Category Archives: Texas News

A Texan Should be Speaker

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Considering the outsize influence Texas has in the current GOP domination of Congress, it only makes sense that a Texan should be Speaker of the House.  And at least three Texas Representatives seem willing to step forward if Paul Ryan (now allegedly too liberal – if you can believe that – to be Speaker) decides to decline to run.  The Texas Tribune indicates that Bill Flores (TP-Bryan), Michael McCaul (R-Gerrymanderland), and Mike Conaway (TP-Midland) are all interested in the job.  All would be midgets following in the Texas-sized footsteps of Congressional giants and former Texas Speakers Sam Rayburn, John Nance Garner and Jim Wright, but at least they would be Texas midgets.

 U.S. Rep. Bill Flores, R-Bryan, said Monday he intends to seek the gavel of the United States House of Representatives if his colleague, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, doesn’t.

Though GOP lawmakers have been urging Ryan to run as a consensus candidate, Flores said in an interview with The Texas Tribune that he spoke to Ryan on Sunday.

“I don’t want to share private conversations, but he was still a ‘no’ as of yesterday when I spoke to him,” Flores said. 

If Flores is to succeed, he will need the 25-member Texas House delegation behind him. That’s no certainty yet, given  possible home state competition. U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Midland, has said he will consider running for speaker if Ryan opts against a run. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul is also mulling a run, a source close to him confirmed. 

Where we are now is, what we’ve agreed is that we’re going to hold our powder dry,” Flores said of his fellow Texans. “And then we’ll see which Texan gets the most traction, and the thinking is today that we’ll coalesce around one Texan eventually.” 

The race is complicated by the Gang of Forty ultra-right wingers who are making outsized demands as a condition of support for any candidate for Speaker.  So right now we have about 10% of the Congress who represent the most far-right lunatic fringe of what used to be a mainstream political party controlling who will hold the third most powerful position in American government.  If Ryan bails, Flores might just be the man.  First, he apparently doesn’t understand the meaning of a private conversation which positions him well to betray anyone who strays from the Tea Party line.  And second, he is apparently willing to kowtow to the Gang of Forty demands of ideological purity at the expense of actually governing.

This Has Bomb Written All Over It

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Former State Senator and miserably failed gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis is developing a TV show based on her life story.  Really?  We didn’t get enough of that in 2014?  If Red wants to watch a bad TV show, he’ll stick to reruns of Reba or any of the upcoming GOP debates. The Dallas Morning News has more on this – oh, words just fail Red every now and then.  Why won’t politicians just go away when the voters tell them to?

Former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis confirmed Thursday night she is working on a pilot for NBC.  She said the series, about a female senator who goes to work for a law firm after losing the governor’s race, is loosely based on her life.

“It is loosely based on my personal experience,” Davis said Thursday night. “It is not an autobiographical tale.”

Davis cautioned the pilot was still in development and NBC was a “long way” from a decision about the series. She said she did not know yet who would play the character based on her.

Red hopes a “long way” means never.  But if it doesn’t, Jenna Elfman is the obvious choice.

Texas Police Shooting Database Now Available

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The Texas Attorney General’s Office is developing a basic database that will allow the public to track all police shootings in Texas.  According to the OAG:

The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) will be adopting and publishing reporting forms for Officer-Involved Shooting Incidents, as required by H.B. 1036, 85th Leg., R.S. (2015), which became effective September 1, 2015.  Until the OAG has adopted and published a final version of the form, and rules governing its completion and submission, all law enforcement agencies should begin using this interim form in accordance with the instructions contained therein.

The interim form posted by the AG is fairly bare bones and will likely be revised to provide more information.  So far there are about a dozen filed reports from various police departments across the state.  There is not a compilation of the reports, but someone will certain began using these reports to analyze and track what is actually happening when Texas peace officers shoot someone.

Red supports any efforts to reduce police shootings and the shooting of police officers.  But it seems clear which is the bigger problem right now.  According to The Guardian which is tracking all States, 891 people have been killed in the U.S. by police this year.  Contrast that to Great Britain where there have been no fatal police shootings since 2012, or Germany where there have been eight police killings over the past two years.  Even Canada, a country with no aversion to firearms, had a total of 12 police shootings between 1999 and 2009.  Of course, these numbers would have to be adjusted for population, but even so the U.S. is not just an outlier it is a complete aberration from the rest of the democratic industrialized world.

Texans Take Note – It’s Now Okay to Damage, Mutilate, Deface and Burn Your Flags

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The often obscure but powerful Texas Court of Criminal Appeals handed down its decision in State v. Johnson holding that Tex. Penal Code 42.11(a) is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The Texas statute made it a crime to damage, mutilate, deface or burn a flag and was passed in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision 26 years ago that found Texas’ previous flag desecration statute to be similarly unconstitutional. Terence Johnson was prosecuted for violation of the statute when grabbed a flag from a storefront and threw it into the street.  There was no evidence that the act was politically motivated as Johnson claimed he did it because he was mad.  The Court looked beyond motivation and held that the statute was unconstitutional on its face because it criminalized expressive activity that is protected as free speech under the First Amendment.  The decision is a victory for free speech advocates.  As the flag is a hot button issue for the right, expect a host of bloviators who know nothing about constitutional law taking aim at the Court for protecting the free speech rights of Texas citizens. And while Red has to except former Supreme Court Clerk and Sen. Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) from those who know nothing about constitutional law, Red would be shocked if he is not leading the charge.

Bastrop Chickens Out?

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Red was unaware that Bastrop had a free-range chicken sanctuary.  But the formerly bucolic tolerance of the fearless fowl is waning as residents complain of chicken overpopulation, noise and chicken waste.  Residents of Bastrop having led the charge against Jade Helm 15, now have something real to complain about.  Red has observed that the greatest myth about roosters is that they crow at dawn.  They crow all the damn time. The Wall Street Journal reports on chicken controversy.

A flock of feral chickens has been protected by law in Bastrop since 2009, given free rein to roam on a stretch of a paved road named Farm Street.

On a recent afternoon, cars slowed as roosters and hens crowed and clucked and strutted across the street, which is lined with bright yellow signs declaring, “Slow: Farm Street Historic Chicken Sanctuary.”

The flock is believed to date back to bygone farms in this town of 7,856 people some 30 miles southeast of Austin. The birds are beloved by the neighborhood, and when the city attempted to round them up, Farm Street residents pushed for sanctuary status.

Now, however, some in Bastrop are squawking. The birds are proliferating and migrating to other parts of town, where their all-night crowing and indiscriminate release of avian feculence isn’t considered charming.

Mayor Ken Kesselus has a message for the chickens who wander beyond the Farm Street sanctuary: You’re fair game.

A “bad rooster” responsible for flower-bed scratching and other offenses personally spurred the mayor to action last December.

“I organized a posse,” says Mr. Kesselus, a 68-year-old retired Episcopal preacher, “but we didn’t have any luck.”

The problem was that it was a “senior posse,” he says, and the bird easily flummoxed the older men for hours with his ability to scamper and fly. Undeterred, Mr. Kesselus returned the following day with some neighborhood teens and a fishing net. It took some effort, but they got their prey, he crows.

City council member Kay Garcia McAnally, author of the chicken ordinance, says the birds shouldn’t be blamed for straying from Farm Street.

“Unfortunately, they can’t read the signs,” she says.

Photo from www.365bastrop.com

Why Vote?

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Seem like your vote just doesn’t matter anymore? You may be right.  Ross Ramsey of the Texas Tribune explains how your state representatives and senators have rigged the system to protect incumbency and secure themselves the benefits of office at the expense of any real electoral choice.  The chances of a Texas incumbent actually losing his or her office to a candidate of the opposing party are practically nil.  The only possible challenges are in the primaries which tend to skew further right or left and leave us represented by many politicians who cater to the fringe of their parties.  Look at the map above which shows how Texas Republicans chewed up Austin to prevent it from electing more than one Democrat from the bastion of Texas liberalism.

Not counting their U.S. senators, Texans elect 217 federal and state legislators, and all but 15 of those seats will be on the ballot next year.

Voters will dump some people. Other officeholders will hang it up — some already have. This, however, you can take to the bank no matter how many of the faces change: fewer than a dozen of those 217 positions will see a change of party. Probably not even that many. The maps are rigged to favor the parties that are in power in each district.

Start with the congressional maps. In the average competitive statewide race in Texas in the last two presidential years — 2008 and 2012 — the Republican candidate beat the Democratic candidate by 11.7 percentage points. The margins in congressional districts range from a Democratic high of 58.1 points to a Republican high of 52.4 percent. It’s safe to say that Dallas’ Eddie Bernice Johnson and Clarendon’s Mac Thornberry don’t have anything to worry about in next November’s elections. Their primaries could always be interesting, but you’re not going to beat either of them with a candidate from the opposing party.

The Slaves Were Just Workers Without Choice of Employer, Salary or Freedom

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Think Progress reports on the utter stupidity that has come from Texas’ control on textbook content.  Textbook publishers must kowtow to the ultra-right Texas Board of Education in crafting textbooks because Texas is a huge market.

A Texas mother spoke out against part of McGraw-Hill’s textbook, “World Geography,” when she noticed that the language erased slavery by calling slaves “workers” and including them in the section “Patterns of Immigration.” One example of the text:

The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

Roni Dean-Burren, who taught English for more than a decade and is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Houston, pointed out that the language of “worker” suggests compensation and “immigration” suggests that people weren’t kidnapped and brought to North America against their will. She first learned about the textbook section when her son sent her a photo of the text.

The real political correctness is now coming from the right-wing.  We can’t really mention the inconvenient fact that much of the early U.S. economy was built on slave labor.

Dope Smokers Get Free Pass in West Texas

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Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West is refusing to take any more marijuana bust cases originating from the Sierra Blanca Border Patrol checkpoint on I-10 in west Texas.  West’s refusal has nothing to do with politics, ideology, Texas law, or the moving trend towards legalization of marijuana.  Rather, West is facing budgetary restraints that make taking the 20 to 30 busts a day an intolerable burden and also take up jail space that the County otherwise rents out for $45 a day.  NPR has the straight dope.

A federal inspection station on Interstate 10 in the West Texas desert earned the nickname “checkpoint of the stars” for all the entertainers who kept getting busted there. In the past six years, Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg, Nelly and Fiona Apple were all arrested for possession of marijuana.

These days, though, after a decision by a local lawman, everyone from personal pot smokers to medium-size marijuana traffickers can avoid jail.

The Sierra Blanca Border Patrol checkpoint was once the bane of pot smokers driving from Los Angeles to Texas. Green-suited federal agents and their uncanny drug dogs would make 20 to 30 busts a day.

But for the past year, Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West has refused to take any more “checkpoint cases,” even those involving commercial quantities of marijuana worth thousands of dollars.

“I don’t have a problem whatsoever going out there and arresting them,” West says. “I just have a problem making my local taxpayers foot the bill for America’s problem. I’m not gonna do the federal government’s job.”

The checkpoint dispute is not about justice, it’s about money. The sheriff says there were so many checkpoint cases they occupied two of his full-time deputies and a fourth of the space in his county jail. This was OK as long as he was getting federal criminal justice grants, but those have dried up.

“When I occupy one of those beds it takes away from a paying customer back there,” the sheriff says.

His jail is a moneymaker. Like a lot of poor Texas counties, Hudspeth built an oversize jail so it can rent out excess space to other counties at $45 a night per prisoner.

The Most Exciting City in Texas

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Is . . . drumroll please . . . COLLEGE STATION?

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that according to Gogobot – a “social media travel planning site”, College Station is the most exciting city in Texas.  Red always knew that he could trust social media to steer him in the right direction.   Red’s favorite – Fort Worth – finished a distant 23rd behind such cultural hotbeds as Beaumont and Killeen.  That pleasure-dome on the Brazos known to the world as Waco comes in third.  Here’s the Top Ten:

1. College Station

2. Austin

3. Waco

4. Amarillo

5. Abilene

6. Houston

7. Denton

8. Beaumont

9. Dallas

10. San Antonio

So round up the wife and kids, load up the SUV and head for a fabulous weekend in exciting downtown College Station – and let Red know if you can find it.

Cruz Lines up Texas Tea Party Support – Big Whoop!

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The Houston Chronicle reports that Sen. Ted Cruz (TP-Texas) has lined up the support of numerous Tea Party denizens of the Texas Legislature.  Red is not sure how that is going to help him in Iowa where a decent showing is surely critical.  Cruz is currently staggering around in sixth place in most national polls, but ranges anywhere from third to sixth in Iowa.  Still, Red has to admit that even sixth place is an impressive feat for a politician that has NOT ACCOMPLISHED A SINGLE THING in his not quite TWO YEARS in actual elective office.  The Canadian-born Cruz talks a good game to his rabid base of right wing loonies, but he has yet to show much broader appeal.  Maybe that day will come now that Cruz has lined up the craziest of the inmates of the Texas Legislative Asylum.  With Tea Party favorites like Konni Burton, Matt Krause and Doug Miller backing him, Cruz is sure to rocket to the top.

But Cruz can’t match the endorsement chops of Ben Carson.  Carson, who looks more and more clueless with each passing minute, has snagged the coveted endorsements of Kid Rock, Roger McGuinn, Richard Petty and Mickey Rourke.  If that isn’t a lineup sure to sway the national consensus in Ben’s direction, Red doesn’t know what is.