That's because, per the Trib, among new Tex-ass laws taking effect over the next two months, you can get ivermectin without a scrip starting today.
That — unsurprisingly — isn't the most loony or wingnut law that will be taking effect over the next month or two.
Lone Star "Left," per Cactus Ed Abbey, seems to believe in growth for growth's sake without admitting that's the theology of the cancer cell.
The Texas branch of League of Women Voters is also wrong.
So is the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, clearly proving itself to still be Gang Green neoliberals in the environmental organization world, in an official support with no real analysis.
I mean, that piece even admits voters are being offered a pig in a poke:
At least 50% of the annual allocations must go toward the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT). The New Water Supply for Texas Fund supports various projects - some of which are highly controversial - that add to the total volume of water available to Texans, such as reservoir construction, seawater desalination, reuse of oil and gas wastewater (“produced water”), a statewide water conveyance system, acquisition of water from out of state, water and wastewater reuse, and aquifer storage and recovery.
The focus of the SWIFT is solely on water infrastructure projects identified in the State Water Plan. This is an important accountability measure because it means there must be some level of support for the project locally for it to appear in the State Water Plan. However, there is no requirement for how this part of the funding must be split between the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and SWIFT.
But still says vote yes.
Gack! Other environmental groups, Gang Green-ish ones, also favor it. National Wildlife Federation and the Nature Conservancy testified for it in the Texas House hearing.
==
UPDATE, Nov 3: Sadly, it's even worse! I had gone looking for this a week or more ago, and hadn't found it, but? WithOUT the Sierra Club caveats, the Texas Green Party says vote yes. All they do is cite the Texas Water Fund, created by the state in 2023 legislation for water projects, which in turn only cites the Trib (neolibs) and the Texas Water Development Board (state agency). That even further settles that I am an independent leftist.
Sierra and other Gang Greeners, I get. But, has nobody in the Texas Green Party read Cactus Ed Abbey's famous dictum that "Growth for growth's sake is the theology of the cancer cell"?
==
Note to likes of Suzanne Bellsnyder: Agricultural wells are declining because of over-appropriation and climate change on the high plains, like your Texas Panhandle. Marc Reisner wrote about the former 40 years ago. I saw that in action 25-plus years ago in eastern New Mexico, as far as the Ogallala Aquifer.
Sadly, per Ballotpedia, all Democraps in both House and Senate supported it. (Twelve House Rethuglicans were opposed.) Also, sadly, no non-Gang Green environmental org, like Center for Biological Diversity, registered official opposition, whether or not speaking to that end.
Lone Star "Left," per Cactus Ed Abbey, seems to believe in growth for growth's sake without admitting that's the theology of the cancer cell.
The Texas branch of League of Women Voters is also wrong.
So is the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, clearly proving itself to still be Gang Green neoliberals in the environmental organization world, in an official support with no real analysis.
I mean, that piece even admits voters are being offered a pig in a poke:
At least 50% of the annual allocations must go toward the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and the State Water Implementation Fund for Texas (SWIFT). The New Water Supply for Texas Fund supports various projects - some of which are highly controversial - that add to the total volume of water available to Texans, such as reservoir construction, seawater desalination, reuse of oil and gas wastewater (“produced water”), a statewide water conveyance system, acquisition of water from out of state, water and wastewater reuse, and aquifer storage and recovery.
The focus of the SWIFT is solely on water infrastructure projects identified in the State Water Plan. This is an important accountability measure because it means there must be some level of support for the project locally for it to appear in the State Water Plan. However, there is no requirement for how this part of the funding must be split between the New Water Supply for Texas Fund and SWIFT.
But still says vote yes.
OK, now the rest. Some I'll have an "OK" with the yes. One or two may be absolute yeses. Many of the "no" votes have "Wingnut virtue signaling" as part of them. That's because these already not only don't exist but may be constitutionally barred, depending on who's interpreting Tex-ass' constitution and related legal issues at hand.
That said, per the graphic, most of the answer is "no."
Prop 1, for dedicated funds for Texas State Technical College? Yes is OK.
Prop 2 on barring capital gains tax? Wingnut virtue signaling. Vote no.
Prop 3, denying bail. Wingnut cruelty, and the moral equivalent of assuming guilt in advance. NO.
Prop 5, on property tax exemption for animal feed at a feed store? A quasi-private member bill carve-out. No.
Prop 6, barring securities taxes? Wingnut virtue signaling. Vote no
Prop 7, for benefits for surviving spouses of certain veterans? Yes is OK. Reason I don't say a flat yes is, are domestic partners excluded? What happens if SCOTUS overturns Obergefell?
Prop 8, banning estate taxes? Wingnut virtue signaling. Vote no
Prop 9, exemption to tangible assets on personal property taxes? Vote no; not only is the loophole and possible abuse an issue, but this should be something addressed outside of amendment if possible.
Prop 10, property tax exemption for a house totally destroyed by fire? Written poorly, as "temporary" is not defined. Vote no.
Prop 11, the jump in elderly / disabled extra homestead exemption from $10K to $60K? Too big a jump at one time. Vote no.
Prop 12, changes to State Commission on Judicial Conduct. Vote no if for no other reason that it removes the State Bar of Texas from naming two members. This is a squeeze on them and the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. Lone Star Left missed that.
Prop 13, upping the homestead exemption? Vote no. Lone Star Left notes it offers nothing to renters, then says "next time around." Wrong.
Prop 14, funding the Dementia Institute? Sounds noble, but vote no for this as a special carve-out.
Prop 15, parental rights? I'm torn. I can see where wingnut activist parents might weaponize this. I can also see how parents of kids with sexual dysphoria could use it to fight back against the likes of Kenny Boy Paxton. No recommendation, as I've not yet decided myself.
Prop 16, that only US citizens can vote? Wingnut virtue signaling. Vote no
Prop 17, Strangeabbott's Operation Lone Star property tax handout in border counties? Vote no.
==
Texas branch of League of Conservation Voters no longer has a website. (What links off Facebook ain't theirs.) Their Hucksterman hasn't been updated since 2022. Green Party of Texas, despite having a quarterly state executive meeting last week, has taken no public position on Prop 4 or the other amendments.
So says Chris Hooks at the Monthly. Nicole Collier was not held captive. First, the historical background:
House Speaker Dustin Burrows’s decision to involve the police should not have come as a total surprise. Legislative leaders have, and have always had, a broad remit to try to compel attendance, from locking the doors of the chamber to deploying state troopers. (The “Killer Bees” of 1979 evaded a statewide police manhunt by hiding; Speaker Dade Phelan locked the doors of the chamber in 2021 to prevent another quorum break.) That’s why quorum breakers leave the state—they can be arrested if they stay here. The quorum break is a form of civil disobedience, and participants know they’re inviting a law enforcement response.
In other words, even before new legislation passed after the 2021 quorum break, people like Collier should have known this was possible, even if Burrows got heavy-handed.
Fast forward to the start of the current session, and now:
The rules package enabling the rounding up of absent House members was enthusiastically approved by Democrats, including Collier, at the start of the last session, and Burrows was the overwhelming choice of Democrats at the last Speaker election. What’s more, Burrows’s attempt to enforce attendance could be seen as conciliatory, not punitive—GOP elected officials to his right have been advocating much harsher and stricter measures.
Give the rest of it a read, even if you're a totally tribalist BlueAnon.
I'll admit, it looked like compelling theater.
But, I knew about this, at least in a general way, being part of the rules package. Presumably, Collier was one of the Dems enthusiastically approving it.
Hooks does talk about Dems losing power in the House and find out Burrows' vice-chairmanships meant nothing. (Same is true of "ranking member" on committees in DC.) But, Burrows doesn't have a supermajority, unlike Dannie Goeb, Hooks notes, so he can't do too much. It should make Dems wonder, once again, if making the deal with Burrows, rather than lumping it, was the right call in the first place.
Final word from Hooks:
The ordeal has become a faint echo of the 2013 Wendy Davis filibuster, which created another media sensation around a Democratic lawmaker who chose to lose well and lose with style.
Chris forgot to mention that:
A. Davis lost hypocritically, as well, and
B. She faded from the scene quickly enough.
Back to the original story.
This isn't teh stupidz like Texas Senate Dems walking out, but not enough to block business. It's more than a nothingburger, too. But, it's like a White Castle slider instead of a Double Whopper.
Specifically, per page 6 of the July Texas Press Messenger, I'm talking about state Sen. Charles Perry, who was given the unchallenged open mic time to promote the water plan constitutional amendment he authored.
Beyond the actual problems with Perry's amendment (and it has them, and I'll be voting against), is the ethics problem. NO politico should get free, unchallenged airtime at ANY state's — or national — newspaper convention on a specific political issue.
Period.
As for those problems?
No. 1, as I noted early this summer, is that it doesn't regulate groundwater pumping.
No. 2 and related is that it doesn't really say anything about conservation.
Forest Wilder at the Monthly threw it way under the bus this spring.
A few takeaways:
Perry, a Lubbock Republican, envisions a multibillion-dollar statewide “water grid” to make sure Texas never worries about the resource again. He is proposing investing in desalinating salty Gulf water, cleaning up the chemical-laden fracking water used to coax oil from the ground in the Permian Basin, and injecting fresh water underground for later use.
Yeah, produced water, chemical-laced even after cleanup, and often radiation-laced, too.
The price? (This was about Perry's overall big dream, not just the amendment, but still):
The whole shebang could cost $162 billion, according to an estimate by the Texas Water Infrastructure Network (TXWIN), a trade association. That’s a staggering figure—about equal to the state’s total annual spending. And it dwarfs the $80 billion worth of projects recommended by the state’s own official water plan, last updated in 2022.
He didn't tout THAT at TPA.
He also didn't talk to Wilder for his article.
The Texas Progressive Alliance wishes the Legislature an unhappy and unproductive special session as it brings you this week's roundup.
Off the Kuff looks at the first re-redistricting map on display, which would be a radical and ridiculous reapportionment of the state's Congressional districts.
SocraticGadfly salutes the second and much better than the first lawsuit against the state over the Ten Commandments bill.
The Waco Bridge assesses that city's flood risk.
The Dallas Observer notes a political cartoon about the Hill Country flood that generated MAGA death threats against its artist.
City of Yes explains why Austin's "Capitol View corridors" are bad for housing and other development.
The 19th profiles Katherine Wells, the health official who led Lubbock's response to the measles outbreak.
Space City Weather asks you to please be wary about taking your weather reports from TikTok.
Jef Rouner ponders the potential of Trump voter regret to lead to changes
Soy Boy Greg Abbott is trying to have his cake and eat it too on mid-decade redistricting and racial gerrymandering.
The Dallas Museum of Art's expansion project has a new design team member.
The Fort Worth Modern's being targeted by wingnuts
is just one step in larger issues in Cowtown going more conservative.
(I was at the Amon Carter exhibit mentioned in the piece.) And, shock me
that the pink slime at Monty Bennett's Dallas Express is involved. Even
though nothing ultimately happened, the Observer notes the "chilling"
factor will likely continue.
Neil at the Houston Democracy Project wrote that the ICE raid through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, is a spur for us to ask questions of local elected officials about how Houston and Harris County are interacting with ICE.
Your Local Epidemiologist explains the forthcoming cuts to Medicaid and why they will be so bad.
Law Dork shows just how much the Trump administration was lying to the courts about sending immigrants to El Salvador.
As the death toll hit 70 Sunday morning from the Guadalupe River flooding, several questions abound. And have grown since it crossed 100.
The biggest was about warnings. Even with local and state officials offering caveats about lack of prediction in location, nonetheless, with the initial warning of 7 inches in the area already early afternoon on July 3, followed by the first flash flood warning early July 4, I think, per the Trib:
“The heartbreaking catastrophe that occurred in Central Texas is a tragedy of the worst sort because it appears evacuations and other proactive measures could have been undertaken to reduce the risk of fatalities had the organizers of impacted camps and local officials heeded the warnings of the government and private weather sources, including AccuWeather,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter wrote in a statement Saturday morning.
That Kerrville and Kerr County officials are full of shit.
Second question, not even being addressed yet by Tex-ass Rethuglican Congresscritters who voted for Trump's bigly ugly bill? How much will it reduce the accuracy, and cut the amount of advance notice, that the NWS was able to offer in this case, even though it went largely unheeded?
Here's the same second link on that, at least at the professionals' level:
The flooding came amid concerns about staffing levels at the NWS, after the Trump administration fired hundreds of meteorologists this year as part of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. The NWS Austin/San Antonio office’s warning coordination meteorologist announced in April that he was retiring early due to the funding cuts, leading to speculation that vacancies could have impacted forecasters’ response.
As I've half-jokingly said elsewhere, the "Gulf of America" will get renamed back to "Gulf of Mexico" the first major hurricane that spawns in it hits the Texas or Louisiana coast.
Per later comment in the story, they're adequately staffed NOW. Six months from now? A year?
Zeynep Tufekci talks more about that official, Paul Yura, in a column asking other questions, like — why haven't more camps moved their camping areas just, even a few feet higher and a few yards further away from the course of the river?
[A]t Camp Mystic, where at least 27 campers and counselors were washed away, the kids whose cabins were on just slightly higher ground all survived. Only those in the lower cabins were lost. Those lower cabins were less than a quarter of a mile away from the higher cabins. Every moment would have counted.
There you are.
On Yura, it's not just about total staffing; it's about loss of experience. But, per places like LinkedIn, you'll see capitalist America, like the Elmo Musk behind DOGE, can't and/or won't put a dollar value on that. (Neither will neoliberal Democrats except when it's worth political haymaking.)
Update: It does appear that NWS cuts grounded several warning balloons.
The first piece has bullshit from dog-shooting Homeland Security head Kristi Noem trying to hand-wave away these concerns.
The third question? How much do Democrats really want to politicize this, since Dear Leader's administration is partially to blame, at least career staffers in it? How much do you want to politicize it, per two paragraphs above, because Dear Leader was one of two people to make sure the "vaunted" Paris climate accords are voluntary unenforceable Jell-O? How much do they want to support putting Tweety Eastland, the surviving Mystic spouse, on the legal hook publicly?
How much of this is the fault of the youth camps' staff? After all, both the 1 am and 4 am July Fourth alerts were available by cellphone alerts. Mystic's co-owner Dick Eastland is among the dead, so he can't be asked, but other owners of other camps, and managers of them, certainly can be. Or, per The Barbed Wire's piece that references self-backpatting of state and federal officials, will this get swept under the rug?
And, to go there? These are Christian girls camps, even if not affiliated with a particular church? How many girls are told that climate change is a myth? What about camp owners and staffers?
Refudiating the likes of Chip Roy in that Barbed Wire piece? This was not a once in a century flood. The Monthly, like others, references the 1987 flood in Comfort.
So does the first Trib piece, at top link, which has a good "wrap-up" on some of these issues:
Billy Lawrence, a 73-year-old San Angelo man, has dealt with this type of tragedy before. During flooding in the summer of 1987, he spent more than 30 days looking for bodies. The first one he found was of a child in a tree, 20 feet up.
But he said this flood is twice as bad as it was in 1987. On Saturday, he was back patrolling the river for bodies. A former volunteer with the Red Cross, he said he's gotten used to the morbid practice.
“I’m used to death. I’ve been around it a lot," Lawrence said.
He noted there are about 20 camps along the river in this area and said the camp counselors should receive training to check the weather every night.
"I'm not blaming them. They just have to do that,” he said.
Refudiating Danny Goeb, the jefe during this with Strangeabbott out of the Pointy Abandoned Object State? His Tex-ass Senate, and Rethuglicans in the House, killed HB 13, a bill that would have updated state warning systems.
Tots and pears are no substitute for training and the acceptance of modern realities.
And, even if campers can't have cell phones on, per this Texas Monthly story, at least at that particular camp, camp counselors, managers and owners sure as hell can. Or you can have a weather-band radio that gets the same type of emergency alerts.
As for the climate change issue? You don't have to go back to that 1987 flood, per the top link:
The region has experienced catastrophic flooding before, including the 2015 Wimberley flood that left 13 people dead, as well as major floods in 2007 and 2002.
Notice how close together these things are now getting?
Last week, moved from the Texas Progressives Roundup, we had Evil MoPac grappling with the Hill Country flooding tragedy. I moved it here because after it going all nice and polite on getting to the bottom of things, this:
There will be a thorough accounting of what infrastructure issues and human errors may have been present and, hopefully, there will be common sense policy changes to try to reduce the terrible human and propery tolls of Texas floods in the future.
And this:
But we also need to grapple with the fact that this tragedy and the incredible rainfall amounts that caused it were not totally unprecedented and the impacted area has long been at risk for this type of event, even if rare. It’s that feeling of helplessness that will be one of the hardest things to process going forward: we can make improvements (including to local warning systems) and increase spending to try and solve the flooding problem, but it might never be enough.
Are both untrue.
The former is untrue per what I said about climate change and Tex-ass Rethuglican leadership, if nothing else. Any "changes" will be a right-wing corporate socialism bailout of capitalism.
The latter will be untrue starting with climate change, which the "we" wingnuts running Tex-ass won't grapple with. It's also untrue in that, from all I read, ownership and management of the various camps easily could have done a better job with the resources they had — ie, smartphone warnings — as could have local governments.
That's as Inside Climate Change notes this is more and more NOT a one-off — as the death toll crosses 100 July 8.
And, per my update about the killed HB 13? Stop cutting these people slack, you fucktard.
I suspect lawsuits are coming — and they need to come.
(I mean, good old BlueAnon Neil Aquino gets it right on this being a political issue, but gets it wrong of course on not looking at how it's various forms of business as usual for both duopoly parties.)
And, Blue Anons, do you REALLY want to politicize the FEMA angle of removing parts of Camp Mystic from the 100-year floodplain? Per the AP, via the Trib, that would be the OBAMA-era FEMA.
In response to an appeal, FEMA in 2013 amended the county's flood map to remove 15 of the camp's buildings from the hazard area. Records show that those buildings were part of the 99-year-old Camp Mystic Guadalupe, which was devastated by last week's flood. After further appeals, FEMA removed 15 more Camp Mystic structures in 2019 and 2020 from the designation. Those buildings were located on nearby Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site that opened to campers in 2020 as part of a major expansion and suffered less damage in the flood. ..
[Syracuse University associate professor Sarah] Pralle said the appeals were not surprising because communities and property owners have used them successfully to shield specific properties from regulation.
Ooopppssss ....
But wait, there's more!
Pralle, who reviewed the amendments for AP, noted that some of the exempted properties were within 2 feet of FEMA's flood plain by the camp's revised calculations, which she said left almost no margin for error. She said her research shows that FEMA approves about 90% of map amendment requests, and the process may favor the wealthy and well-connected.
And, with that, we have the answer that, in the past at least, the Eastlands were partially responsible for the current deaths. And, we have material evidence of negligence, even willful negligence, when somebody drops this nice polite ownership bullshit and sues.
Will Texas Monthly mention that? Mimi Swartz's hagiography of the Eastlands and Forest Wilder's laundry list of what went wrong both failed to.
Abrahm Lustgarten, who has a great book on climate change, now weighs in at Pro Publica.
Texas Monthly has abandoned its traditional 10 best and 10 worst Legiscritters coverage, saying it just couldn't do it with today's Lege.
Instead, it went with the nine lawmakers and one lobbyist who shaped the session. It's pretty much similar to a 10 worst list, but no accompanying 10 best.
That said, with Gene Wu as House Dems' leader, it's kind of hard to find a 10 best.
Brian Harrison is the Monthly's legislative "cockroach," far worse than a bum steer.
That said, it's arguable that Texas Monthly has broken itself in ways since Paul Burka handed off the 10 best/10 worst lists, and even more since his death.
Off the Kuff still thinks Greg Abbott will not veto the THC ban bill.
Riffing on this year's Lege session, SocraticGadfly first snarks about the death of the Lottery Commission killing Miriam Adelson's casino dreams (if she and Patrick Dumont get that), then goes Johnny Cash on the student cellphone ban bill.
Tex-ass Rethuglicans: Hypocrites on college tuition rates for Ill Eagles.
Tex-ass Rethuglicans: Ongoing hypocrites on E-Verify.
OSHA has a public hearing on a worker heat protection bill June 16. The Observer wonders what will happen.
Neil at Houston Democracy Project said it was good 3 councilmembers voted no on Whitmire’s regressive budget & Council chambers did not need to be cleared when there was protest against budget.
The Texas Observer rounds up the anti-LGBTQ+ bills that were passed.
The Barbed Wire reports on some malicious compliance ideas for the Ten Commandments bill.
Your Local Epidemiologist sorts fact from chaos about COVID vaccines for pregnant people and babies. Franklin Strong analyzes the current strategies of the professional book banners.
The Dallas Observer attended Rob Schneider's latest standup show so you don't have to, not that you would have.
Evil MoPac got to ask Willie Nelson a few questions.
I'll have more detailed thoughts in days and weeks ahead, beyond a few issues I already wrote about earlier this week. Meanwhile, here's this week's roundup.
Off the Kuff has some advice for THC retailers about what to do next.
SocraticGadfly looks at the Supreme Court unanimously, yes, gutting the National Environmental Policy Act in light of his non-duopoly voting.
School district library censorship is here in Tex-ass, pending Strangeabbott's signature. Brad Buckley is wrong about removal of classics being a red herring. That said, I look forward to the bible, with incest, adultery, sanctioned daughter-killing and more, getting yanked.
The Texas Supremes are letting Kenny Boy Paxton keep investigating (and intimidating) Annunciation House.At least the Lege didn't give Paxton even more power to investigate actual, alleged or made-up election crimes.
The Lege's attempt to regulate mifepristone (and abortion telehealth) appears dead.
Dan Patrick is a lying nutbar about THC (like he is about many other things).
Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted about the busy week for the Project ahead. This includes being the featured speaker at the June Spring Branch Democrats meeting.
The Eyewall takes one last look ahead to the hurricane season.
The San Antonio Report notes the cancellation of a major cyber security conference due to the "challenging" US policy climate.
Houstonia writes about several Houston chefs who were DACA recipients and who are speaking out against Trump's immigration atrocities.
The Texas Living Waters Project adds up the wins and losses for water resources in the 89th Legislature.
In the Pink Texas read that Jake Tapper book so you don't have to.
Shock me the Lege didn't pass an ethics bill.
Per the Observer, RIP to Ronnie Dugger, its founding editor.
RIP Loretta Swit. From MASH regulars, it's Alda, Farrell, Farr and Burghoff left.
Panhandle billionaire-ish Alex Fairly (father of cellphones in schools bill author Caroline in the Texas Lege) has grown semi-disgusted with the tactics of Christofascist Tim Dunn and his millions, but I doubt there will be some major split in their objectives, just Fairly will pay out more money on his own and not through any Dunn or Wilks pipeline, so take this graf with a grain of salt:
His political awakening could have seismic implications for Texas politics. Just last year, he seemed positioned as a second Dunn-like figure who could add pressure and funding to the effort to push the Legislature further right. Even now, he still supports many of those same candidates and concepts in principle. But he has come to condemn many of the methods used to achieve those goals by Dunn and his allies. Dunn did not respond to a request for an interview or written questions.
Given his background, how did a man so business-successful exercise so little due diligence as to end in bed with Dunn in the first place? Or to not look up the details on Dustin Burrows, since Lubbock is just down the road from Amarillo and the Trib does a scorecard of Legiscritters after every session. On that career:
He built his fortune slowly over the course of a few decades through a career in insurance and risk management.
Insurance and risk management require lots of due diligence, and lots of not taking spoken or written words as presented.
That's especially true for the son of a pair of public school teachers, which he is.
That's also a failure on the Trib, to ask why and how he got into bed with someone devoted to the destruction of public schools.
Beyond that, I feel no sympathy for a dude who spends $500K to buy his daughter a seat in a banana republic state legislature.
(Second note from that story: Why is Miriam Adelson so dumb as to have two PACs, one specifically about gambling, when that will never happen as long as Dannie Goeb is Lite Guv?)
As is normal, not all pieces are from April, and will so be noted, but these were the most read pieces here last month.
10. In February, I doubled down on new Texas Court of Criminal Appeals justice David Schenck's call for judicial reform with my call for real judicial reform.
9. A January Texas Progressives roundup talked mainly about a Texas Lege preview.
8. I talked about the moderators at r/MLB's subreddit kowtowing a second time on all things Trump.
7. Coming into new prominence with the Trump-Zelensky rare earths deal, I looked in detail at North Korea's military aid to Russia.
6. My January piece about updating my blogroll and why continues to get attention. And, I still generally don't miss the people that haven't been carried over.
5. In March, I said The Resistance 2.0 still wants to relitigate Russiagate 1.0.
4. I noted in February that Quorum Report founder Harvey Kronberg was pissed off. He surely is even more so, two-plus months later.
3. A Texas Progressives roundup from February reminds us of the start of the Texas measles epidemic and other things.
2. I'm sure you'll see this one here on the next popular pieces roundup in a month: My thoughts on the death of Pope Francis.
1. A Texas Progressives roundup from last month gave a snapshot on the expansion of measles, along with Lege nuttery on water and Kenny Boy Paxton nuttery.
Off the Kuff encourages the filing of lawsuits to force a CD18 special election onto the calendar.
SocraticGadfly talks about how Trump's tariffs and other actions could and will affect pro sports teams.
We're getting closer to vouchers, with House tweaks to SB2 largely cosmetic, as are further increases to the WADA.
The TSTA Blog scoffs at the notion that the fight for vouchers is somehow a "civil rights" matter.
Elmo Musk is the latest beneficiary of the Lege's ongoing efforts to undermine local control of more and more issues.
Havana Ted is trying to put daylight between himself and The Donald over tariffs, while still leaving plenty of room to butt-kiss as deemed necessary.
No, Trib, you cannot backdate worries over Trump tariffs to late 2024. Rather, it was already likely then that momentum was building for a recession.
The political bottom line of this piece on Dallas tenant lawyer Mark Melton is "why does El Paso Democrat Joe Moody hate tenants?" I get Angie Button and the other Republicans, but, since Moody refused to talk to the Monthly, "he hates tenants."
Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reported on his remarks to the crowd of 6000 at the 50501 protest at Houston City Hall. Houston City Council must join the fight for our freedom.
Texas Monthly takes an Austin-centric view of the Tesla Takedown.
Evil MoPac gives his next batch of Austin Truths.
Deceleration reports on the very high cost of cleaning of Texas' fracking water.
Mean Green Cougar Red has a bit of good news about monarch butterflies.
Off the Kuff saw the failure to call a May special election for CD18 coming.
SocraticGadfly wonders how someone like Coppell ISD's superintendent can get nailed by a sting video in 2025.
Nuclear power to treat oilfield "produced water" to theoretically make it usable for agriculture? Gee, what could go wrong with that idea? The correct answer is, like with much of Aridzona, etc.? Admit that anthropogenic climate change is real, it's too expensive to get water to farm most your crops, and move.
Kenny Boy Paxton's office is investigating an insurance company accused of spying on journalists, among other things. Paxton probably wants their secrets.
The bill that purports to clarify Texas' anti-abortion law may NOT fully clear up what exceptions are allowable, despite many elected state Dems jumping on the bandwagon. There's also other "backdoor" problems with the legislation. Don't forget that this is a Senate bill, not a House one.
Texas Republicans love to hate inflation, as do national Republicans, except when it allows them to cover their tracks on whether they've really increased school funding or not.
Measles cases now at 400 (officially) and still rising.
Texas' "right to farm" law may not include raising Spanish hogs inside a city limits.
Neil at Houston Democracy Project said Whitmire sent 11 HPD units to modest, calm protest about bike lanes. What will be HPD's response when we are on streets for our basic rights this Saturday, April 5?
Nonsequiteuse updates her earlier advice on how to stay safe at protests.
Evil MoPac presents the first items on their list of 100 Fundamental Austin Truths.
The Current has some bad news for San Antonio in the Trump-Canada trade war.
Bayour City Sludge shows that nobody likes Briscoe Cain.
UT alum Luke Winkie explains Signalgate from the frat boy perspective.
More than half of Democrats in the Texas Senate earlier this week joined Dannie Goeb and all Republicans in supporting SB 990, which gets even more ghoulish about the death penalty in the Pointy Abandoned Object State.
For the unaware, the bill now means that killing a 10-15 year old becomes capital murder, even without another crime. It also gives prosecutors, despite their 96 percent conviction rate on crimes in Tex-ass in general, "enhanced tools." Fourth degree instead of third? It also "closes legal loopholes and gaps." Like, "Hey, he's 9 years, 364 days old, or 15 years, 1 day old?" What stupidity.
Stupidity and concern-trolling and virtue-signaling that 6 of 11 Senate Democrats voted FOR.
Before that, apparently ALL Senate Dems joined Rethuglicans in saying that K-12 public school teachers MUST tell their students about the "unique" evils of Communism.
What? They can't teach both sides, like the Southlake Carroll administrator telling teachers there to talk about "opposing views" on the Holocaust?
In reality, because SB 24 doesn't mention fascism (let alone capitalism) it's virtue signaling on those grounds alone.
It's also virtue signaling, because of what I said yesterday about national-level Democrats, that it doesn't mention Zionism.
Maybe I should be quiet, before Dan-o brings up another bill about Islamo-terrorism.
SocraticGadfly went one better than Court of Criminal Appeals presiding judge David Schenck on real judicial election reform in Texas.
A&M System regents have banned drag shows, and their claiming that part of the reason why is because such shows are anti-woman is specious hypocritical bullshit. That's even as Tranny Dannie Goeb is getting the state Senate to further whack its version of the state budget for higher education, claiming public universities are still too much in thrall to diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
The Observer is right: The Tex-ass Senate's new bail bills will just needlessly jail people who can't afford it.
Per the Monthly (I found a non-paywalled version via Firefox's Pocket several days ago but didn't save it, Dripping Springs shows that both HOAs and exurbanites are deep in Dantean malebolges of hell.
Mike Miles' old Odessa charter school may have cheated, not offering required social studies classes, but giving kids grades. That's a longform from the Observer.
Off the Kuff looked at January campaign finance reports for Houston-are state legislators.
Greg Tepper worries that the school voucher proposal could really harm Texas high school football.
Olivia Julianna believes in vaccines.
Deceleration notes how Elon Musk is boosting climate denialism globally.
The Eyewall worries that the Muskian rampage will halt or even undo progress on hurricane forecasting.
The Observer reports on local law enforcement agencies getting involved with ICE.
In Lege news, the House's proposed version of school vouchers has some differences with the Senate's already-passed bills, including tying voucher funding explicitly to public school funding levels.
Under HB 3, most participating students would receive an amount equal to 85% of what public schools get for each student through state and local funding. That feature is a key difference from the Senate plan, which would provide a set amount of $10,000 to most participating students.
Under the assumption that some sort of voucher bill will pass, I think this is not only good fiscal stewardship but smart management in general. The Senate will officially wear the "anti-public schools" collar if it rejects this. Odds that happens, though? I would still put it at 50-50.
That said, state Rep. Brad Buckley, who authored the House's vouchers bill, could have made the increase in aid to public schools more than the $200 per student he actually did. That's just 3 percent, far below total inflation of the past two years and compounded by the old level itself being inadequate.
This:
Rep. James Talarico of Austin, who is leading House Democrats’ efforts to stop the voucher bill, said the school finance proposal is “wholly inadequate” and does not bring state funding back to the levels of a landmark 2019 education bill when adjusting for inflation. That year, lawmakers increased schools’ base state funding by $1,020 compared to this year’s proposal which would increase it by $220.
Is totally correct.
Can Salado and his jefe, Speaker Dustin Burrows, carry a vouchers bill that doesn't increase public school money more, or will more rural Republicans join 2023 special session flip-floppers like David Spiller?
Buckley also dropped HB 4, calling for an overhaul of STAAR. It's noteworthy that the Texas Senate has passed no such bill.
Is ERCOT right to be worried about the Texas power grid? The Trib says many people claim that's overstated, in part based on new utility use accounting. OTOH, I think counting potential customers as well as actual ones, especially these data centers, is important.
The Texas vs New York reproductive service wars have heated up after a Collin County judge ordered New York doctor Margaret Carpenter to stop prescribing mifepristone etc to Texas resident patients.
Trump's tariffs will drive up beer prices if you buy it in cans not bottles. (That said, the craft breweries the author worries about most usually bottle, not can, don't they? And, she didn't mention beer kegs.)
SocraticGadfly takes a look at Russia-Ukraine issues of the last several days.
Can downtown Dallas be revived? The Monthly ponders that issue in a longform, without being as skeptical-critical of the likes of Ray Washburne as Jim Schutze was in his glory days.
Off the Kuff has the January campaign finance reports for US Senate and Congress.
Trump didn't actually let Eric Adams off the hook. Instead, the NYC mayor is dangling in a creative way.
The TikTok ban? Fueled by Israel, not China.
Learn about the Office of Attending Physician, a concierge health service for Congresscritters, and maybe other gummint insiders, paid for by you and I, and right now, serving as enablers of Congressional dementia and general gerontocracy-itis.
Want to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget? Here's how.
As Musk/Trump attacks FEMA and climate science, the Houston Democracy Project asked why Republican At-Large Councilmember Twila Carter who attended Mattress Mack GOTV rally last October, is Chair of Council Committee that deals with these issues.
Space City Weather sings the praises of a fully operational and un-privatized National Weather Service.
Deceleration criticizes how Texas universities responded to the 2023 anti-DEI law.
The Dallas Observer has what you need to know about Dan Patrick and dick pics.
Your Local Epidemiologist explains what "indirect costs" are in NIH grants.
Lone Star Left reviews House committee assignments.
The Monthly, in my non-paywalled article, reports how Harvey Kronberg, founder of The Quorum Report, is disgusted at the current state of Tex-ass politics. (The Monthly doesn't ask if it's contributed to that at all. Harvey doesn't ask that of himself, either.) The piece is good in noting the state will be hitting some budget caps, that passing them requires a two-thirds vote, and in the House, Dem votes will have to be sought out, giving them some degree of power.
HK: They’ve got two pieces of leverage there. One is that we’re going to be busting budget caps. You need one hundred votes to bust budget caps. The leverage is that it’s going to take two-thirds to do some things, and that—historically, anyway—West Texas Republicans have more in common with South Texas Democrats on most issues than they do with Woodlands Republicans. And that has been the basis of a workable coalition for a long time. Second, the Democrats couldn’t figure out why they should care [about losing chairmanships], because only six or eight were going to be chairs anyway. But Burrows giving them vice-chair authority in the rules, with the ability to set bills, shouldn’t be taken as insignificant.
I disagree on the ranking minority members angle, but, we'll see.
He also thinks Dustin Burrows will be better for the House in general than was McDade Phelan.
Phelan? Wonderful guy; I like him. But when he would go on the floor, he would only go to the frat-boy caucus [a group of younger white, male Republicans]. He never went to Red Square [the part of the chamber where Democratic liberals sit]. He never went to the old farts over by the members’ lounge. One of the responsibilities of a Speaker is to build a community. With Phelan, members never knew what the direction was from management; even if they disagreed with the plan, they didn’t know what it was. The chairmen didn’t feel like they were empowered as much as the frat-boy caucus was. He didn’t have any graybeards in the back hall with him. Now I see the pieces there for Burrows to build a community.We'll see on that one, too.
