Texas roundup: TxDOT cheating, Alex Jones cheating, Three Percenters, Ike Dike

Wylie's Guy Reffert, described as a ringleader of stirring up Jan. 6 insurrectionist, now has his reward. It's seven years in the federal stir. Looks like sentences are getting tougher. Unfortunately, though legally understandable, the judge rejected a terrorism enhancement, and yes, why haven't prosecutors followed that angle before. 

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The state is being sued for breaking the new Austin I-35 work into segments small enough to try to dodge environmental impact statements. It's by some of the same people who fought the I-45 expansion in Houston, and the story shows just how much TxDOT has used this dodge. This:

The case, filed in U.S. district court, raises larger questions about the federal government’s decision to give TxDOT the authority to approve its own environmental reviews.

is the key, and how it's laughable that the federal government outsources too much work to states. And whose fault is that?

Uh, Dear Leader's, not Shrub Bush and not Trump. Read the words:

In 2012, the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA — which oversees the construction and maintenance of highways — created a program that would allow state transportation departments to assume federal responsibility to enforce NEPA.

Disgusting.

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Dan Solomon comments on the lack of free speech implications in the Alex Jones trial. That's because Jones and his attorneys didn't care to pursue First Amendment angles. They DO care to abuse other parts of the legal process, with Jones' parent company filing for bankruptcy last week, and using a part of the bankruptcy code intended for small business.

UPDATE: In a colossal self-own, Jones has now been busted in lies about never using email and not being able to find Sandy Hook info on his smartphone when one of his attorneys accidentally shared some of Jones' cellphone records with attorneys for Sandy Hook people suing Jones for defamation. This of course opens Jones up to perjury charges. It also opens both him AND his attorneys, if they had any inkling that Jones was lying about this, to other legal sanctions or charges.

As for the $45 million punitive damages verdict?

Not only will it likely be legally reduced, but, per Jones' bankruptcy cheating, how much money anybody from Sandy Hook will ever get out of Jones is debatable. Months ago, I blogged that anybody suing Jones needed to ask the judge in the case for an asset freeze order right off the top of the bat, and he's now proven why.

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The Senate OKed the antienvironmentalist Corps of Engineers to start planning for an Ike Dike that isn't funded yet, but once the Corps has its claws in it, probably will get the bucks, even though it's not only environmentalist but won't do half of what most people think it will do, and even that much is only if it works perfectly. Stuff it on this one, any Houstonians with whom I've argued directly or indirectly. I'm right, and I collected past receipts on this when I called out The Fraud (aka "The Squad") and other allegedly environmentalist House Dems for voting in favor of this a month ago. David Bruce Collins doesn't fully like the Ike Dike but doesn't think it's the end of the world, either. Texas Greens, by webmail and email, as well as Twitter, haven't answered me yet. Maybe they're less environmentalist than even the #GangGreen Sierra Club, which expressed concerns about an Ike Dike when the idea was first broached?

Update? Adding to the fun, the email address cochairs@txgreens.com doesn't work!

I would have searched on the website, but, guess what? The Texas Green Party's website ... doesn't have a search feature. This is 2022, not 2002. Seriously.

#BostonMarathon, Eric Rudolph, Tim McVeigh, #AlexJones, #falseflag #wingnuts

The wingnut New York Post, with its claim a Saudi national is a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, appears to be ... likely wrong. Or at a minimum, very premature, with perhaps being a blind hog and an acorn later. Boston Police are telling multiple media sites, from the New York Times to news-blog Talking Points Memo, that that info didn't come from them.

President Obama has said we don't know at this time who's involved.

Of course, wingnuts will claim "not in custody" doesn't mean not a suspect. But Boston PD have so far swatted down even the "suspect" angle.

NBC's claim of a suspect appears to be nothing more than cribbing the NYPost via Twitter. Don't believe that is an independent source. (That's a "command," not a personal speculation.) It's got no attribution, no links to independent reporting. Of course, this is the network that's so in the toilet it's doing a second run of Saturday Night Live in prime time.

So, per speculation on the blast, there's only one "original source" that has any alleged info so far. And that highlights another problem with the Internet era -- 90 percent of people online think there's 100 separate sources confirming this.

Meanwhile, could be plenty of non-Mooslim angles as far as possible suspects.

An anti-abortion terrorist, like Eric Rudolph at the Atlanta Olympics?

Or a white supremacist like Tim McVeigh at Oklahoma City?

What if an anti-gay rights person, more specifically, an anti-gay marriage person, were wanting to borrow a page, and targeted Boston because of its alleged liberalism? (Don't forget Rudolph was anti-gay, too.)

Or a gun nut, knowing that people were running for charity for the Newtown massacre, had such an idea?

I'm not saying such types of people caused it, any more than a Saudi national. But, it's just as plausible from where I sit.

Hell, given his recent new levels of paranoia, Alex Jones is as likely a suspect.

After all, here's what he's Tweeted:

"Explosions at the Boston Marathon. Don't that the FBI has been behind virtually every domestic terror plot in the US, as NY Times reported."

If true, how would he know? 

Meanwhile, one hallmark of Islamic terrorists has been, in general, to immediately claim responsibility, albeit sometimes indirectly, for their actions. The fact that we've heard nothing says this is someone else.

So, even if a Saudi national at a Boston hospital but not in policy custody is the culprit, he likely acted alone.

Second, a bystander tackled him because "he looked suspicious." Did he look suspicious? Or did he look foreign? Or Mooslim? 

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Updates, April 16: The Saudi student is officially not a subject; in fact, he's officially being called a witness.

More reason why would could say domestic wingnuts are reasonable suspects: 

April 19, 1985 — federal agents arrested the leaders of the Covenant, Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, an extremist group in Arkansas. April 19, 1993 — federal agents chose to lay siege to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. April 19, 1995 — Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. All three of these events dealt with gun rights and federal agencies confronting groups with extreme beliefs on the issue. It is Tax Day and Patriot Day, a celebration of the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War. Controversial gun legislation is currently being debated in Congress. 

Again, no guarantee of anything, but anybody who wants to support the idea of a Mooslim being tackled ... well because he looked like a Mooslim running in fear ... needs to either admit how biased they are, or, if they want to separate themselves a few degrees from total irrationality, admit that other possibilities do exist.


The Pakistani Taliban have denied responsibility, too. This gets back to what I said on my day-of-event thoughts, that usually Muslim terrorist groups claim responsibility right away. That's especially important because it readily admitted responsibility, at the time, for a botched 2010 attempt to bomb Times Square, whether it was actually responsible or not. 

And, an Indiana man's 20-year sentence for burning a mosque reminds us that these types of homegrown terrorists are out there. 

Further reminder of that is here in this CNN piece. Only one left-wing/environmentalist terrorist of note in the last decade. The rest have all been either radical Islamists or else radical domestic rightist wingnuts. 

While the perpetrator or perpetrators of the Boston bombing are as yet unknown, an analysis of the 77 people based in the United States who have assembled bomb-making materials or tried to carry out a bombing for political purposes since 9/11 shows they have overwhelmingly been motivated either by al Qaeda-like ideas or right-wing extremist ideology.

So, there you go.

And, that's just bombs. Don't forget Andrew Joseph Stack, who in 2010 flew his airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, as a, well, as a kamikaze pilot.

The Saudi student being a witness, not a suspect, and gloating aside, no Islamist group stepping up to claim responsibility, the look needs to turn inward and rightward. 

April 17: Nothing new to report so far, other than noting that generally irresponsible people, mixed with wingnuts, are claiming a teen/young adult in a backpack is now a suspect. Once again, not true says the FBI. And, even the pressure cooker design of the explosives has been touted by domestic as well as Islamicist terrorists.

Louie Gohmert has once again claimed the crown of king of all Texas nutbars over the explosions. 

And CNN, which is not (yet?) the NY Post, is claiming an arrest has been made. 

And, let's end this day by saying that it was actually the Associated Press, of no more "illegal immigrant" fame that apparently first started spreading this false story. Even though I have defended legitimate use of social media by the traditional mainstream media, one has to say that it's becoming more and more irresponsible about it all the time in tragedies. Even putatively reputable sources like CNN and AP are blackening their own eyes, and will probably continue to do so. 

But we're all at fault for this in some ways.

To the degree we're disaster porn junkies, and we expect the MSM to deliver an ever-quicker fix, we're at fault. That's doubly true the more and more we expect to get our online news for free.

The MSM is at fault for not fixing broken financial models much earlier. The AP, for underpricing itself to news aggregators, is also at fault.

The "lean hypercapitalism" of modern big biz America in general is also at fault.

These are all mixed up in some sort of vicious circle that may not die down for years, if at all, until the current media system is a hollow shell, one ever more dependent on a mix of private and government PR to fill news holes with little critical editing or actual reporting. 

April 18: Not much new here. Well, other than the NY Post doubling down on anti-Mooslim racism, and similar stupidity. (And Rupert Murdoch from lying about it.) That's while the apparently actual suspect looks nothing like all the people wingnuts have been favoring. Indeed, he looks very Caucasian.

And, a Saudi facing deportation is NOT the one who was interviewed as a witness at the hospital.

But, the doorknobs are out in full force on Kenneth Clark's arrest for mailing the ricin letters.

Now the wingnuts are asking if the mainstream media is going to "hide" the fact that an obviously mentally ill man who mailed the ricin letters is a Democrat. Dear old college friends - I've got you hidden, by and large, because I'm not who I was then, and a lot of you have moved further rightward. It pains me not to unfriend you, if I need to.

April 19: As for the real suspects, let's not we the people jump to too many conclusions yet, either. Contra Boston's police commissioner, if by "came here," he meant they emigrated to the U.S., I doubt either of the brothers came here to commit terrorist acts a decade ago, when the younger was just 9 years old. Hardly "sleeper cell" material.

Beyond that, I used the word "anomie" about people like this. They become disillusioned, detached, and feel separate. Cults and sects of all sorts (Scientology, anybody) prey on people like this. Many of said sects, it's true, aren't violent. But they all operate on similar principles Scott Atran wrote a book in part about reaching out to people like this, before they become radicalized Muslims.

That said, in Chechnya, how much of the terrorism is Islamism, and how much of that is the Islamic equivalent of caesaropapism, Islam being used in the service of nationalist separatism? 

 And, related to that, isn't the word "terrorism" often politicized? Tea Partiers go ape shit when Boston Tea Party participants are described as being, in part, terrorists, even though it fits, at least from the British Crown's point of view.

At the same time, as Daily Kos reminds us, arguably, a neolib like Dear Leader could have gone nutbar with drones had he had a hankering.