Western wildfires, firsthand

Having coming from California, and firsthand through some smaller wildfires, and ground zero for fighting a biggie, the Rough, I have a new appreciation for the work and cost.

The Rough Fire had a 50-acre command and living center. No, that's not hyperbole.

I was able to leave Sequoia National Park the first night the northern entrance-exit, via Fresno, reopened. Kings Canyon National Park, including the General Grant Grove, remained closed. (I had hoped to go hiking in the actual Kings Canyon portion of the park, but that remained very closed.)

About halfway to Fresno, I drove through the command center for fighting the Rough Fire. It was a vast sprawl of tents (firefighters live in them, and they're usually sleeping in shifts), gear and equipment, vehicles — both personal to drive to a fire site and official firefighting vehicles, supply vehicles for food, fuel, additional firefighting gear and clothes, etc., and more.

And, for the hundreds, even thousands, of actual firefighters and support that are involved with suppression of a Western wildfire that big, it takes 40-50 acres to hold them all.

And, that whole area smelled like a massive barbecue restaurant.

Carpenter ants in Yosemite/Steve Snyder

Later, in Yosemite, the Butte Fire was more knocked down, and I didn't come across too much in the way of smoke problems from it. The Tenaya Fire didn't affect Upper Yosemite too much. But, the National Park Service had a couple of lightning-started fires it had already controlled, and was managing them, as a burn tool, rather than killing them. The carpenter ants at left are grubbing through the Yosemite Fire, near the top of what is putatively Yosemite Creek, but was pretty much dry as a bone. (One pothole a mile east, in the drainage of what NPS maps show as a Yosemite tributary, had a bucket or two of water.)

And, as anybody who follows the West knows, our federal firefighting budget in western lands has skyrocketed. And, they know why. Climate change.

Screw the deniers. And screw the Associated Press who now says it's officially impolite to call them deniers.

Shell, oil prices, drilling, #txlege and budgeting

First, it looks like my poll for the quarter ending today was way wrong, though no more wrong than paid oil analysts, on average. Averaging votes, you and I said oil would be around $58-59 a barrel at the end of the month. And, we were off by, oh, only about $15 a barrel, per the latest numbers from Oil-Price.net.

Meanwhile, that same slump has caused Shell to pull back from Arctic drilling. Shed no tears, though; the oil giant will be back when oil gets above ... $70 a barrel, venturing on them holding on for a little while before premature withdrawal.

It's also caused greed machine Chesapeake to finally face the need for layoffs.

As for what's ahead for the coming quarter? Your guess is as good as mine, so I'll have a new poll up for those guesses. Let's just say that price points will be about $5 lower.

Meanwhile, our state's urban Jethro Controller, Glenn Hegar, is probably still masturbating his rosy scenario on the Texas budget, even as the falloff could be staggering — 13 percent in the Eagle Ford, 7 percent in the Permian. That much less drilling means fewer double cab pickups sold; fewer new houses bought; fewer remodelings; fewer fancy restaurant dinners; etc., etc. And, all of that means fewer sales tax dollars for Hegar's state treasury. Since the state has lost nearly 30,000 oil jobs this year, this continued slump in sales taxes is not an unrealistic scenario.

As for when things will pick up? Chris Tomlinson refers to U.S. oilmen who say the price needs not to get above $60, but above $70, or higher yet, for major investment in the American oil patch to pick up again. Per his piece, if $80 is really the threshold, that means waiting until the next decade.

Is our urban Jethro listening?

The AP tanks on climate change

In the biggest newspaper industry clusterfuck since refusing to use the word "torture" for torture, lest it be accused of taking sides, the Associated Press has said that "climate change skeptic" and "climate change denier" are both OUT.

"Doubter" is the official modifier.

However, this is itself taking the side of deniers.

It's just like not using the word "torture" to describe tortures that military and civilian representatives of the United States committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And AP knows that. This is an issue of "legacy journalism." Sometimes, using particular language requires "taking sides" in an issue that has largely been settled scientifically (this) or otherwise empirically (torture).

And, if AP doesn't have the balls to do that, it can slide downhill along with individual legacy newspapers and other legacy properties.

And, of course, it has, for 20 years, since good old Dean Singleton was the chairman of AP's board, and started its clusterfuck on the business side. (Deano was a primary touter of the "TV model" of revenue for online newspapers, which of course was horribly wrong, including ignoring that, already in the 1990s, not only had cable TV been around for multiple decades, but pay cable channels like HBO had been around for a decade or more.) And, it's always fun to kick Singleton and his alleged newspaper business genius. (I've met him before.)

Unfortunately, when conservative pundits claiming to be reporters engage in philosobabble over this, the AP will continue to think it has to appease, yes, appease, "both sides."

TX Progressives talk about bad business, campaign finance, more

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes that everyone made it through the blood moon apocalypse all right as it brings you this week's roundup. (Assuming we're all still here to read it, and we've not been sent by John Hagee or other wingnut to the pits of their personal hell.)

Off the Kuff comments on the first poll of Texas we've seen in awhile.

Libby Shaw at Texas Kaos and contributing to Daily Kos notes that George P. Bush is a predictable clone of his father and uncle.  It's all about him and his cronies.  Texans should be wary.  George P. Bush: A Chip Off of the Old Block.

SocraticGadfly has a two-fer on Texas-related big business smackdowns. First, he compares VW to Blue Bell, without being sure who loses more in that. Second, after yet ANOTHER recent flight delay, he bitches about Southwest becoming more and more just another legacy airline.

With seven million bucks to spend and a Houston mayoral race that's putting people's feet to sleep, the Houston Chronic excitedly reports that the campaign air wars are about to begin.  PDiddie at Brains and Eggs points out that this is just one of the signs of a dysfunctional political system.

Neil at All People Have Value took a picture in Downtown Houston that suggested the important place of just plain luck in our lives. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

It may not generate much press during this election cycle, but Texas Leftist has been seeing the signs of a growing challenge for the Houston region. We are now in an affordable housing crisis that is likely to worsen in the coming years.


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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Eric Berger shows us what Sunday's lunar eclipse would have looked like if we saw it from the moon.

Offcite reports from Parking Day in Houston.

Greg Wythe wonders when the campaign for Houston Mayor will begin.

Glenn Smith notes that the late Yogi Berra was a beneficiary of birthright citizenship, which many Republicans like Ted Cruz would like to rescind.

Mean Green Cougar Red recalls Hurricane Rita.

I have found a newspaper worse than any in Texas

By "worse," I'm not referring to editorial content, op-ed stances or anything like that.

I'm referring to worse financially.

Back in the good old days, pre-financial bubble, pre-housing bubble, pre-auto sales bubble, and before Net 2.0 caught on too much, papers still hoped to have as much as 50 percent of their print content to be ads. They definitely targeted 40 percent, with the understanding that, way back then, even before the Advance chain cut back on delivery on these days, that some days, like Mondays, were slow for ads.

Well, regular readers have seen me bust the Austin American-Statesman in the chops for being as low as 10 percent adhole on Mondays.

And, in the online world, they've seen me slap the Dallas Morning News repeatedly for its digital misadventures, including starting a paywall then killing it.

(I know the Houston Chronicle has a paywall; I don't know what its print adhole usually is.)

Well, I have seen a paper that combines the worst of both worlds.

The San Francisco Chronicle.

Like the Snooze, it has no paywall, and it went down a similar road: It had a "premium" version at one time, then junked that.

Its adhole? Even worse than the Statesman's.

Just 8 percent on a Tuesday, which is not as slow an ad day as a Monday. Just 16 percent on Wednesday, which is definitely not as slow an ad day. Just 42 pages on a Wednesday as a result, for a paper in a major metro area with a vibrant economy.

Seems like Hearst needs to do an Advance, or something.

That said, Anschutz's wingnut San Francisco Examiner, if it's still around, has to be a money bleeder even worse.

That said, this was a "three-star" issue out in Red Bluff, California; I've been told that in-Bay issues have a higher ad percentage. That said, given that Red Bluff (up on the Sacramento River in northern California) is a lot closer to Sacto than San Fran, why is the Chronicle even circulating out there, weak adhole or not?

Southworst: Just another legacy airline

I am becoming more and more convinced of the fact that Southwest, if not yet fully a "legacy" airline, is becoming more and more like one.

Its vaunted hedging on fuel prices has backfired with the current oil glut. Even before that, many of its flights were only a few dollars cheaper than other airlines, even with the allowance for free checked bags.

And, even before Herb Kelleher fully handed over the reins to Gary Kelly, when I still lived in Dallas, it got a massive fine from the FAA for poor maintenance records, documentation, and possible actual poor maintenance history, as I note here (unauthorized parts) and here (the biggie) and here (the Blue Bell-like length of knowing about this). Southworst got fined $10M over that, but bitched enough to get it reduced to $7.5M. (And allegedly may have had a death threat against the wife of a whistleblower.)

After Herb let go of the reins, it muffed taking over Frontier because of shoddiness.

I have finally gotten to enjoy and use some vacation time, and for the second trip in a row, Southwest has had a delayed flight.

(And, I now realize, going through this blog, that Southworst flew me late back in 2009.)

So, editing a direct message on Twitter to Southworst?

Next spring, you will NOT be my first choice. I'll see who's available from Bush instead of Hobby, or even with a multi-stop flight, but closer to me, my options from Shreveport. (Actually, my flight out to LA was delayed 15 minutes, so, really, 3 of my last 4 flights have been delayed on these last two vacations.)

Oh, and after learning of the delay by calling on my cell phone (after your sucky voice recognition couldn't recognize "Los Angeles") I was TWICE disconnected when it attempted to transfer me to an agent.

The first longer delay, on my summer vacation? Plane mechanical problem. In its email alert for the 45-minute delay on my flight of later today, Southworst has no explanation. Since this is the first leg of this flight, I wonder if it's having to shuffle planes. (A Twitter reply confirms maintenance issues.) And so, at some point, given some of its past history, this now becomes a safety issue. Especially since the FAA fined it just two months ago over aircraft maintenance.

In turn, that follows on a 2014 fine of $12 million for failure to follow FAA compliance. As one would expect, Southworst is fighting this one, too, claiming it was just a single plane involved. Per my blog post at the time, the FAA said not true.

I told the person who responded to my DM it wasn't his fault. It's, rather, the fault of a company that has rested on its laurels for a decade.

Oh, and the myth that Southwest is better than others at on-time percentage? Not even close. It's near the bottom. And, no, the AirTran acquisition didn't make that worse; AirTran was better than pre-merger Southwest.

But, let's not blame all this on current CEO Gary Kelly. If I'm puncturing balloons, it's Kelleher's, not just Southworst's. Given that the maintenance issues go back before 2005, that's on his watch. That said, ugh that Kelly serves on the president's jobs competitiveness council.

But, things have gotten worse under Kelly. The on-time rate is worse. The maintenance problems are worse. The falsifying of maintenance records is almost totally on his watch. The fighting of FAA fines for this is all his.

Hell, at least Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn had the decency to step down (perhaps to avoid the board there canning him). Last week, I compared VW's FarMoreSmogging to Blue Bell's Triple Listeria Swirl, and wondered which is worse. Well, Kevin Kruse hasn't stepped down at the privately-run Blue Bell, either. Maybe it's something in the Texas business waters.

Honestly, I'd like to hear these words out of Kelly's mouth, and not to me personally, but in an AP story:

Dear customers of Southwest in particular and airline passengers in general: 

I can't deny it. Southwest as an airline has gotten worse in the last decade. Our on-time rate has gotten both absolutely worse and comparatively worse versus other airlines. Our maintenance problems have sadly gained national renown. 

I intend to address this as part of a new legacy at Southwest. To better focus on this, I intend to step down as chairman of the board. I also hope to find my successor as Southwest's CEO as part of this focus on addressing our decade's worth of problems.

Sadly, I'll never hear even the first paragraph, let alone the second.

(As noted by the Houston Chronicle, because of an ad in its pages, while it's long on PR and short on specifics, United just did something exactly like I'm suggesting.)

To me, Southwest is kind of like Apple. Some people think that because they're different, they're automatically special, and better. And that's not true. And, I invite people to be more skeptical. That's why I posted the link to Southworst's on-time rate, so that it wouldn't just be my anecdotal claims.

Finally, speaking once more of the FAA.

Fifteen minutes (or a few more) on the tarmac isn't enough to trigger official action from the FAA. But, given that we were already running nearly an hour late (not 45 minutes), it was enough to trigger me emailing the FAA. I have gotten an official acknowledgement email back. Again, it may not be enough to mean anything. But, given Southworst's ongoing history of FAA fines, and refusal to pay FAA fines, and the fact that I mentioned my delays were all aircraft-related, not weather-caused, maybe it will mean something.

That said, I'm not a blanket Southwest hater.