Top blogging of December 2024

As is normal, not all posts are from the last month, but these were the 10-most read pieces within the last month. As is normal, I'll mention the date of the ones that have become newly evergreen.

No. 10? Yes, indeed, state-level Democrats are environmental hypocrites at times, too. New Mexico is offered up as a detailed example.

No. 9 is connected to the top three posts on this list. Tex-ass Gov. Greg Abbott, or at least people connected to him, seem willing to talk out both sides of their mouths on the David Cook vs Dustin Burrows Texas House Speakership battle.

No. 8? I discussed looming climate crisis tipping points.

No. 7? I decried armchair psychology being practiced on Luigi Mangione.

At No. 6, I dissected the efforts of at least one librul Millennial snowflake practicing psychological projection to try to explain away Kamala Harris' loss.

No. 5 was one of December's weekly Texas Progressives Roundups, this one's header featuring my piece about failing states.

No. 4 was a blast from the past and maybe started trending because of the Washington Commodes, aka Commanders, beating Philadelphia to inch near an NFL playoff spot they now have. A decade ago, I called for new names for the then-Redskins in light of the NFL push to get them more acceptable.

Since Nos. 1-3 are all connected, and to No. 9, we're going to take them top to bottom rather than reverse order, as they make more sense that way.

At No. 1 was Dustin Burrows' claim to have enough votes to be elected Tex-ass House Speaker, and how these claims collided with reality.

No. 2 was my take on current (for a few days) Speaker McDade Phelan bailing on running for another term.

No. 3 was my thoughts on whether the Texas GOP would really censure any GOP Legiscritter for voting for Burrows rather than Cook, and whether the two-year primary ban would hold up in court or not.

Texas Progressives say sayonara to 2024

Off the Kuff considers the ethics and value of putting courtroom proceedings on YouTube. 

SocraticGadfly read Jessica Pishko, and disagrees with some of her premises, including but not limited to the idea of abolishing sheriffs.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said the work of fighting for democracy will be up to rank & file citizens of Houston/Harris County, rather than people dependent for their livelihood on the mainstream systems bringing the authoritarian outcomes.

The Observer rounds up its best longform stories from the year.  

El Paso Matters reports that Ken Paxton's efforts to kill Harris County's guaranteed income program succeeded in doing so in El Paso. The Barbed Wire remembers an iconic Christmas gift.  

Your Local Epidemiologist highlights 22 public health accomplishments from the past year. 

The San Antonio Report brings you its year in photos.

The Teamsters didn't really strike Amazon; here's what they actually did and its results.

It's more important than ever to bust myths about Hanukkah

As promised, I am pulling this from last week's Texas Progressives roundup, with today being the last day of Hanukkah.

Kuffner found this piece, and it's all wrong.

Rabbi Levi Greenberg writes about Hanukkah's message that evil can be defeated. 

It's got a picture of Chabad at the top of the column, plus Greenberg being a Lubavitcher. It's Zionist just from the Chabad angle, and it's also messianic (and not in that "Messianic Christian" sense) with the Lubavitch angle, especially if Greenberg holds to the Schneerson as Messiah cult within the Lubavitcher world.

Also, since Hanukkah was adapted from an already existing Persian winter solstice festival, it's a lie; more thoughts on that and related here. (A bit more here; more myth and legend in general deconstructed here.) And, reading between the lines about the celebration of the fall of the House of Assad in Syria, and the silence on something else, it's anti-Palestinian. Shock me that Kuff, who passes by the plight of Palestine and pro-Palestinian protestors in silent contempt, would like something like this

Finally, some Hanukkah alt-history, riffing on the first "here" link, here.

Does ranked choice voting really matter that much?

That's one big takeaway from an AP story a month ago about the general failure on the Nov. 5 ballot to get more states to consider RCV — along with open primaries and/or other electoral reforms.

On RCV, the story says it rarely makes a difference in outcomes.

But, rarely is not never, and the AP admits that in its nut grafs:

The AP analyzed nearly 150 races this fall in 16 jurisdictions where ranked choice voting is authorized, ranging from the Board of Assessors elections in the Village of Arden, Delaware, to the presidential elections in Alaska and Maine. The ranking system was needed in just 30% of those cases, because the rest were won by candidates receiving a majority of the initial votes.

Nationwide, just three candidates who initially trailed in first-place votes ended up winning after ranked vote tabulations — one for Portland City Council and two for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

In San Francisco, two progressive candidates campaigned together, encouraging voters to rank them No. 1 and 2. Initially, they fell behind a moderate candidate who would have won a traditional election. But after six rounds of rankings, one of the progressive candidates emerged the victor when the other was eliminated and his supporters’ votes were redistributed to her.

Supporters of ranked choice voting point to that as a success, because it avoided two similar candidates splitting the vote and both losing.

“It’s kind of like a pressure valve – you don’t always need it, but when you do, you really do,” said Deb Otis, director of research and policy at FairVote, which advocates for ranked choice voting.

There you are.

Portland's mayoral race went 19 rounds, and one council race went 30 rounds.

That said, would you prefer somebody being elected with a plurality of just 30 percent? Or doing a top-two physical runoff? Not me.

I don't know what — other than continued educational work — is the answer to one-fifth or more of voters not engaging in rankings, or more Black than White voters skipping it. On the former, I suspect races with a dozen or more candidates make it frustrating to rank them all.

But, you don't have to rank them all. You could rank the top four. That said, if your candidate is No. 5 or worse in the first round, out you go.

I also don't know how easy it is to run for mayor or council in Portland. Maybe that needs addressing. Not with a fat filing fee, but with a few more names than current on a petition drive.

But mattering somehow is still more than nothing.

Beyond that, the story is flawed otherwise. It says Save Our States opposes RCV, but it opposes a helluva lot more than that, starting with opposing a national popular vote for president. Weirdly, and again, showing its limitations when it comes to modern political science, Wiki has no page for it.

Help protect monarch butterflies

Author photo: Monarch at Hagerman NWR.

FINALLY, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed an Endangered Species Act listing as "threatened" the monarch butterfly. (I say "finally" because the Center for Biological Diversity was pushing for this a decade ago.)

But, it's just proposed. They're going to need backup, since the likes of Texas Ag Commish Sid Miller are going apeshit over this.

So?

Here's where you comment. In support!

Here's what I said:

Dear USFWS: I appreciate the proposed "threatened" listing. My one quibble is that most of the stronger protections, such as critical habitat areas being designated for protection, apply only to the Western monarch subspecies. (I know that USFWS can't do anything about Mexican overwintering grounds for most monarchs. I would like USFWS to consider critical habitat designation elsewhere. (I'm familiar with USFWS feet-dragging on critical habitat for the dunes sagebrush lizard.)

That said, any exception for pesticides should be extremely limited, and should only be adopted based on statements by lepidopterists etc allowing that limited use of certain pesticides will not be a monarch / milkweed danger.

Beyond the listing itself, USFWS should work with other federal and state agencies, including state transportation departments on roadways, to increase milkweed propagation through sowing, increased use of no-mow / limited-mow areas, etc. Sincerely, /me

Click that link! (Scroll to the bottom for the comment button.)

As for Sid? He's full of it. As noted in my comment, except for the Western subspecies, a fair chunk of whose acreage is on land either of a governmental agency or private conservation organization, there IS NO critical habitat designation. Per what I said about pesticides, FWS may well create a Mack Truck sized loophole.

And, contra Mr. Jeebus Shot? A number of farmers are, at least tentatively in support. Per the Chronicle, that includes one Zippy Duvall, head honcho at the American Farm Bureau.

That said? Per what I said in my comment about Mexico? The Chron notes that many scientists think FWS has the wrong focus:

Many scientists believe monarch butterflies are not endangered, but their migration is. A study released in October by the University of Georgia found the monarch butterfly's breeding population is relatively stable and similar to historical abundances. However, the species' fall migratory population is in serious decline. The study, which suggests the insects are dying off during their fall migration south to Mexico, points to the planting of non-native milkweeds along the migration path resulting in the rise of a parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), which infects and debilitates monarch butterflies. The release of captive-reared butterflies, which are not as good at migrating, is also a factor.

Andy Davis, assistant research scientist at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology and lead author of the study, expressed frustration with the USFWS listing decision, opining that it may cause more harm than good. "I think the biggest problem will be that this ruling will further convince people that monarchs need to be saved in their own yards by rearing them in 'protective captivity,'" he wrote on Facebook. "And since this ruling has no real meaningful restrictions on this practice (in fact the USFWS encourages it in their press release), then we will likely see further increases in OE levels across the board, more non-native milkweed being sold, and fewer and fewer monarchs successfully reaching their winter destinations."

Hard to argue with that.

On the other hand, as the Chron also notes, a listing is the only tool in the FWS arsenal:

"Unfortunately, no possibility exists for listing a phenomenon such as a migration as threatened or endangered under the ESA," wrote Monika Maeckle, who tracks the insects and runs the website Texas Butterfly Ranch in San Antonio. "Listing the species itself may be the only recourse for protection."

Hard to argue with that, too. 

America's Ranchers™ also support a listing, well, if any conservation efforts are purely voluntary.