. The ability to enter keywords, such as “man wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt,” will help the investigator more efficiently sort through data.

But while the technology can be a good aid, it would ultimately fall on employees to make final determinations, Spurger said.

That to me is a perfectly fine use case for AI. It’s in line with how we use AI in a cybersecurity context, as a way to do refined searches of vast quantities of data with a goal of identifying a generally small number of items of much greater interest. It’s still on the human analyst to review the search results and determine what warrants further investigation. Perhaps this what HPD meant when it was talking about using “AI surveillance” in its operations, and if so then I mostly retract my concerns. AI is good for taking labor-intensive drudge work and turning it into manageable tasks. If that’s the direction they’re going, and assuming that sufficient oversight and checkpoints are in place to assure that algorithms aren’t making judgment decisions, it’s worth pursuing.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged artificial intelligence, body cameras, Ed Gonzalez, Harris County, Harris County Sheriff, HPD, Texas | Comments Off

Amarillo to vote on abortion travel ban

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I sure hope the opposition to this gets all the support it needs.

Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules.

Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley confirmed reports about the committee requesting to add the ordinance to the November ballot. Stanley said the request will be on the agenda for the council’s next meeting on July 9. The council will take a procedural vote, which Stanley said is expected to pass, so it will be officially placed on the ballot.

[…]

After the Amarillo City Council balked at passing the ordinance last year, residents began collecting signatures to petition to have the council consider the measure, and to place it on a local ballot if it wasn’t passed by the council. Last month, the council rejected both the original ordinance and an amended version that would have declared the city a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and prohibited using city roads and highways to seek abortion out of state.

Once the council rejected it, supporters of the ordinance were allowed to place it on the ballot for local voters.

“The people will speak and we will hear what they want,” Amarillo City Council member Tom Scherlen said. “Through our process, we will see which side wins.”

Scherlen added, “When it gets down to it, we live in a democratic society where the vote does count.”

[…]

Stanley said the council would still have a role in making sure the public is properly notified on the language of the ordinance, because there are differences from similar laws passed by other cities and counties in Texas.

In a statement, the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, a local advocacy group that has rallied against the ordinance, said the travel ban had a “clear and resounding rejection.”

“We are deeply disappointed that the misguided initiating committee has chosen to ignore the majority of Amarillo citizens and our duly elected representatives by placing this unconstitutional ban on the ballot,” the group said in a statement.

I didn’t follow this saga, mostly because I was waiting to see how it ended. That still remains to be seen. As noted in the story, similar “bans” have been passed in other cities and counties, mostly but not entirely small rural ones. Amarillo’s a conservative Republican place, but its Council’s rejection of this ordinance in the past offers some hope. My hope is that the locals who have been fighting this all along get the support and resources they need to mount the fight they’ll need to have for November. Here’s the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance webpage if you want to learn more or give them a hand.

Posted in Election 2024 | Tagged abortion, Amarillo, Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, Election 2024, SCOTUS, Texas | Comments Off

Domestic violence charges dismissed against Judge Frank Aguilar

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay.

A misdemeanor assault case that led to the suspension of a Harris County felony judge was dismissed Wednesday by Galveston County prosecutors, court records show.

Prosecutors contend probable cause exists against 228th District Court Judge Frank Aguilar, who was accused of assaulting his girlfriend at his Galveston property, but there was “insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to their motion to dismiss. A judge signed off on the dismissal.

Aguilar’s defense attorney, Mark Diaz, declined to comment on the dismissal. Aguilar could not be reached for comment.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct suspended Aguilar from the bench with pay in February, about two weeks after a misdemeanor assault charge was filed against him. The commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the status of his suspension or whether it could be lifted.

Aguilar was arrested Dec. 31, 2023, after his girlfriend told police that Aguilar punched her and held his foot to her neck in the 9600 block of Teichman Road. The judge countered to authorities that she was intoxicated and throwing beer cans at him. The girlfriend was charged last year in connection with an assault at Aguilar’s property, according to court records.

An affidavit from Aguilar’s girlfriend filed in January urged prosecutors to dismiss the charge, saying that she fell down the stairs and that Aguilar never hit her.

Aguilar was acquitted of another domestic violence charge in 2010.

See here and here for the background. Not a whole lot to add here, the story is what it is. I assume sometime after the holiday weekend that the State Commission on Judicial Conduct will un-suspend Judge Aguilar. As with Judge Kelli Johnson, I hope Judge Aguilar is encouraged to address any underlying issues that may have contributed to this situation, with any and all help that may be available to him.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged domestic violence, Frank Aguilar, Harris County, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | 1 Comment

A small followup on the West 11th Street safety study

Posted on July 6, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This doesn’t really add much to what we had before, but I figured a little low-stakes story about something good was a thing we could use.

11th Street in the Houston Heights area became safer for everyone, including drivers, after traffic-calming measures and protected bike lanes were installed, according to a Houston Public Works (HPW) study published by Axios.

“I’d say it’s not surprising,” said Nicholas Ferenchak, an assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at the University of New Mexico. “We did a study of bus rapid transit system in Albuquerque … and we’re actually seeing the same thing. So, it’s not just protected bike lanes, but protected bus lanes as well — just kind of making these corridors more multimodal.”

Despite the apparent improvement and an award from the American Public Works Association, the $2.4 million 11th Street redesign could be reversed. Mayor John Whitmire announced a re-evaluation of multiple street projects in March, along with a deemphasizing of the “Vision Zero” traffic safety initiative. Ferenchak published research in 2019 finding that cities with higher rates of biking are safer for all road users, including drivers. His coauthor was Wesley Marshall, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver.

“I think one of the big findings was that it was the bicycling infrastructure that was sort of the biggest differentiator between the safer cities and the less safe cities,” Marshall said. “More specifically, it was the separated and protected bike infrastructure … it wasn’t just painted bike lanes, it was the better infrastructure that seemed to be one of the biggest differentiators.”

[…]

The HPW study published by Axios found that overall travel times “do not appear to have increased significantly” because of the changes, with drivers experiencing less than 10 seconds of additional waiting time during the morning and evening rush hours at the Yale Street Intersection.

“I think there’s a lot of biases that come from behind the windshield, especially when you look at bike lanes or bus lanes,” Marshall said. “The way those operate, they’re gonna seem empty to someone who’s sitting in traffic congestion … you’re going to look over at a bike lane or a bus lane and think, ‘Oh, no one’s using that. I should be over there.’ The math doesn’t support that if you’re actually counting people instead of cars.”

See here for the background. The one thing I’ll add, as someone who has lived in the Heights for over 25 years and who drives down West 11th all the damn time, is that when it was four lanes in total, those lanes were empty most of the time. You’d get a rush of traffic when the lights changed at Studewood and Heights/Yale, but usually just in one of the lanes each way. A similar two-way, four-lane-total thoroughfare like Shepherd between US59 and Allen Parkway was way, way busier, any time of the day. It’s really not a surprise that vehicular traffic on 11th is mostly unaffected.

What those extra lanes meant on 11th was that it was easy to speed like you were accelerating to enter a freeway. That’s what made crossing 11th, especially at the bike trail between Yale and Shepherd, so dangerous. That behavior is now mostly extinct, which is why it’s so much safer. This is not hard to figure out.

Anyway. Even if the bike lanes on 11th didn’t get used all that much, the Heights trail that crosses 11th does, and one no longer takes one’s life in one’s hands when one makes that crossing. And we can put a dollar value on that, as a bonus. We’re not out from under the Mayor’s thumb on this yet – who knows how long he’ll do whatever it is he’s doing about it – but we have that on our side.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged accidents, bicycles, Bike Houston, bike lanes, Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, Heights, HFD, Houston, John Whitmire, pedestrians, sidewalks, Sylvester Turner, Texas Public Information Act | Comments Off

SCOTUS to hear appeal of Texas’ anti-porn law

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The hits are already coming.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it will consider a challenge to a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the ages of their visitors.

The dispute centers around Texas House Bill 1181, which was enacted in June 2023 and aims to prevent minors from accessing sexual content online. The law requires any website that publishes a certain amount of “sexual material harmful to minors” to verify that every user attempting to access the content is at least 18 years old.

Websites covered by the law must also display health warnings about the alleged psychological risks of pornography. Search engines and social media platforms are effectively exempt from the law’s requirements. Violators may face up to $10,000 per day in civil penalties, and if a minor accesses sexual material, the Texas attorney general can seek an additional $250,000 per violation.

Similar age-verification laws are in effect in seven other states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia — and are scheduled to take effect in several more in the coming months.

The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, and a group of companies that operate pornography websites challenged the Texas law before it was set to take effect on Sept. 1, 2023, arguing it infringes on their First Amendment rights. A federal district court agreed to block the law’s enforcement one day before it was set to go into force.

[…]

Texas appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which allowed the state to enforce the law while it reviewed the district court’s ruling. In March, a three-judge panel of judges upheld the injunction as to the health warnings and disclosure requirements, finding it unconstitutionally compels the adult websites’ speech.

But the panel divided 2-1 to find that the challengers were unlikely to succeed on their challenge to the age-verification portions. The majority disagreed with the district court about the level of scrutiny it applied, and said the proper standard was rational-basis review, the minimum level of scrutiny for determining the constitutionality of a law.

Applying that level of judicial scrutiny, the two judges found that the age-verification requirement is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography” and therefore doesn’t violate the First Amendment.

Judge Patrick Higginbotham dissented as to the age-verification requirements, writing that the provision “cannot be reasonably read to reach only obscene speech in the hands of minors.”

“H.B. 1181 limits access to materials that may be denied to minors but remain constitutionally protected speech for adults,” he wrote. “It follows that the law must face strict scrutiny review because it limits adults’ access to protected speech using a content-based distinction—whether that speech is harmful to minors.”

See here for the previous update and here for an overview of the problems with Texas’ law; The 19th also has a good discussion of the issue. On the plus side, SCOTUS did hand down a good ruling on the stupid social media censorship law, one that recognized the free speech implications and went in the right direction from there. That was one of several bench-slappings that SCOTUS gave to the Fifth Circuit this past term, which suggests they have some limits, on some issues, some of the time. On the other hand, well, there was everything else SCOTUS did. Six of them are handmaidens to plutocrats and Christian nationalists, and they can and do plenty of damage. We’ll just have to see what they do with this one. The Associated Press and the Trib have more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged data privacy, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Free Speech Coalition, lawsuit, Pornhub, pornography, SCOTUS, social media, Texas, The Lege | Comments Off

Judge Kelli Johnson appears in court

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I wish her well in resolving this.

Judge Kelli Johnson

Judge Kelli Johnson, 52, entered the misdemeanor courtroom — 11 floors below her 178th District Court bench — to face an elected official like herself as hundreds of defendants have done in her place. A prosecutor’s recitation of the probable cause that led to Johnson’s June 25 arrest was delayed until outside counsel could be appointed on behalf of the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, who announced plans to recuse themselves.

The judge anticipates a special prosecutor will be tapped to the case by the week’s end.

Judge Leslie Johnson, who is presiding over the jurist’s case, held off on determining whether Johnson will require random urinalysis as part of her bail conditions until a new prosecutor joins the case.

Houston police arrested Johnson in the 7600 block of Kempwood Drive on the DWI charge. The arrest followed a traffic stop in April in which a Harris County sheriff’s deputy suspected that she had been drinking alcohol but issued her a verbal warning for speeding after she passed a field sobriety test, according to body-worn camera audio from the traffic stop that the Chronicle reviewed.

She took several weeks off from the bench in May and June after the traffic stop. She has since recused herself from felony driving while intoxicated cases, court officials said.

See here for the background. Reading this story, I apparently thought she had been arrested at that traffic stop in April, making this the second time she had been busted. That’s not the case and I regret the error. Even one drunk driving arrest is a serious matter, and just because she wasn’t charged with anything at that earlier traffic stop doesn’t mean she had been driving without incident. I say this to say that I want Judge Johnson to be healthy and safe, and if there is an underlying problem that needs to be addressed, which I hope she would recognize, then she needs to prioritize that. In the meantime, the next hearing is set for August 6, at which she is not required to appear, and we should have an appointed prosecutor for the case.

Posted in Crime and Punishment | Tagged drunk driving, Harris County, Kelli Johnson, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Texas | Comments Off

A few questions about Swyft Cities and the Whoosh project

Posted on July 5, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

In my earlier post about the Whoosh elevated autonomous cable car project in North Texas, I got a comment from Leonard Lee addressing some of the concerns I had raised. He invited me to contact him if I had any further questions, and well, I had them and so I did. The following is the brief Q&A I had with Leonard Lee, who is the Head of Communications for Swyft Cities, the independent business spun off from a Google project to do transit innovation. They are the sponsors of the Whoosh project. Here’s the Q&A:

1. The story I referenced only mentioned the five North Texas cities as being candidates for this pilot program. What other cities (if any) are also under consideration?

We are in discussions with cities and real estate developments around the world, but we’re particularly excited to be working with the five cities in North Texas, because North Texas has a long history as a center of transportation technology innovation. In addition, the CERTT program (Certification of Emerging & Reliable Transportation Technology) through the North Central Texas Council of Governments is a unique program that helps facilitate and streamline our discussions with the North Texas cities that are most interested in exploring new transportation technologies including ours.

2. Are the five North Texas cities being considered as a group, or are they competing against each other? How many grants will there be in the end?

We are having separate discussions with each city to identify the best site for the first pilot project, but we are hoping that multiple projects will result from the process.

As far as grants, that’s part of our discussions with the cities. but the grant process always carries a lot of uncertainty, so although we are hopeful, there is no way of knowing in advance how many grants might be involved.

3. What is the time frame for making a decision? What is the time frame for construction?

There is no set timeline for making a decision. We want to be thorough and work with the cities to identify sites where we have the most impact to address their transportation needs. But we are hopeful that in working with the cities we will have a list of candidate sites identified by the end of this year with selection of the first pilot site by mid-2025. The next phase after that would be engineering planning. Once construction starts, build time for the first pilot system is expected to be no longer than 18-24 months.

4. What are the criteria for the success of the project, and is that solely determined by Swyft Cities or do the participants have a say in it?

Each city may have different goals for what they would like the pilot system to achieve. Some may want to ease traffic congestion in areas where cars need to be used even for short trips. Or they want to connect neighborhoods that are cut off by freeways or other obstacles. Improving access to DART transit is likely to be an objective. Others may want to improve opportunities to develop new real estate by planning in new mobility options.

5. What happens to the infrastructure after the pilot?

The pilot system is intended to the initial phase of a system that can be continually expanded over time. We see one of the benefits of our system being that it is easily expandable.

6. By the nature of this technology, I assume that it can’t be extended to a greater area in the way a bus network can. If the goal is to make mass transit work better, is the idea that there could be several discrete installations in different city hubs?

Great question. Our system is designed be very flexible in how networks can be built. We sometimes liken it to building a transportation system like Legos. It could be a series of small networks built around existing transit hubs. Or it could all be stitched together into larger networks. To extend the Lego analogy, there’s almost no limit to how large a network could be built or how it could be configured.

7. Most large scale transportation projects have to go through environmental impact reviews and other time-consuming processes. Are there similar requirements for this project, either in the pilot phase or later in a full production phase?

Absolutely. As you mention, environmental review is part of any large infrastructure project, and we working with the cities on those processes.

8. Are there other pilots planned? What would a city need to do to participate in a subsequent pilot?

A hardware pilot system will break ground in New Zealand in coming months. Our discussions with cities in North Texas are for the first U.S. pilot system.

My thanks to Leonard Lee for his (very quick!) responses to my questions. I’ll be keeping an eye on this and look forward to seeing how it turns out. Honestly, I’m a little jealous this is happening in the Metroplex and not here. Not that we’d be serious contenders given current conditions. Maybe someday down the line if this works as intended.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Arlington, cable cars, Dallas, DeSoto, Frisco, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Plano, Swyft Cities, Texas, Whoosh | Comments Off

On cover songs

Posted on July 4, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

It’s almost certainly because of Luke Combs and his amazing cover of Tracy Chapman’s classic “Fast Car”, but cover songs are back in the conversation now. I’m an aficionado of covers, I love a good one, so this is all right up my alley. I’ve been thinking about the AV Club’s recent list of 25 Best Cover Songs since it came out. It’s fine, there’s nothing I take strong issue with, but it was missing something for me, which was a sense of discovery. The Popdose list of 100 Greatest Covers is still the go-to for me, in that I found songs I didn’t really know before (“How Soon Is Now“, “Everybody Knows“) and some versions I didn’t know (Frente’s “Bizarre Love Triangle“, Gloria Jones’ “Tainted Love“, Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”; the first is a cover, the second is the original, and the third was from a KBCO acoustic in-studio collection by the original songwriter, which I found very affecting). I didn’t get that from the AV Club, which was a disappointment even if the list overall was fine and probably had some new material to check out for people who are less obsessed with this subject.

I got less out of their companion list of 25 Worst Covers, partly because about half of the songs struck me as more novelties than anything actually serious, partly because I wasn’t particularly moved to find a new-to-me version of the songs in question. This list I did have some quibbles with – I actually kind of like the Ugly Kid Joe version of “Cat’s In The Cradle“, and I don’t understand at all their hate for Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman“, the only tune on that list that I ever heard on the radio. But whatever, to each their own.

To me, a good cover song can be a faithful reproduction of the earlier work – Phil Collins’ “You Can’t Hurry Love“, for example – or a faithful version done in a different genre – Dwight Yoakum’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” – or a reasonably faithful version of a classic done in a more contemporary style – The Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly“, or Bananarama’s “Venus” – or something completely new and different – CAKE’s version of “I Will Survive” is my favorite example of this, but of course famous covers from Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” to Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” to Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” all count. I’m a sucker for bands that can do complete transformations of songs into their own style – Manhattan Transfer’s “Unchained Melody“, the Austin Lounge Lizards’ bluegrass “Brain Damage“, the Asylum Street Spankers’ “Paul Revere“, the entire catalogs of Postmodern Jukebox and Scary Pockets, and so on. And of course, we can’t talk about cover songs without mentioning Coverville, which I’ve listened to for many years now (thanks, Ginger!) and which has given me many new songs to enjoy.

Anyway. The Luke Combs cover inspired Chris Molanphy to do an episode of “Hit Parade” about the history of cover songs on the Billboard charts, and it was terrific. It also gave me that bit of discovery that I always seek, in that it was in listening to that episode that I learned that Kim Carnes’ “Bette Davis Eyes” was a cover. Whatever your own history with cover songs, I say check it out. And I’ll close out with a cover that wouldn’t ever be on the charts but encapsulates much of what I say here in terms of being faithful to the original while also going someplace new:

Happy Fourth!

Posted in Music | Tagged cover songs, Coverville, videos | 2 Comments

Judge rejects Paxton’s bullying against Annunciation House

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good.

An El Paso district court judge has denied Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to shut down the Annunciation House network of migrant shelters in El Paso, saying the state was harassing its employees and guests.

In a pair of rulings issued Tuesday morning, 205th District Judge Francisco Dominguez said the AG’s office efforts to shut down the nonprofit organization on allegations that it is operating a stash house are “unenforceable,” stating those statutes are pre-empted by federal law.

“The record before this Court makes clear that the Texas Attorney General’s use of the request to examine documents from Annunciation House was a pretext to justify its harassment of Annunciation House employees and the persons seeking refuge. This Court previously expressed its concern that the Attorney General did not identify what laws he believed were being violated from the outset,” Dominguez wrote in an order granting Annunciation House’s request to block Paxton’s demand for records.

“In fact, the record before the Court now establishes that the Attorney General was seeking evidence of alleged criminal activity all along. This is outrageous and intolerable,” Dominguez wrote.

In a second ruling, Dominguez rejected Paxton’s efforts to close Annunciation House for failing to produce records on demand, calling the state’s efforts to obtain documents from Annunciation House, which has deep ties to the Catholic church, “unconstitutionally vague.”

He said the request violated the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by substantially burdening its “free exercise of religion.”

“In my heart of hearts I would hope … that this truly would be a determining action and that this would bring it to an end. That’s my hope, that would be my prayer,” Annunciation House founder and director Ruben Garcia told El Paso Matters following the ruling.

“I’m realistic enough to know it probably won’t end here and for that I’m very sorry,” Garcia said, adding that he expects the attorney general to appeal the ruling.

[…]

In his ruling, Dominguez said the actions by Paxton, a Republican, were motivated by politics.

“As the top law enforcement officer of the State of Texas, the Attorney General has a duty to uphold all laws, not just selectively interpret or misuse those that can be manipulated to advance his own personal beliefs or political agenda,” the judge wrote.

See here for the previous post. That’s a strong ruling, but as we are all painfully aware, what ultimately matters is what the Supreme Court thinks. I assume this matter will get there, and while our State Supreme Court has not been out there actively strangling democracy, it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately. So, one and a half cheers for this ruling, pending further updates.

The Chron adds on:

Dominguez granted Annunciation House’s motion for summary judgment against Paxton on Monday and ruled that any subpoenas served by the attorney general on Annunciation House over the next two years must be filed with the court.

The judge denied Paxton’s counterclaim, which he wrote violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act by “substantially burdening Annunciation House’s free exercise of religion and failing to use the ‘least restrictive means’ of securing compliance with the law.”

[…]

Dominguez’s decision comes as religious leaders, including a top U.S. bishop, have raised concerns that government officials’ targeting of faith-based border work, including Paxton’s attempts to shut down Annunciation House, infringe on religious freedom.

Republicans have grown increasingly critical of nongovernmental organizations along the border that have long assisted migrants arriving in the U.S. The groups, which often receive federal funding, help border communities manage new arrivals by taking asylum-seekers off the streets and helping them find transportation to other parts of the state and country.

“We obviously want to respect the law, but if that liberty is restricted, then yes, our religious liberty is being restricted because we can’t put into practice the precepts of the Gospel,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said during a news conference last month.

I dunno, man, maybe people who call themselves Catholic, especially those who call themselves Catholic and have been voting Republican, might find a reason to be offended by this and perhaps oppose Ken Paxton when he’s next on a ballot. The whole “impinging on religious freedom” thing might be a problem, maybe? I’m just spitballing here. The Trib has more.

Posted in La Migra, Legal matters | Tagged Annunciation House, border, El Paso, immigration, Ken Paxton, lawsuit, Ruben Garcia, Texas, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops | Comments Off

More on “No trust, no bond”

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

I’m still inclined to vote for the HISD bond, but I’m listening to the opposition and am very interested in seeing what traction they can get.

Several HISD teachers, parents and community members say they are planning to cast their first-ever vote against a school bond if HISD puts the $4.4 billion school bond package developed under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles on the ballot in November.

Critics recognize that this is one of their most powerful opportunities to voice their opposition to the state takeover, the replacement of HISD’s elected board members, concerns over financial accountability and a lack of trust in district leaders, especially Miles.

Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said the largest teachers’ union in HISD has never opposed any of the district’s past four school bond proposals — until now. She, like other bond opponents, have adopted the rallying cry of “No trust. No bond,” to stress to district leaders that much more must be done before they’d ever consider voting for the proposal.

“This is a very difficult position for the union to take and for teachers to take,” Anderson said. “We know that our schools need work. We know that, but because our collective voices and democracy have been stripped away from us, this is our only chance to express our disapproval at the direction that our district is going in.”

The full scope of the pushback to the bond in the HISD community, including if it will be able to swing the election, remains unclear. According to HISD, 69% of voters said they would support a bond with no tax rate increase in a poll from Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, which was taken before the district publicly unveiled its bond proposal in May.

However, with more than three months until the potential vote, bond opponents say they’re working to raise awareness of their position and convince enough people to vote down the district’s proposal later this year through actions like regular chants at board meetings, selling anti-Miles yard signs and even creating public yarn installations advocating against the bond.

I’ve said my piece about the merits of the bond and of opposing it, so I’ll skip that here. I’m interested in a couple of other things. One is the possibility that bond opponents might try to bargain their way towards supporting it, or at least not actively opposing it. I don’t know who might organize such an effort (if indeed one exists; I’m going way out on a limb here), I have no idea what they might ask for – I think we can agree that “Mike Miles is given a one-way bus ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska” is not on the table – and I have no clue who might be empowered to grant them any of their wishes. I mean, other than that, it makes sense to try, because what have you got to lose? Like I said, I’m sure I’m reading way too much into a sentence that isn’t even Jackie Anderson’s own words, but it’s my blog and I’ll engage in a flight of fancy if I want to.

Second, I wonder how many times that one Kinder Institute poll, taken before the bond was authorized, will be cited as a factual level of support for it going forward. HISD bonds have done quite well in the recent past – more on that in a moment – and under normal circumstances I’d expect this one to pass easily. These are not normal circumstances. We should be clear about that.

How popular have HISD bond issuances been? Here are the results from the last four such elections:


1998: 142,233 For, 55,155 Against, 72.1% For
2002: 133,454 For, 67,677 Against, 63.4% For
2007:  43,657 For, 41,631 Against, 51.2% For
2012: 217,319 For, 97,787 Against, 69.0% For

Note the four-to-five year gap in between them before now. The lack of any bond issuance since 2012 is very much an anomaly, and is a big part of the reason why this one is as needed as it is.

As for the four elections, there were three easy wins, all in relatively high turnout environments thanks to the year in which they occurred. The outlier was the one that was controversial at the time, for reasons I don’t care to detail in this post. Go peruse my Election 2007 archives – there was precious little happening on the ballot that year – and see for yourself. (Fun fact, one of the main opponents of that bond was then-State Rep. Sylvester Turner.) That Kinder poll may be meaningless, but 69% support is not out of line with historic precedent. The question is whether this year’s referendum is anything like the ones of the past. I say an emphatic No to that, but that doesn’t mean the result will be any different.

One more thing to consider, via Campos:

I have yet to see any organized pro-bond campaign activity or anti-bond campaign activity. I assume the pro-bond forces will have the funds to conduct a campaign. I wonder if the anti-bond folks will have funds.

It’s a little early for that, but there will be a pro-bond campaign. There always is. If those who oppose the bond are truly serious about it, they will raise money, form a PAC and a campaign, and mount a real effort to defeat it. That remains to be seen.

Posted in Election 2024, School days | Tagged Board of Managers, bond referendum, bonds, Election 1998, Election 2002, Election 2007, Election 2012, Election 2024, HFT, HISD, Houston, Jackie Anderson, Mike Miles, New Education System, polls, schools, Sylvester Turner, Texas Education Agency | 4 Comments

Future doctor shortage update

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Still going in a worrying direction.

According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, state fights over abortion access have created plenty of uncertainty for pregnant patients and their doctors. But that uncertainty has also bled into the world of medical education, forcing some new doctors to factor state abortion laws into their decisions about where to begin their careers.

Fourteen states, primarily in the Midwest and South, have banned nearly all abortions. The new analysis by the AAMC — a preliminary copy of which was exclusively reviewed by KFF Health News before its public release — found that the number of applicants to residency programs in states with near-total abortion bans declined by 4.2%, compared with a 0.6% drop in states where abortion remains legal.

Notably, the AAMC’s findings illuminate the broader problems abortion bans can create for a state’s medical community, particularly in an era of provider shortages: The organization tracked a larger decrease in interest in residencies in states with abortion restrictions not only among those in specialties most likely to treat pregnant patients, like OB-GYNs and emergency room doctors, but also among aspiring doctors in other specialties.

“It should be concerning for states with severe restrictions on reproductive rights that so many new physicians — across specialties — are choosing to apply to other states for training instead,” wrote Atul Grover, executive director of the AAMC’s Research and Action Institute.

The AAMC analysis found the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs in abortion ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase in states where abortion remains legal. For internal medicine, the drop observed in abortion ban states was over five times as much as in states where abortion is legal.

In its analysis, the AAMC said an ongoing decline in interest in ban states among new doctors ultimately “may negatively affect access to care in those states.”

Jack Resneck Jr., immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said the data demonstrates yet another consequence of the post-Roe v. Wade era.

The AAMC analysis notes that even in states with abortion bans, residency programs are filling their positions — mostly because there are more graduating medical students in the U.S. and abroad than there are residency slots.

Still, Resneck said, “we’re extraordinarily worried.” For example, physicians without adequate abortion training may not be able to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or potential complications such as infection or hemorrhaging that could stem from pregnancy loss.

See here, here, here, and here for more. I recommend you go look at the linked article, because you can search by state and by specialty. It’s not just OB/GYNs who are not coming to Texas, pediatrics and other specialties are also falling behind. This is a slow-burn problem, one that may not become acute for a generation, when many of the current villains will have shuffled off the stage, but it’s coming, and if nothing changes it’s going to get bad. It already is bad for poorer patients and people in rural areas. It’ll catch up to us affluent city folks soon enough. Don’t say we weren’t warned.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged abortion, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Medical Association, Association of American Medical Colleges, Kaiser Family Foundation, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege | 1 Comment

Texas blog roundup for the week of July 1

Posted on July 3, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes everyone’s dogs a safe and quiet Fourth as it brings you this week’s roundup.

Continue reading →

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

SCOTUS keeps Texas’ stupid social media censorship law blocked

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

The US Supreme Court did an awful lot of Very Bad Things this past week. You don’t need me to get into that, the entire Internet is screaming about it, with much justification. They also did at least one not so bad thing, and that was this.

The U.S. Supreme Court sent the legal challenge to a Texas social media law back to a lower court, sidestepping a landmark ruling for now.

The legal battle centers on Texas’ law preventing large social media companies from censoring users’ content based on their political viewpoints.

On Monday, the Court said the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had not properly analyzed the full scope of the legal challenge and redirected the case back to the lower court for relitigation. The Supreme Court sent a similar Florida case back to the Eleventh Circuit. Both states’ laws will remain blocked while the challenge continues.

Writing for the majority, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said neither court had fully considered how far the Florida and Texas laws could reach.

“The question in such a case is whether a law’s unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones,” Kagan wrote. “To make that judgment, a court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry.”

Texas’ 2021 law, called House Bill 20, was championed by Republican state leaders in an effort to combat a perceived anti-conservative bias on social media platforms — a sentiment further spurred by social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, suspending former president Donald Trump from their platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.

The suit was filed by NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association who argued that social media have a First Amendment right to manage the content on their platforms and select the types of speech they deem appropriate — similar to curated publishing platforms like newspapers. And tech companies say that allowing government control over their content could lead to a surge of misinformation, which would be detrimental to users.

In a Monday morning statement, CCIA President Matt Schruers said he was pleased that the court seemed to recognize the First Amendment challenges in Texas and Florida’s social media laws.

“We are encouraged that a majority of the Court has made clear that the government cannot tilt public debate in its favored direction,” the statement said. “There is nothing more Orwellian than government attempting to dictate what speech should be carried, whether it is a newspaper or a social media site.”

See here for the previous update. I’ll leave it to Rick Hasen to explain what this means.

As I first explained at Slate back in February, Moody concerns a pair of laws, one from Florida and one from Texas, that regulate different aspects of social media. Among the most important provisions in each of the laws is a limit on content moderation. The state laws differ in their particulars, but both were motivated by the removal of Donald Trump from major social media platforms after the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and a general complaint that the platforms were unfairly “censoring” conservative voices on their platforms. A coalition of internet companies, NetChoice, challenged the laws claiming they violated the First Amendment. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit put key parts of the Florida law on hold but the 5th Circuit allowed Texas’ law to go forward pending further proceedings—an action the Supreme Court reversed as it considered these issues.

In Monday’s opinion in Moody, the Supreme Court was unanimous in holding that the way that NetChoice litigated its cases was not proper. It had brought a “facial” challenge to the law under the First Amendment, which essentially requires showing that in almost any way that the state might try to enforce its law, doing so would be unconstitutional. The justices agreed that these laws were very complex and the issues were not fully developed. As Justice Elena Kagan explained for the majority, the cases were litigated as if it was just about whether Facebook could curate its news feed. But it was not clear how this law might apply to Gmail, or Etsy, or Venmo. The case is going back for better legal and factual development to both courts.

That’s where the agreement among the justices ended. Speaking for herself, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Sonia Sotomayor, Kagan gave guidance on where the 5th Circuit went wrong in its First Amendment analysis in considering the constitutionality of the Texas content moderation decisions. None of this was necessary for the decision (in legal parlance, it was “dicta”), but the court addressed the issue because “[i]f we said nothing about those views, the court presumably would repeat them when it next considers NetChoice’s challenge.” The other justices would not have reached the First Amendment merits, although Alito expressed some serious reservations about the analysis.

Kagan’s guidance relied heavily on a 1974 case, Miami Herald v. Tornillo, in which the court held unconstitutional a Florida law that required newspapers to print the reply of someone who had been criticized in the newspaper. The court held that private actors like newspapers have every right under the First Amendment to include or exclude content as they see fit.

To Kagan, social media companies in moderating content were just like newspapers. She said that curating content is expressive activity protected by the First Amendment and that includes the decision to exclude content and that this principle is true even if most content is allowed and just a little bit is excluded. Further, when it comes to laws regulating speech, “the government cannot get its way just by asserting an interest in improving, or better balancing, the marketplace of ideas.” Were the rule otherwise, Kagan asserted, the platforms could be forced by Texas law to carry bad content including posts that “support Nazi ideology; advocate for terrorism; espouse racism, Islamophobia, or anti-Semitism; glorify rape or other gender-based violence; encourage teenage suicide and self-injury; discourage the use of vaccines; advise phony treatments for diseases; [and] advance false claims of election fraud.”

I for one appreciate Justice Kagan’s list of horrors; I hope they left a particularly bad taste in Ken Paxton’s mouth. The main point here is that SCOTUS said that social media sites are more like newspapers than telephones, which is what Texas and Florida wanted. That doesn’t always turn out for the best, as the site formerly known as Twitter clearly shows, but on balance it’s the right answer. It doesn’t come close to making up for the raw sewage that SCOTUS spewed at us recently, but it’s what we have.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Computer and Communications Industry Association, Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Facebook, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Florida, Google, Greg Abbott, Instagram, lawsuit, NetChoice, SCOTUS, Texas, The Lege, Twitter, YouTube | 1 Comment

Are we really gonna take this show on the road?

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Color me skeptical.

The seismic changes seen by Monsiváis’ son and the 180,000-plus students throughout HISD this school year are the result of the most dramatic state takeover of a school district in American history, a grand experiment that could reshape public education across Texas and the nation.

In stunningly swift fashion, HISD’s state-appointed superintendent and school board have redesigned teaching and learning across the district, sought to tie teacher pay more closely to student test scores, boosted some teacher salaries by tens of thousands of dollars and slashed spending on many non-classroom expenses.

The changes in HISD rival some of the most significant shake-ups to a public school system ever, yet they’ve received minimal national media attention to date.

Still, district leaders, citing private conversations with researchers and superintendents, said education leaders throughout the U.S. are following the HISD efforts to see whether they may be worth replicating. Adding to the intrigue: Texas lawmakers have looked in recent years to policies used by HISD’s new superintendent, former Dallas Independent School District chief Mike Miles, as inspiration for statewide legislation.

“I think people are watching and waiting,” HISD Board Secretary Angela Lemond Flowers said. “We’re stepping out there big, and it’s important because we are a big district and we have lots of students that we need to make sure we’re serving better. Not in the next generation. Not in five years. Like, immediately.”

Miles, the chief architect of HISD’s new blueprint, has pointed to early successes — including strong improvement in state test scores this year — as evidence that his model works where others have failed. For decades, Black and Latino children in urban school districts like Houston have trailed well behind wealthier and white students in school.

Miles’ critics, however, have blasted his approach as an unproven, unwanted siege on the district orchestrated by Texas Republicans. They cite high teacher turnover headed into the next school year and long-term questions about the affordability of Miles’ plans as indicators the effort may be doomed.

Regardless of whether the HISD intervention becomes a shining success, a historic failure or something in between, it could help answer one of the most pressing questions in education: Can a large, urban public school district dramatically raise student achievement and shrink decades-old performance gaps, ultimately helping to close America’s class divide?

I think you know what my level of doubt is at this point, so I won’t belabor this. It occurs to me just how effing funny it is to see the solution that Miles has presented is basically “spend a bunch more money per student” – I mean, after so many years of being told that throwing money at the problem is not the right answer, even I almost missed the obvious point that Miles is throwing a ton of money at the problem. He’s doing it in an entirely unsustainable way, of course, because the state has been unwilling and unable to sustain public school budgets, which like everything else have been affected by cost increases. He’s also been singularly unwilling to name that problem, for fear of disturbing his overlords or something, I have no idea. But if one result of all this is that the Lege ponies up a shitload more money for school districts like HISD so they can all get the Full Mike Miles Experience, I’ll have to admit that this all had some value to it. And then I will promptly expire from lack of oxygen as I am convulsed in bitter laughter.

By the way, just curious here, has anyone else noticed that Miles has made his current budget work in part by shifting a bunch of money from the already-successful non-NES schools to the NES schools? If the key to the NES schools’ success is the increase in funding they have received, then doesn’t that foretell worse outcomes for those non-NES schools? Are we going to be happy if there’s a commensurate number of schools dropping from A and B ratings to C as there are schools moving up from D and F to C? I’ll leave the socialism jokes to someone whose brain isn’t already falling out of his ears.

Whether this turns into a sustainable experiment or not, we’ll need more than a year or two’s data to know. The story helpfully drops a Michelle Rhee reference for those of us old enough to remember the turn of the 2010s. And before we even get to next year’s STAAR results, we still have to ensure that HISD’s enrollment doesn’t drop by some double-digit percentage, as parents who have the means to not have to deal with Mike Miles’ bullshit hit the exits, and we have to ensure that enough teachers with something resembling a qualification show up to run the scripts. I sure hope we get something positive out of this mess, because it’s been a whole lot of chaos and disruption so far. But as I said up front, I remain skeptical.

Posted in School days | Tagged Board of Managers, HISD, HISD Board of Trustees, Houston, Michelle Rhee, Mike Miles, Mike Morath, New Education System, Placido Gomez, school finance, schools, STAAR, Sue Deigaard, Texas, Texas Education Agency, The Lege | 1 Comment

Whoosh!

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Okay, this is a new one.

Transportation planners have a new idea about how to take on congestion as Dallas-Fort Worth’s population grows: elevated autonomous cable cars that riders can hail on demand.

Five North Texas cities — Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Frisco and DeSoto — are vying to become the first in the U.S. to pilot the novel transportation system known as Whoosh. The system consists of electric vehicles that resemble conventional aerial gondolas but use autonomous technology to move along an elevated network of fixed cables and rails. The concept comes from Swyft Cities, a project that was born at Google but was spun out as an independent business aimed at innovating transit.

The company has been working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments to identify potential sites. Swyft Cities will choose which would be the best fit for the project’s first run.

[…]

Like buses, Whoosh vehicles would have predetermined stops on the ground, with the system initially covering about a three-mile radius — more stops could be added later. But unlike buses or trains, the on-demand nature means it would bypass all the existing stops to take riders directly to their designated one. Since it’s elevated, it also bypasses, rather than competing with, road traffic.

While each potential site has unique needs, Whoosh is a good fit for mid-density areas like the edges of a downtown — places that lack good last-mile transit solutions.

“The core of downtown is probably pretty well served by other modes, but there’s a whole lot places outside of downtown Dallas and Fort Worth that doesn’t have good solutions,” said Jeral Poskey, Swyft Cities CEO.

Swyft Cities chose North Texas because of an NCTCOG program that looks to attract new transit technology to the region and connect them with local governments. Staff at the transportation planning agency vet the companies first, making sure they offer potential solutions to some of DFW’s transportation challenges.

While cost depends on the specifications of each system, the buildout of a Whoosh system should take around $30–$50 million. Cities are in the process of applying for funding grants. Those should come to fruition around this time next year, along with system plans.

You can look at the Swyft Cities webpage for a bunch of whiz-bang pictures and whatnot. I couldn’t find any news stories about other locations that may be looking to kick the tires (as it were) on these things, so I can’t give you much in terms of how hot this is. It looks cool, but it also looks like a lot of infrastructure that I have a hard time believing would come in at that price tag. You’d also need some awfully wide sidewalks or other available surface-level space to put up those gondolas. Probably not a surprise that Houston is not on that short list for possible beta testers, and that’s without taking how utterly non–visionary our current Metro Board is. I have no idea if this is the actual Next Big Thing or a bunch of hyperloop-level nonsense, but at least it’s something other than building more road lanes. I’ll buy the hope, at least for now.

Posted in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Tagged Arlington, cable cars, Dallas, DeSoto, Frisco, North Central Texas Council of Governments, Plano, Swyft Cities, Texas, Whoosh | 3 Comments

Lawsuit filed over Angleton ISD at large districts

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Add this one to the list.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday alleges that Angleton ISD is violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by denying fair representation to Hispanic voters by using an at-large system to elect all of its trustees.

Brewer Storefront, the advocacy arm of Dallas-based Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, filed the lawsuit on behalf of plaintiff Laura Jaso, claiming the district “denies Hispanic voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choosing to represent their communities.” Brewer Storefront brought similar lawsuits against several school districts, most recently against Humble ISD last month.

The 6,885-student district in Brazoria County currently uses an at-large method to elect school board members, rather than dividing the district into geographic sections. As a solution, the lawsuit suggests Angleton ISD switch to a system that would elect trustees from one or more properly apportioned single-member electoral districts that could be drawn in which the Hispanic Citizen Voting Age Population would constitute a majority of eligible voters.

The lawsuit points to a lack of diversity among Angleton ISD’s school board and teachers and alleges that, based on the district’s demographics, there should be at least one Hispanic board member. Students of color comprise 67% of the district’s student body, and about 52% of those are Hispanic.

Jaso, a Mexican American, ran for Position 6 on the AISD Board of Trustees in May 2021, but lost to Heather Brewer, a white candidate.

“Hispanic candidates who run for the Board are disadvantaged due to the at-large voting system, which illegally dilutes the votes of ethnic minorities,” the lawsuit reads. “Hispanic children, who are the majority of AISD students, are failed by this system and the Board.”

The lawsuit cites also “an alarming achievement gap” within Angleton ISD as only 46% of Hispanic students, 39% of African American students and 40% of English learners meeting grade level across all subjects and grades for the 2022-23 school year compared to 60% of their white counterparts.

“Unfortunately, the Board’s fiscal and policy decisions have resulted in a significant performance gap between white and minority students,” the lawsuit reads.

Other similar lawsuits involve Spring Branch, Katy, and Humble ISDs. Many other area ISDs have At Large only members, with similar issues of representation. All of those lawsuits, as well as the one against Houston City Council are ongoing, and all of them are dependent on the Voting Rights Act in a way that may be undercut by SCOTUS at any time. I’ll keep an eye on it.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Angleton ISD, lawsuit, SCOTUS, single member districts, Texas, Voting Rights Act | 2 Comments

Rep. Nehls defends himself against stolen valor charges

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

This whole thing is so weird.

Rep. Troy Nehls

Under fire for accusations of stolen valor, U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls is doubling down on defending his military record by blaming “the establishment” forces seeking to discredit him.

Nehls, R-Richmond, has been under intense scrutiny over his display of a combat service badge that the Army revoked and removed from his service record last year.

Nehls, who represents a large swath of suburbs southwest of Houston, released what he called a “final written comment” on the controversy Tuesday afternoon. Nehls did not dispute that his Combat Infantryman Badge (CIB) had been revoked by the Army, but offered no explanation for why he continued to wear it until as recently as this month.

The congressman instead accused his critics of using the military to undermine him for his hardline conservative views. Nehls is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus.

“Unfortunately for me, as an America First Patriot and an outspoken member of Congress, there are no lengths to which the establishment won’t go to discredit me, including my CIB, which I was awarded over 14 years ago,” Nehls said in his Tuesday statement. “Nothing more needs to be said.”

On Wednesday, Nehls had apparently stopped wearing the badge.

[…]

Nehls served in the Army from 1988 to 2008, first with the Wisconsin National Guard and then in the Army Reserve. During his two deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Nehls served in the civil affairs branch, the Army confirmed to the Washington outlet NOTUS. The Combat Infantryman Badge was apparently incorrectly awarded for his tour in Afghanistan in 2008.

Only infantrymen or Special Forces soldiers who engaged in active combat are eligible for the Combat Infantryman Badge.

In his Tuesday statement, Nehls appeared incredulous over the Army’s move to rescind his badge, even as he acknowledged that it occurred. Nehls previously argued in a letter to the Army’s human resources command that the division he had been a part of was indeed a combat unit.

See here for the background. I would just note that every person quoted in the original article that criticized Rep. Nehls for this was one of his Republican colleagues in Congress, including Rep. Wesley Hunt from the neighboring CD38. I suppose that means they’re all “the establishment”, but it makes me wonder if anyone in Congress likes Rep. Nehls. Maybe that should be more of a concern for him. The Chron has more.

Posted in Show Business for Ugly People | Tagged CD22, Congress, Defense Department, Election 2024, Marquette Greene-Scott, Texas, Troy Nehls, Wesley Hunt | 2 Comments

When you’re hoping for a hurricane

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Doesn’t seem like a great position to be in.

South Texas was prepared for a deluge.

City officials distributed sandbags and planned road closures. Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster before Tropical Storm Alberto, which was projected to dump up to eight inches of rain in the Rio Grande Valley.

But by the time the storm passed, the four-county region in the southernmost part of Texas only saw about half that. The shortfall was good news for residents concerned with flooding. And yet, it was hardly enough to raise the level of water in two reservoirs that serve the millions of people along the Texas-Mexico border.

The levels at the Amistad International and Falcon International reservoirs remain near or at record lows. The lack of water threatens the region’s agricultural industry and residential users alike. Earlier this year, the last sugar mill in Texas announced its closure after 50 years due to water scarcity and local agriculture leaders worry citrus could be next.

The Falcon reservoir is at approximately 11%. The reservoir saw a slight uptick from a record low of 8.8% on May 28 partly thanks to the rains from Alberto. Meanwhile the Amistad Reservoir, which did not receive much rain, is at a record-breaking low of about 19% as of Monday morning, according to Barry Goldsmith, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Brownsville.

The low water reserves are partly due to the lack of water deliveries from Mexico that are required under a 1944 treaty between the two countries. Mexico is required to deliver water to the U.S. from six tributaries that feed into the Rio Grande. In exchange, the U.S. delivers water from the Colorado River to Mexico.

But Mexico’s own drought has led the country to fall behind on its deliveries, raising doubts about whether it will be able to release the 1,750,000 acre-feet of water it is required to by the end of the current five-year cycle which ends in October 2025.

Without water from Mexico, farmers are hoping for an especially active hurricane season and there is reason to be hopeful.

We’ve heard plenty about this year’s hurricane season, but that’s the first time I’ve seen the word “hopeful” attached to it. I get it, they need a lot of water, and these storms deliver exactly that. Still feels weird to be expressing it like this, especially given how big Hurricane Beryl has become already. I hope they can get what they need without it causing too much collateral damage. In the meantime, having an actual response to the current and future climate conditions would also be nice.

Posted in The great state of Texas | Tagged climate change, Colorado River, drought, Hurricane Beryl, hurricanes, Mexico, Rio Grande, Texas, water | 2 Comments

Weekend link dump for June 30

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

A Spaceballs sequel is in the works.

“How Josh Marshall has sustained Talking Points Memo amid the wreckage of modern journalism”.

“Young basketball player Olivier Rioux is so tall that he’s setting records simply by continuing his education. The 18-year-old Montreal native recently graduated from high school and has committed to Florida. The school lists his height at a mind-blowing 7-foot-9. That would make him the tallest college basketball player in history.”

“Maybe states should require that copies of the 10 Commandments be posted in every room of every church? That’s what conservative white-/Christian-nationalist MAGA evangelicals seem to favor as the solution to moral failures anywhere else in society.”

“Yet Restorative Reproductive Medicine isn’t the politically neutral medical field that the measure’s champions claim. Rather, it’s the latest rebranding of an IVF “alternative” by religious groups who consider the process of IVF, which can include the destruction of unused embryos, to be a form of abortion.”

“After nearly a quarter century, The Jim Henson Company is selling off its historic studio lot in Los Angeles”. Their main headquarters in New York is unaffected. Mark Evanier has more on the interesting history of that lot.

“In a survey of Americans conducted days before the Dobbs decision was leaked, almost two-thirds of Americans agreed churches and religious organizations have a responsibility to increase support for women who have unwanted pregnancies if their state restricts access to abortion. According to those who attend, the majority of Protestant churches in the U.S. are not supporting a pregnancy resource center that exists either separately or as part of their church.”

Not being able to find a job as a canary breeder will no longer stop you from being able to get disability benefits.

“Overturning Roe Didn’t Just Cut Off Access. It Sabotaged Science, Too.”

You can get your Alex Trebek stamps now.

“The whole comment and analogy are actually a good window into just how what we might call electoral authoritarianism works. It is corrupt both in the civic sense and the venal sense. With Trump specifically, it’s tied to the acquisition and hold on power but also … let’s be honest, he wants a cut. He wants the money. It’s not just about punishing and rewarding.”

“It’s funny. It seems like the greatest amount of enthusiasm for Charlotte to have Major League Baseball is everywhere but Charlotte. For people who have been here a long time, Charlotte has been perpetually ‘five years away from Major League Baseball’ going all the way back to the ’90s, maybe even farther.”

“President Joe Biden issued a blanket pardon on Wednesday morning to LGBTQI+ service members removed from the military because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

RIP, Jewel Brown, Houston blues and jazz singer who performed with Louis Armstrong.

RIP, Bill Cobbs, veteran character actor known for The Hudsucker Proxy, The Bodyguard, Night at the Museum, and more.

“A jury in U.S. District Court ordered the NFL to pay more than $4.7 billion in damages Thursday after ruling that the league violated antitrust laws in distributing out-of-market Sunday afternoon games on a premium subscription service.”

Little whinging fuckers are as little whinging fuckers do.

RIP, Martin Mull, character actor known for Roseanne, Arrested Development, Clue, and many other roles.

Posted in Blog stuff | Tagged linkdump | 1 Comment

Anti-gay Waco JP gets her lawsuit reinstated

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Boy, the State Supreme Court sure had a banner day on Friday.

The state’s highest court ruled Friday that a Waco judge who had refused to officiate same-sex marriages had a right to sue the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for reprimanding her.

Justice Dianne Hensley had refused to officiate same-sex weddings based on her religious views, prompting the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to issue a public warning against her declaring she could not perform her role as judge impartially. Hensley then sued the commission on First Amendment grounds, eventually appealing a lower court’s decision to the Texas Supreme Court. In an 8-1 decision Friday, the court granted Hensley standing to sue but did not weigh in on whether she had indeed violated judicial codes of impartiality.

Hensley was elected Justice of the Peace in McLennan County in 2014, one year before the Supreme Court ruled that institutions could no longer refuse the right for same-sex couples to marry. When gay marriage became legal in Texas in 2015, Hensley initially refused to officiate weddings altogether. Eventually, she began offering wedding services to heterosexual couples again and said she would refer same-sex couples to other judges in the area willing to perform the service.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct argued that Hensley’s discriminatory practices meant she could not rule on same-sex issues or defendants fairly. With the help of conservative law group America First Legal, Hensley sued the commission on grounds that the warning violated her religious freedoms, but a lower court sided against her.

The court’s opinion issued by Chief Justice Nathan Hecht argued that because officiating weddings is not one of Hensley’s required duties as justice of the peace, how she chooses to perform that duty is not necessarily a reflection of how she carries out her responsibilities on the stand. Justice Jimmy Blacklock filed a concurring opinion arguing that the lower court should have never ruled against Hensley in the first place, since no same-sex couple had complained about her separate-but-equal practices.

See here for the previous update. As noted, the Court’s opinion did not address the merits of Hensley’s claim, just that she had the standing to pursue it in court at this time. The lone dissenter was again Justice Debra Lehrmann, and while her dissent was on technical legal grounds, it’s worth quoting from so you can understand a little better the question the Court actually decided.

In sum, the judge could and should have engaged in the procedure provided by the Government Code for obtaining judicial review of the
public warning, as nothing precluded her from bringing affirmative claims under TRFRA and the UDJA after exhausting that procedure. See CPS Energy, 671 S.W.3d at 620. Because she did not, the district court lacked jurisdiction and appropriately dismissed this suit.
Chaparral Energy, 546 S.W.3d at 138 (“When an agency has exclusive jurisdiction, courts lack jurisdiction until the party has exhausted all
administrative remedies before the agency.”).

I express no opinion on the merits of the judge’s TRFRA claims.4 I would hold only that she failed to exhaust her administrative remedies
before filing this suit, thereby depriving the district court of jurisdiction. Because the Court holds that exhaustion was not required, I respectfully dissent.

Basically, the lower courts said that since Hensley had an administrative remedy available to her, she needed to go through that first before she could sue. SCOTx said nah, she can sue now, Justice Lehrmann disagreed. Now the appeals court will hear the case and address the merits claim. That will be fun. KERA has more.

Posted in Legal matters | Tagged Dianne Hensley, gay marriage, gay rights, Justice of the Peace, lawsuit, Liberty Institute, McClennan County, SCOTUS, State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Supreme Court, Texas, Third Court of Appeals, Travis County | Comments Off

Reps. Fletcher and Hunt push flood tunnel study

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Charles Kuffner

Good teamwork.

Japanese flood tunnel

After six years of delays, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is under new bipartisan pressure to complete the study of a massive underground tunnel system in Houston that could prevent catastrophic flooding like what happened during Hurricane Harvey.

U.S. Reps. Wesley Hunt and Lizzie Fletcher — once political rivals who ran against each other in 2020 — have joined forces and inserted language into pending federal legislation that demands the Army Corps speed up a long overdue review of the project and submit it to Congress by the end 2025.

“The Corps, basically, they’ve been dragging their feet a little bit on it,” Hunt, a Republican in his first term, said of what has been called the Buffalo Bayou and Tributaries Resiliency Study.

Hunt said he and Fletcher, a Democrat, have met with Army Corps officials and written numerous letters in support of the study but feel they need to push the bureaucracy more for the long-talked-about project that has broad community support.

In the past, Army Corps officials have raised concerns about the price tag, which could be as much as $12 billion, and have worried about the project’s effectiveness. In an earlier preliminary report released in 2020, they warned that the diverted water from a tunnel system would be potentially pushed to areas that are also already at flood stages.

The Army Corps has outlined other alternative projects to address flooding, like digging Buffalo Bayou wider and deeper or building a third dam and reservoir on the Katy Prairie.

But Hunt worries that those aren’t enough to protect one of the biggest and most important cities in America from another flooding catastrophe. He said the community wants a bolder project that will have a greater impact in protecting homes and businesses.

See here and here for my most recent posts on the topic of flood tunnels; there are more links in the second article if you want further reading. I don’t know if this is the best solution or not. It has promise, but I’m no expert. What I worry about is how long it takes for this stuff to get done. I get it; these are extremely complex situations, with all kinds of potential ramifications for large swaths of land and millions of people. You don’t want to rush these things. But at some point you need to make a choice and start building, because the flooding threat is not getting any smaller. We really don’t want to find ourselves after another massive storm saying “well, if we’d gotten that project done by now it really would have made a difference”. Let’s pick a lane and get moving.

Posted in Elsewhere in Houston | Tagged Addicks Reservoir, Army Corps of Engineers, Barker Reservoir, Buffalo Bayou, climate change, Congress, flood tunnels, flooding, Harris County, Harris County Flood Control District, Houston, Houston Ship Channel, Hurricane Harvey, Ike Dike, Lizzie FLetcher, Texas, Wesley Hunt | Comments Off

Calendar

Categories

Archives

My linkage

Polling Texas 2020

Polling Texas 2018

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities

Categories

Archives

Polling Texas 2016

Polling Texas 2014

Polling Texas 2012

My Linkage

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Tags

Blogroll

Utilities