#Harvey catastrophe final roundup

The Houston-area damages from Hurricane Harvey happened in large part because of bad politics in Houston and Harris County, followed by some in the state of Texas. Unfortunately, at least one semi-prominent pseudoskeptic in greater Houston wants to double down on that politically conservative state of mind.

That same politics is exemplified in the US Senate by Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both of whom voted against Superstorm Sandy aid but immediately had their hands out for Harvey help, with Cruz then doubling down on bad manners and ill grace by attacking President Trump for making a deal with Democrats not to link Harvey help to a long-term debt ceiling move.

Could an IkeDike have helped? Besides the fact that it only addresses storm surges, not rainfall-caused flooding, it appears to be a massive boondoggle of the military-industrial complex. It's something that should not be seen as a solution, or even a plausible idea.

Could Houston and Harris County have a better plan for evacuations? Possibly. It at least needs further discussion. Because, storm surge or not, rain-induced flooding, even from less than fully big ones, is going to be an ongoing problem there.

And, maybe part of the problem is that Houston, along with other disaster-prone urban conglomerations, simply has too many people there. Decarbonizing the economy, along with the federal government not favoring right-to-get-fired states, would help with Houston, but not other places.

(And, this hasn't even touched the issue of community, state and federal enforcement of existing floodplain building and rebuilding rules.)

Meanwhile, I, with other Texans, wish the best for Floridians post-Irma. Miami has done some mitigation that Houston has not, but at the state level, it's run by a wingnut governor.

And, Presient Trump's St. Martin property being badly damaged, and Mar-A-Lago at least moderately so, still won't likely lead him to admit the reality of climate change, speaking of Irma.

Maybe there's too damn many people there

Per my post last week about Harvey-related evacuation of Houston, if Houstonians and others think that, even with an orderly, Ike-type evacuation, you still couldn't evacuate the whole city in this case, let alone in a fictitious Hurricane Isaiah, then there's one logical conclusion.

There's too damned many people living in greater Houston. (Until you get politicians who fire climate change deniers and stand up to developers, at least.)

The problem's not just there.

If a Superstorm Sandy gets supersized, I know there's too damned many people living in Manhattan.

And — with note that, due to lack of predictiveness, this would be post-event only — if the next Big One hits San Francisco and not the East Bay, I know there's too damned many people living there, too.

With places like the Bay Area, even before the tech/Net boom, it was the scenery. With Manhattan, it was Big Money — and an interesting sidebar that the Net world, rather than increasing remote working, seems instead to have fueled the desire for Big Money to cluster in the Big Apple.

In Phoenix, even before the housing bubble burst, the healthful dry desert air instead became converted to a smoggy urban heat island, with people half-afraid to be caught outside of air conditioning. Add in rapidly depleting groundwater, the Colorado River system being over-allocated, and there's too many there. (Unfortunately, besides bailing out fat cats, Dear Leader didn't use the Great Recession to get people in Phoenix and Vegas to move back to where water is in exchange for surrendering their "underwater" houses.)

Houston? In part, the "energy industry," even though the Houston area itself is no longer a major producer of crude oil, just refined products. And, the energy companies with world, North American, or US headquarters there, really aren't tied there.

Now, if you freely choose to live in some of these places, as in you weren't born there without reasonable means of escape, or your job didn't transfer you there, fine. Accept the natural disasters as part of the price of living there.

And, in the case of places like the Bay Area and Manhattan, accept that blue states or locales actually have more income inequality than red states. In short, if you're trying to live in San Francisco on a shoestring job, you made that choice, even aside from the natural disasters issue.

Obama, #DACA and #hypocrisy shattered Dreamers

Yeah, I saw Obama call out Trump yesterday on wanting to end DACA.

But, how many of you knew that Obama deported more people than any other president? That he deported more than all 20th-century presidents combined?

Snopes tries to get Obama off the hook by saying this was in part due to a change in definition. It then undercuts itself by admitting this happened under Bush, but doesn't say exactly when, or what his stats were. This is one of those clear cases where Snopes, moving from narrow skepticism fact-checking to political analysis, fails. (Obama passed Bush by 750,000.)

And, if part of it was due to other legislative changes, Snopes, did Obama try to veto any of it? This is the man who kept the "Bush tax cuts" in place, after all.

Otherwise, quick Googling of the mainstream media shows poor data there on the main stories trying to compare Obama and Bush.

I am going to make what is, I think, a reasonable assumption, that the change in numbers of full, fingerprinted deportations vs turnarounds, and any definitional changes, started not too long after 9/11, and therefore, covered most of Shrub's presidenncy.

Therefore, at a minimum, with apples to apples for most of their presidencies, suffice it to say that Obama was at least as bad as Bush, I am very sure, and still probably worse. (If I generously say the two administrations were 80 percent apples-to-apples, Obama still deports 200,000 more.)

So why the sudden concern for DACA and the Dreamers?

Guilty conscience?

I doubt it.

Legacy?

Maybe.

He should be guilty for abandoning state and Congressional Dems in 2010. But, I'm not a Dem.

Anyway, I think that Obama created DACA by executive order precisely to let him get away with deporting more adults, at least as one part of the idea behind that.

You read that right.

Hence my header.

But why?

To appear tough on crime? But, he didn't make that part of his re-election platform.

So, ultimately, I don't know.

I just know he comes off as a hypocrite on this issue.

And, sure, he was facing the tail end of a Shrub Bush spike in illegal immigration, but it declined, modestly, under his own administration. Per that Pew link, more of them were long-term residents in the US, 10 or more years, especially from Mexico, which makes their deportation even worse.

Plus, more and more were from south of Mexico, escaping places like chronically right-wing wracked Guatemala, or the Honduras of the Obama-Clinton coup of 2009. (I originally called it a non-coup, then a semi-coup, then a coup, per Wiki.)

#Harvey and evacuations

Many Houstonians, including friend Brains and a college classmate of mine, whenever the issue of Harvey evacuations was raised, adamantly sided with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett vs. Gov. Greg Abbott.

They insisted, all while referring to the clusterfucked Hurricane Rita evac, that such a thing couldn't be done.

First, a sidebar. Per one Tweeter, despite the fact he's so anti-gummint he doesn't like the Americans with Disabilities Act, it's possible, whether true compassion or simple rationality, that Abbott's physical condition was a motivator in his thought.

That said, was he wrong?

First of all, let's remember that three years after Rita, and apparently learning from it, Houston-Galveston had a relatively orderly — given the situation — evacuation from Ike. Not all the city, but targeted low-lying areas, as well as Galveston.

Yes, I know people jumped the gun on Ike, and it wasn't as orderly as it could be. But, adequate law enforcement helps. Use the National Guard if necessary. Given an evacuation ultimately affects more than a local area, the gov (Perry then, now Abbott) should be calling it up ASAP anyway.

Harvey had even more rain, so I don't know if that could have been done as well as with Ike, but it's at least possible.

And, per the NYT, others are asking why not an Ike-like partial evacuation?

So, at a minimum, comments here (or if I post to Facebook) that ignore the Ike evacuation will be deleted. Period. You can criticize the Ike evacuation, but to say nothing but "look at Rita" doesn't fly.

Second, having started on this piece on Monday, even as regional public safety officials were going door-to-door in selected neighborhoods, couldn't greater Houston at least had "evacuation in place" plans already started? As in, having designated shelters, or volunteer shelters, in Houston's highest, relatively least flood-prone areas, already set up? And then, mass evac people from the worst neighborhoods there, earlier?

Of course it could have.

I mean, Fort Bend County ordered a mandatory evac of selected areas early Monday afternoon.

At the same time, per my post on Harvey and politics, isn't this yet another reason to "vote YOUR rascals out" in Houston and Harris County? (I know Brains didn't vote for Emmett, and if he voted for Turner in the city runoff, it was while holding his nose.)

"Evacuation in place" would also, at least partially, address the issue of people who can't afford to evacuate.

TX Progressives salute those who labor through Harvey relief

The Texas Progressive Alliance suggests a donation to the United Way Houston Relief Fund, or other reputable agency (do not put the Red Cross at the top of that list) to help everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey as it brings you this week's roundup. It also hopes that, even — or especially — if you had to work Labor Day, or if you were lucky enough to have off, you remember what the day is really about — and how the Republicans continue to gut it and Democrats continue to go along.

And with that, this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff celebrated the federal court ruling that halted enforcement of the "sanctuary cities" ban before it went into effect.

SocraticGadfly, from up in North Texas, offers his take on both the politics behind Harvey, and pseudoskeptics, including an alleged actual skeptic in Houston, the politics behind Harvey everything behind the Arkema explosions.

After getting his 91-year old mother out of the calamity that Harvey left behind in Beaumont, PDiddie at Brains and Eggs collected some observations about the looming environmental catastrophes threatening the Texas Gulf coast.

Lewisville Texan Journal, also up in North Texas, noted how hoarding by Metroplex-area drivers was exacerbating post-Harvey gas supply and price issues.

South East Texas soil, air and water are awash in toxic chemicals thanks to deregulation by Trump and Abbott. Trump's gutting of the EPA ensures that the destruction and suffering will have the maximum effect.  CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme wishes each of them could experience all of the suffering they are causing themselves.

Neil at All People Have Value said you don't have to be "Houston Strong" regarding Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey if you don't want to be. Do what you need to do to move forward. APHV is part of NeilAquino.com.

Dos Centavos thinks Trump's planned gutting of DACA and lack of care for Dreamers could be an election issue in 2018 and 2020.

Millard Fillmore talks about patriotic flag-flying for Labor Day.

Jobsanger says "remember the unions."

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

Space City Weather, which got some well-earned national attention for its coverage of Harvey, assures us we will get though this.

It's Not Hou It's Me shared their pictures of high water around town.

Katharine Shilcutt found the helpers.

Therese Odell rounded up more examples of Harvey heroism.

Lone Star Ma made it through Harvey in Corpus Christi.

Dan Solomon mourns for Port Aransas.

TransGriot knows that a general evacuation of the Houston metro area would have been an unmitigated disaster.

Maggie Gordon documents the effort to save the Waugh Street Bridge bat colony during the height of the flooding.

The Overhead Wire explains why the lack of zoning in Houston had little to do with Harvey-related flooding.

The Lunch Tray details how to help Houston school kids.

Raise Your Hand Texas discusses how school districts affected by Harvey are coping.

Juanita calls your attention to a couple of folks feeding people who need it in Fort Bend.

BeyondBones tells you what you need to know about floatinf gire ant mounds (spoiler alert: stay away).

Better Texas Blog answers your questions about Harvey and health care coverage.

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Angelia Griffin begs you to choose the things you donate to disaster relief carefully.

"Happy" #LaborDay, including words for the #TrumpTrain and unions

Income inequality and economic immobility both continue to grow, even as Speaker Paul Ryan tells easily refuted lies about the latter.

How did this happen?

A mix of many factors.

One is not directly economic, but the general cowing of workers through courts siding with businesses in stripping away workplace civil liberties is a psychological factor. And, other than in rare cases like Ledbetter, where it's actual discrimination, not civil liberties in general, many Democrats have gone along.

Just as Democratic presidents, while not actually working to gut the National Labor Relations Board, generally declined to reverse gutting by their Republican predecessors.

On income inequality, people still don't talk about how bad it's gotten. For the US as a whole, it's as bad as Mexico. That may be another reason fewer Mexicans are coming to the US. (A greater and greater portion of Hispanic illegal immigrants are from Central America.)

An article by the NYT, claiming that $16.60/hour would be the same in Rochester, New York, as in the Bay Area, leaves it halfway pulling its punches on this issue.

It is right — but doesn't push on it hard enough — that allowing companies to designate more people as contractors is another problem. Republicans encouraged this one, too, and Democrats generally acquiesced, until Obama tried to take too big of a bite back at one time, and too late in his administration.

The biggest problem, in many ways? Organized labor.

The Carpenters and AFL-CIO heads both sitting on Trump's business council? Nothing new. Remember Nixon's hardhats in the early 1970s? Reagan Democrats? (A full 22 percent of them went for Reagan in his first election, and 34 percent of them who thought civil rights was moving too fast.) Andy Stern's suck-ups to big biz of the previous decade? 

Goes back before that.

Maybe as far as Haymarket. US organized labor was in general, at that time, more bourgeoisie than its European counterparts. And, Haymarket, Bethlehem Steel and Ludlow coal world incidents aside, more willing to play ball. The American presidential-driven, duopoly-based political system, by helping shut out a political party that might be labor-specific, was a related problem.

But organized labor itself was often part of the problem.

Yes, Debs' railway union and Bridges' longshoremen were color-blind, as well as having stiffened spines, but AFL unions before the rise of the CIO? And even somewhat after that?

Not.

Sure, Jacobin can point at Communists working to help blacks and whites organize together in the South in the 1930s, but that's the exception that proves the rule. Long before that, black workers were used as strikebusters in urban areas North, Midwest and South. Having often been shut out of organized labor by whites, having been opposed in the workforce by white laborers, at best, they often felt they had little choice; at worst, they likely felt smoldering resentment.

(The next time the likes of Jacobin writes an "it's all classism and never racism" piece, ask them how many black faces they can find in, say, pictures from the Flint strikes of the late 1930s. In my opinion, it's intellectually dishonest to try to gloss over the history of racism in organized labor, or to try to reduce racism to classism in nearly every instance — and that goes for people beyond Jacobin.)

Mainstream AFL-CIO unionism would shoot itself in the foot in other ways, or if not direct foot-shooting, undermine broader politically left issues.

It was the third leg, along with the AMA and big business, in opposing Harry Truman when he made the first serious push for national health care in the US.

It cooperated willingly with the CIA in helping establish anti-Communist sham unions outside the country, especially in South America.

Many of its leaders, as well as members (those hardhats), virulently opposed antiwar efforts in the Vietnam War — and later.

In industries like autos, its members believed the whisperings of the ownership class about job loss fears and stridently opposed the environmentalist movement as it grew in the 1970s.

Much (but certainly not all) of organized labor has slouched toward Gomorrah for decades.

That said, so has the American workforce that is not unionized.

Class-conscious in a way that the Paul Ryans of the world won't admit publicly, but surely push to enhance privately, for many gray-collar and tech-collar employees, "union" remains a dirty word.

The labor movement in America, inside and outside unions, isn't going to get better until these things happen:
1. Democrats stop nominating neoliberal candidates / or Greens start breaking through with labor voices

2. Union leaders stop willingly being co-opted by Republican leaders and business leaders

3. More workers indicate their willingness to look beyond the Democratic Party and beyond organized labor if 1 and 2 don't happen.