Texas progressives look toward election day

Off the Kuff rounded up all his interviews and Q&As for the primary cycle, including the late-breaking interview with Rep. Sylvia Garcia in CD29.

SocraticGadfly had a Texas environmental news roundup.

Texas could be the country's largest data center state by 2030. Have fun with all that Proposition 4 water supply that's supposed to flow in abundance.

A federal judge gave student sexual orientation clubs in Houston, Katy and Plano ISDs legal protection, at least for now.

J.W. Wingate broke the color line in minor-league baseball in Texas. Texas Monthly takes a deep dive. Showing how pervasive the reach of minor-league baseball was back then? He played for a team in Lamesa.

Colt McCoy, Strangeabbott's new flunky on the Higher Education Coordinating Board, talked out of his "I'm not up to speed yet ass" about DEI and other things. Michael Hardy could have pushed him more. 

Neil at Houston Democracy Project posted about upcoming protest in Conroe regarding conditions at Texas ICE detention concentration camps, and of course ignores Leqaa Kordia. A local activist group & Harris County Democratic Club are co-organizers. Each day people realize while voting is essential, it won't be enough.

The Texas Signal shows how Austin is fighting homelessness with tiny houses.

The Barbed Wire provided a detailed Ken Paxton scandal timeline.

The Dallas Observer examines the North Texas World Cup host committee's draft plan for human rights issues.

Texas Public Opinion Research investigates the real ideological landscape of the Texas Democratic Senate primary.

So, what HAVE Tex-ass Republicans accomplished in 25 years?

At the end of a piece talking about how Tex-ass Democrats might actually miss Kenny Boy Paxton as state AG, as he profiles his four would-be GOP successors, CD Hooks rhetorically asks something that a former county commissioner in my county — a Republican, no less, told me several years ago on education.

He references the nutbar level of the four in a debate sponsored by the Republican Attorney Generals Association: 

Altogether, the debate painted Texas as a weak and collapsing place under imminent threat from about two dozen outside corrupting forces—Islam, gays, New York Jews, Somalians, the Chinese. Which tends to suggest a question that didn’t get asked. If everything the candidates said is true—if the Big D is being subjugated by the crescent moon—and all these things are the product of a quarter century of continuous, uninterrupted Republican rule, what possible reason could there be for conservatives to continue voting Republican?

Indeed. 

ICE is killing people in Texas, too, and yes, lying about it

ICE is killing people in Texas, both by bullets and by jailer thuggery. 

In the former case, ICE trotted out the Rachel Good claim, that Ruben Ray Martinez tried to run them over. I'll assume they're lying, as in that case, but without video here, it can't be proven.

In the latter, Geraldo Lunas Campos hit a George Floyd "I can't breathe," killing — and yes, it has been called homicide by a medical examiner. ICE has already lied twice about that, first with a made-up bullshit of "medical distress" then claiming it was suicide.

And Congresswoman Veronica Escobar suggests a prosecution loophole — this killing was by employees of a civilian contractor, so no sovereign immunity. 

In another case, ICE deported a 2-month-old baby that it sickened in ICE detention, along with its family. 

Neoliberal California climate change environmentalism in action

Shock me that the state governed by the former Mayor Pothole is doing toothless state carbon offsets by funding "renewable" natural gas plants in North Carolina, extracting and purifying the methane out of hog shit. And yes, per the piece, California FUNDS something that is not really environmental, is neoliberal greenwashing, involves cheating within that and also has environmental justice problems.

First, of course, some of that methane goes into making fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides for the food that feeds the hogs that produce .... methane and shit. It's "renewable" but in just the opposite way from Gavin Newsom's idea. 

And, as said Devon Hall, an environmental justice organizer who founded the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) in Warsaw, North Carolina, about fifteen minutes down the road from the facility:

“Communities have been suffering with the swine CAFOs for many years,” said Hall. “Whenever you begin to talk about biogas, then it just further embeds the problem.”

There you are. 

The hypocrisy is compounded because Newsom signed into law a bill from the Cal Lege banning eggs from states that don't give chicken minimum room to roam but won't ban pork from CAFO farms.

Meanwhile, the biogas technology, a greenwashing effort by the Big Hog industry, doesn't actually solve the problem anyway:

The United States Department of Agriculture warns that the methane capture process can exacerbate certain water quality issues by increasing the water-solubility of nitrogen in livestock waste. That raises the risk of nitrate contamination of drinking water which is linked to miscarriages and infant mortality and is a particular concern in an area where most residents draw their water from wells.

Again, there you are. 

The story goes on to note that, back in Newsom's own state, biogas for dairy farms doesn't get the carbon reductions Newsom's state credits it for.

Worse yet? Newsom's California cheats:

Even more egregious, they say, is the fact that the program allows farms in Wisconsin, Texas, New York, Missouri and several other states to sell biogas credits into the California market for fuel that never makes it into California pipelines.

Cheats.

Go read more. I'm just halfway into the piece with that quote. 

No, there's more. California's hypocritical even compared to North Carolina! Yes:

Years before the LCFS existed, utilities in North Carolina were required by a 2007 state law to source some of their power from renewable sources, including 0.2 percent from swine biogas by 2018. It’s the only state in the country that mandates sourcing electricity from animal waste.

Again, there you are. The "only state that mandates" means no California. (That said, the mandate targets in NC aren't close to being reached.)

That all said, the story notes other environmental problems with the whole biogas idea. It also notes a shitload of environmental justice ideas. 

And people wonder why I don't vote Democrat, not only not for president, but also not for U.S. Senator nor any statewide state office. 

Texas Progressives get ready for the primary

Off the Kuff interviewed three Congressional candidates: Todd Ivey in CD09, Jarvis Johnson in CD29, and Justin Early in CD31.

SocraticGadfly offered up Part 1 and Part 2, with further installments likely, of Noam Chomsky in the Epstein files, and Chomsky thoughts background at this tag.

Well put thoughts by Mike Elk on singleness and Valentine's Day. 

Texans who want their governments to stop data centers should already know they're shit out of luck if they're not in an incorporated community, and if they lost an incorporation election, should STFU. 

Kudos to Lone Star Left for doing what Kuffner still won't and mentioning Leqaa Kordia. (I gave Michelle Davis a push.) Family and friends remain unable to locate where she's been hospitalized. That said, Kuff can write about things outside Texas, like ICE in Minneapolis. Pro-Palestinian protests, though? Never. 

(I omitted a link from Kuff about student ICE protests. Kuff, round me up a pro-Palestinian protest.) 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project asked if Harris County can sue Trump over cuts to FEMA, why can’t Whitmire ever stand up to Trump or Abbott?

CultureMap and El Paso Matters mark the end of their cities' Alamo Drafthouses.

The Texas Observer reports on ICE locking up longtime Texans who had been on a path towards legal status.

Texas Public Opinion Research reveals how Democrats think they can win statewide. (They're wrong.)  

G. Elliott Morris shows how low-information voters have moved strongly against Trump.

Grist says pushing people into climate change actions can backfire — so what next?

Here's the big takeaway, in a piece it wrote about a paper to that end in Nature Sustainability:

It found that climate policies aimed at forcing lifestyle changes — such as bans on driving in urban centers — can backfire by weakening people’s existing pro-environmental values and triggering political backlash, even among those who already care about climate change. The findings suggest that how climate policy is designed may matter as much as how aggressive it is.

So, what next? 

First, note that "can" is not "will." I'm not saying ignore the study's findings and damn the torpedoes. I am saying that mandates can be framed in certain ways.

First, there can a be a push-pull setup, kind of like the "nudge" so beloved of neoliberal behavioral economists. (The last one-third of the piece discusses that.)

Second, there can be non-financial "pulls," like appeals to patriotism or whatever.

That said — and the research in "law-abiding" Germany, not the US — the problem is worse than with COVID lockdowns:

While researchers found a backlash effect, or “cost of control,” in both instances, it was 52 percent greater for climate than COVID policies.

INteresting. 

The last one-third also discusses financial "pushes." Make keeping a climate-unfriendly older heater, or some similar situation, for people who can afford to change on their own, especially, so expensive that, unless they're millionaires determined to cut off their noses to spite the government's face, they'll change.

And, per Grist, the study's authors acknowledge that even in "law-abiding"™ Germany, this isn't 1960:

The authors also emphasize that they aren’t claiming mandates or bans never work — seatbelt laws and smoking restrictions have become commonplace, for instance. But those were enacted in a different era and there was little public dissent about their benefits to personal health.

Times have indeed changed.

To me, the study, or at least how Grist extracts it, misses a possible, though not guaranteed, elephant in the room.

What if a lot of people who say they care about the climate are actually virtue signaling more than anything else, especially when the need for stronger and stronger action becomes more and more urgent? 

This is an idea that's not brand new to my mind by any means. That said, Peter Brannen's new book, "The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything," which I read last month and which discusses just how dire the situation is and just how urgent the need is for serious, global action, has reinforced that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a Greta Thunberg, or the guy out west who basically won't do anything in life. (I exaggerate.) I currently drive a gasoline-only vehicle (but it was cheap and doesn't need to go to the dump), fly the occasional airplane (noting that that flight is a sunk carbon cost), eats some meat (but in the bottom 15th percentile, if not even lower, of Americans) and other things. On the other hand, I've called for carbon taxes for years, even though not that high on the American economic pedestal.