SINE DIE 83RD LEGISLATURE.... OH WAIT

Another session of the Texas Legislature is in the books and for the most part it was quite compared to the 82nd Legislature which saw the enactment of the Vaginal Ultrasound Bill, the gutting of education, and the redistricting nightmare that created some odd shaped districts. The redistricting efforts of the previous legislature has consequences as it delayed the primary from its original March date to May. That delay allowed the Tea Party element in the Republican Party to organize around  Ted Cruz and force Lt. Governor David Dewhurst into a runoff where he lost to the now-Senator Ted Cruz.

For the most part, the 83rd Legislature was fairly uneventful and calm compared to the last session. Some of the highlights are as follows:

You had your rallies such as the one foreducation and in support for Planned Parenthood. LGBT Rights activists from across the state (including yours truly) attended Equality Texas's Lobby Day. It wasn't the only LGBT event at the capitol as anti-equality and pro-equality advocates held competing rallies as the Supreme Court was hearing oral arguments concerning Prop 8 and DOMA. Then there were these events between gun law reformers and those who oppose any proposed changes.

The Texas Tribune noted that the Texas House was less combative as it was to the previous session. In part it was due to Republicans losing some strength in that chamber and them recognizing the results from the 2012 Presidential Election, and in state level governance there are better chances for bi-partisanship. Even though Republicans hold a sizable majority in both chambers (House 95-55, Senate 19-12), it wasn't the super strong Tea that was present in the 82nd.

A victory for women happened when not a single one of Texas Republicans' 24 anti-choice bills advanced to the House floor. In part this was again due to what happened nationally, but also Texas Democrats were able to mobilize women (and some men) to take on this issue. State Senator Wendy Davis (D, SD-10) has been a vocal advocate in protecting Texas women's health.

Equality Texas is calling the 83rd Session an "enormous success" as they were able to champion LGBT causes and fight back some of the discriminatory policies proposed by conservative politicians. I credit Rep. Mary Gonzalez (D, HD-75) with her presence in The Lege to advocate that those discriminatory policies hurt people like herself. I also credit Mr. Daniel Williams, Equality Texas's field organizer, for keeping people informed about the going-ons in Austin.

There was also this exchange on twitter between Rep. Matt Krause (R, HD-93) and a person who described himself as a "voter, constituent, and gay" after the representative snuck in an anti-gay measure into a larger bill. The good news is that the measure died in The Lege.

And I think I heard a loud cheer coming from Houston among hearing that a transphobic and rather stupid proposal that would prohibit any person from obtaining a marriage license without a photo I.D. died in committee. One of the sponsors of this bill is my senator, Jane Nelson (R, SD-12).

Other big ticket items was that Democrats were able to fight for was a restoration of some of the $5.4 billion in education cuts that happened last session. State Senators Wendy Davis (there's that name again...) and Sylvia Garcia (D, SD-6) and San Antonio Rep. Mike Villarreal (D, HD- 123). While there are programs at the national level, Texas is doing what they can to help veterans (like myself) ease their transition back to the civilian sector. One of the programs is to make the licensing process easier for veterans who have skills from the military that translate to the civilian sector. Others is strengthening the Hazelwood program and allow veterans to apply for low-interest home mortgage loans and down payment assistance.

The only drama was around the vote to continue the Texas Lottery. At first the State House voted 81-65 to discontinue it... that is until they realized that the lottery covers some of the education bills. The vote was 110-37 in favor of supporting it.

An unnamed observer of what happens at The Lege explained to me this way: say I give you a box and you tell me you don't want it. I take the box away and then I mention that the box has $2 billion in it. I ask you if you want the box....

And apparently six Tarrant County Republican legislators (Capriglione of Southlake, Stickland of Bedford, Zedler of Arlington, and Goldman, Klick, and Krause of Fort Worth) don't want the box with $2 billion in it. Idiots.

There were some issues that the legislature needed to tackle such as water issues considering that even though we are moving towards a highly urbanized state our state's economy is dependent on agriculture and basic biology teaches us that people need water to live. Maybe the state will table it for the next session or use a special session to address that issue and many other pressing issues (such as Medicare Expansion, roads)...

Right....?

Um.......

Nope

Instead Governor Perry in his infinite wisdom has called on a special session to tackle the issue of redistricting.

So far it appears that is the only issue they are tackling. There might be more special sessions to push the radical Tea Party agenda so I am paying close attention to what is going on.

In the 82nd session, redistricting was classified so FUBAR that the courts had to intervene because the maps were so jacked up and it pushed Texas's scheduled primary from March until May. It had an impact on the Republican Primary that bought Tea Party activists time to organize and rally their favorite candidates to victory.

To be honest, my level of knowledge (LOK) is very low on the topic. However.... here is someone who knows a lot about it. Michael Li writes an excellent blog that explains what is going on with Texas Redistricting. I HIGHLY recommend that you bookmark his website and follow him on twitter.

For now it appears that The Lege is going to look at congressional and state house districts. Texas has 36 congressional districts and 150 state house districts. There are many ways how you can divide Texas up among legislative boundaries, but there are rules you have to follow when you do it such as the boundaries must be continuous, they have to have a relatively equal amount of population, and some states such as Texas are subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (there is a case before SCOUTSchallenging this provision). It is unknown if the 31 state senate districts will be up for being redrawn. Again, they are subject to the same rules as the congressional and state house districts.

Honestly, I should have seen this coming. Maybe I was blinded that this was a quiet session. There is always talk of special session every year in The Lege; sometimes it happens, others not. Looking back though.... well, here is a quote that stood out when a Tea Party backed Republican in the Metroplex was asked about his experience as a freshman legislator:

"We haven’t had any pro-life legislation, we haven’t had any immigration legislation, and we’ve spent a whole bunch of money. So I think they would count that as a victory. What Democrats have done best is identify liberal Republicans and have gotten them on board with a bunch of their agenda."

- State Rep. Jonathan Stickland (Dropout R HD-92), 20 May 2013 interview with Fort Worth Star-Telegram

You know.... I thought I would never say this, but State Rep. Stickland is correct.

Well... a broken 24-hour clock is correct once a day.

But yes, he is correct in that a lot of conciliatory and fairly agreeable legislation was passed in the 83rd. For the MOST part The Lege avoided hot button issues. That was until the NRA held its annual convention in Houston early in May and Republicans were salivating at pushing through as many pro-gun bills as possible in order to please them. The State House revived the open carry bill (HB 972) which would allow students with a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) to carry a handgun on their person on a college campus. A compromise was reached that would allow students to carry on campus as long as the weapon is secured in their vehicle.

See... State Rep. Stickland has a problem.. well... he has several such as being voted as one the Worst 5 legislators according to Texas Tribune readers and other issues that are documented here (being a Ron/Rand Paul crank, his feelings on disaster relief, why he shouldn't have to pay taxes because his children don't go to the school system, etc.)

Anyways...

State Rep. Stickland has a problem. He authored 11 bills in the House including the controversial HB 649, The Hobby Lobby Bill which would give companies a tax break for denying their female employees birth control coverage.

How many of Stickland's bills passed?

Tentative #TXLegescorecard for Tarrant's Tea Party Freshman 5: Capriglione 1 bill passed, Goldman 1, Klick 1, Krause zero, Stickland zero.
— Bud Kennedy (@BudKennedy) May 26, 2013

According to the Star-Telegram's Bud Kennedy, a big fat round ZERO.

Stickland came in saying that he was going to be the most conservative voter in the House and that is all fine and dandy. Stickland and other Republicans know they have to satisfy a very rabid base of voters with something (as he stated: pro-life and immigration) or else he will be back doing whatever he was doing before he was elected. And I suspect that it wasn't much.

This special session is nothing more than an opportunity for the very vocal minority of Tea Party Republicans to push forward their agenda and to prevent some legislators from seeing a formidable primary challenger in 2014. State level Republicans know they are going to get hammered on issues such as the budget and not pushing enough of an extreme agenda by their base. Governor Perry knows this too as he is weighing his options on whether he will run for re-election next year. The latest polling shows that the governor is the favorite to win the Republican nomination over Attorney General Greg Abbott who has expressed some interest in the race though there is sentiment among Republicans that it's time for Perry to step out of the spotlight.

The special session should be utilized to focus on the tangible and real issues such as repairing our roads, participating in Medicaid expansion, solving our water issues, improving voter turnout, and other problems that exists with the budget. What the Texas Legislature is involved in is nothing more than political gamesmanship. These redistricting efforts and overall attack on voting rights might serve as a short term victory for Republicans in Texas, but as The Hill put it bluntly:

"(This effort) insults the intelligence, dignity and interests of Hispanic, black and all voters who want to be respected as equal citizens under law, and not abused like the disappeared during the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile."

Though the comparisons to Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile is extremely inflammatory and offensive to those that suffered under his brutal 16-1/2 year rule, these redistricting efforts further marginalizes specific voting groups leading to Texas becoming like a Banana Republic where the democratic process is not only subverted, but highly perverted in order to give one political party a manufactured inflated advantage and depresses opposition voters.

The efforts in The Lege have national implications. As shown in the last presidential election, Republicans cannot win on their ideas. In 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, the Republican candidate has not won the popular vote. The last Republican to win more than 300 electoral votes was George H.W. Bush in 1988when he amassed 426 electoral votes.

Even though the Republicans hold the most seats in the House, they did it by losing the popular vote by a little more than 1.4 million votes. Texas, like most states, delegate the authority of redistricting after the decennial Census to their State Legislature so the boundaries are drawn on the whims on whatever political party is in charge. As shown in 2010, Republicans made gains not just in the House but also at the state level by taking control of a record number of state legislatures not seen in generationsand in some cases (like Texas) having control of both chambers AND the governor's mansion (or in our case, the governor's house in an Austin suburbangated community).

John Boehner should thank Gerrymandering on why he's still holding the Speaker's gavel.

Analysis of the 2012 House elections shows that the only way Democrats could get a majority was to win the House popular vote by more than 7 percentage points and they would hold a slim majority of 5 seats. To put into perspective, Republicans won the 2010 House popular vote by 6.8 points and commanded a 242-193 seat advantage.

So instead of trying to discover better ideas to make their party a bigger tent, Republicans are trying to win the only way they know how: cheat.

This special session on redistricting could finally be the tipping point that pushes Texas from a Republican stronghold to finally a state in play in the presidential election of 2016 and beyond.

State Senator Davis put it best when asked about this special session:

RT @amanbatheja: Wendy Davis on Perry's special session call: "Business as usual, to borrow the phrase y'all have been using" #txlege
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 27, 2013

And sadly, that is what we have.

"Business as usual."

FAREWELL MICHELE BACHMANN

What better way to break the seal for the 2014 Election season than this recently breaking news story....

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (Batcrap Crazy R, MN-6) announced (VERY) early this morning that she is not running for her seat in 2014.

Representative Bachmann has a long documented list of outrageous statements. If I was to list them, it would be the longest post ever and I would never get done.

Think Progress gave us the 8 most outlandish statements in the time Michele Bachmann was in Congress.

Only EIGHT.... man, I thought there would be more than that.

Bachmann is a former tax litigator who was first elected to the Minnesota State Senate in 2000. In 2006, she was elected to Congress during an election that saw Democrats reclaim both chambers for the first time in 14 years. In 2008 she appeared on Hardball to defend the content of robo-calls the McCain-Palin campaign was making as the election season was winding down. In the interview she made the outrageous claims that Democrats and liberals were "unAmerican" and wanted to investigate these claims.

For a moment there I thought I saw the ghost of Joseph McCarthy returning...

During the Obama presidency, Bachmann has been a rallying point for the Tea Party and was one of the founders of this caucus in the House. She opposed ObamaCare, was a staunch opponent to LGBT Rights, and the most shocking... she sits on House Subcommittee on Inteligence. Her husband and she had well documented connections to "Pray-Away-The-Gay" Clinics.

In January 2011 she gave the Tea Party Response to the State of the Union. It was widely ridiculed for being odd that the opposition was given TWO responses to the State of The Union and also that the Congresswoman was LOOKING AWAY FROM THE CAMERA!

Representative Bachmann was part the clown show deep Republican Presidential Primary that took place in 2012. Bachmann suspended her campaign days after a 6th place finish in Iowa, the first caucus of the primary season.

Bachmann ran for Congress in 2012 and escaped with victory by less than 4,300 votes or 1.2 percentage points. By percentage wise, it was her narrowest victory.

A narrow victory such as that might cause a politician to moderate their positions in order to set up for later success, but Bachmann continued her outrageous statements. Her Democratic opponent, Jim Graves, hinted that he will run for her seat in 2014.

Bachmann's presidential campaign is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for campaign finance violations. Former Bachmann campaign staffers told The Daily Beast that the investigation was concerning allegations of improperly transferring funds and under-the-table payments by the campaign. The violations are so severe that they involve an Iowa State Senator and an special prosecutor has been appointed in the case.

And all this time Representative Bachmann was calling for Obama's impeachment....

Me thinks Obama will be in office past January 2015. Unlike her...

There has been talks that Bachmann might run for higher statewide office in Minnesota such as governor or even Senate.

First.... on running for governor, Minnesota became the 12th state to pass a marriage equality measure. I doubt that the good people of the Land of 10,000 Lakes would ever put HER in office because of her anti-LGBT positions.

Second... on running for Senate. Former SNL cast member and writer Al Franken scored a surprising upset victory in his 2008 election. Senator Franken's policies has mirrored that of his constituents and resulted in him being the favorite going into 2014. Public Policy Polling (PPP) gives Franken a 51% favorable rating vs. 42% unfavorable. Franken against all potential candidates is polling 50% or BETTER. His highest rating: Franken 55, Bachmann 38.

My thoughts on this is that everyone and most importantly, her constituents are tired of her antics. Eventually you have to get to governing and House Republicans are more interested in creating crises than governing as shown with their continuing politicizing of the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi. Even after the faux outrage, Obama's polls have IMPROVED as the most recent CNN-ORC pollshows the President's approval numbers jumped from 51% to 53%. Meanwhile the latest Pew Research Center Poll on PollingReport.com shows Congressional Republican's approval ratings at 22% vs. 68% disapprove.

Bachmann and her Tea Party cohorts are one of the many reasons why Congress's Approval Ratings remain in the teens.

I think she knows (or at least her campaign staff) knows what is going on. A potential ethics violation and the amount of nonsense she has put out will cause her (and several other Republicans) to lose. Former Minnesota Governor Arne Carlson (a Republican by the way) posted on his blogin September 2012 about how Bachmann's star was waning within the GOP at the time. He is also critical about how her Presidential campaign led to an increase of recording absent votes. From July 2011 to October 2011, Bachmann missed half of the roll call votes in the House. From October 2011 until January 2012, that number jumped to 90%.

I won't subject you to her announcement video. You can watch it for yourself. It was smart of staff to disable the comments section and that was the only smart thing about this video.

As for her future, she'll probably get absorbed the conservative bubble. She'll end up on Fox News or whatever the conservative media machinery looks like as we gear up for another presidential election. Wouldn't shock me if she writes another book and sells it to her masses on the speakers' circuit. I could see her starting to campaign for Republicans in this cycle and the next one. There's a lot of money and influence to be made in the conservative movement.

Though, this is most likely, and it is from this quote from the 1957 film "A Face in The Crowd" directed Elia Kazan.

Suppose I tell you exactly what's gonna happen to you. You're gonna be back in television. Only it won't be quite the same as it was before. There'll be a reasonable cooling-off period and then somebody will say: "Why don't we try him again in a inexpensive format. People's memories aren't too long."

And you know, in a way, he'll be right. Some of the people will forget, and some of them won't. Oh, you'll have a show. Maybe not the best hour or, you know, top 10. Maybe not even in the top 35. But you'll have a show. It just won't be quite the same as it was before.

Then a couple of new fellas will come along. And pretty soon, a lot of your fans will be flocking around them. And then one day, somebody'll ask: "Whatever happened to, a, whatshisname? You know, the one who was so big. The number-one fella a couple of years ago. He was famous. How can we forget a name like that?"

"Oh by the way, have you seen, a, Barry Mills? I think he's the greatest thing since Will Rogers."

- Mel Miller (played by Walter Matthau)

Anyways, Representative Bachmann, this video is dedicated to you:

MEMORIAL DAY 2013

OUTBREAK

The Great Plains recently experienced an outbreak of tornadoes stretching from as far south as Texas to as far north as Missouri. This is not uncommon for this time of year as you have cold dry air from the Rockies combine with warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico followed by warm dry air from the southwest that create strong thunderstorms that produce heavy rains, large hail, high winds, and if the weather conditions are ripe enough they spawn tornadoes.

Even though tornadoes have been recorded in all 50 states at various times of the year, this region of the country sees a higher number of these types of storms due to the weather conditions during the spring months that it earned the name Tornado Alley. It stretches from as far north as South Dakota to as far south as Central Texas and encompasses such metropolitan areas as Kansas City, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Wichita Falls, Waco, and the largest one: the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Yes, I live in this region. I cannot count how many times regularly scheduled evening programming was preempted with a breaking news bulletin as the local weather person shows on the Doppler radar where the severe weather is and the affected counties scroll at the bottom of the screen.

In April 1994 a tornado tore through the south Dallas suburbs of DeSoto and Lancaster destroying over 500 homes and killing 4 people. The storm happened at night and the tornado was difficult to spot. When daylight broke, you saw the damage and the path the tornado took. I still remember the destruction that the local news showed from the air.

Mayfest in Fort Worth is an annual event, but the 1995 edition is remembered for the super cell thunderstorm that appeared without warning that produced hail as large as 4 inches in diameter. What was to be the Fort Worth community celebrating the onset of the warmer months, it turned into a nightmare. People were leaving the event crying and bloodied. 90 people were treated for injuries ranging from broken bones, lacerations, and deep bruises. As the storm headed east from Fort Worth, drivers on I-30 did their best to seek shelter under bridges but those that couldn't unfortunately had their windows smashed by hail stones.

I remember my then-72 year old grandfather standing outside in the torrential rain as the storm crossed into Irving. He was a Navy man who survived World War II, Korea, and Vietnam so that storm was probably nothing to him.

The 1995 Mayfest storm claimed 13 lives due to flooding and cost $1 billion in damages. For the longest time it was the costliest hailstorm in US history.

Then there was the 2000 tornado that cut through downtown Fort Worth...

In this recent outbreak, there was a tornado that struck southwest of Fort Worth in Granbury that killed 6 people and injured a dozen last week. On Monday an EF-5 tornado tore through Moore, OK located halfway between Oklahoma City and Norman on I-35. Recovery efforts are currently underway. Already the Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed the 24 people were killed; 9 of them children as two elementary schools were in the path in the tornado's 1.3 mile-wide path that traveled 17 miles in 50 minutes.

Part of the reason why surviving tornadoes has improved in my lifetime is because we have invested into research programs into how to improve tornado survival. In her interview segment of her show on Tuesday Night, Rachel Maddow interviewedresearch professor Larry Tanner of the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX. These people find ways to make buildings more structurally sound through studies in mathematics, science, and material design properties. They test their ideas by shooting two-by-fours and other projectiles to simulate debris flying through a tornado, record the results, and find ways to their results better.

In my lifetime it is amazing how weather forecasting has improved. It used to be that storm warnings were issued for an entire county but now we have pinpoint accuracy on when the storm will reach your home at street level. The persons affected by the Moore, OK tornado had 16 minutes to get to shelter. That amount of warning time saved several lives to allow people time to get into shelters.

Weather forecasting and construction research takes money and most importantly people who are willing to study these topics.

Recently the federal government administered a self-inflicted wound called the sequesterwhich was across the board budget cuts. One of those agencies that suffered these cuts was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which oversees the National Weather Service (NWS). The sequester lopped off 8.2% from NOAA's budget, instituted an across-the-board hiring freeze, and four days of mandatory furloughs are up ahead for this agency.

There is a debate over whether climate change played a role in this tornado. Over the last decade there have been six least active tornado seasons and four most active tornado seasons. Is this a sign of changing weather patterns where there are strong push and pulls? Perhaps but it appears that the climate change label is being applied to a totally different phenomena. It's one thing to apply it to hurricanes, droughts, and blizzards, but tornadoes are their own phenomena.

Again, I cite my own experience having lived in Texas for most of my life. We've had all kinds of storms; some produced tornadoes, others just a lot of rain and wind.

Harold Brooks, a top researcher at the National Weather Center in Norman, OK, was quoted in a 15 March 2013 USA Today article that: "It's hard to predict future tornado seasons when we don't understand current tornado seasons. We're not sure what's going to happen with the tornado numbers."

I note the large metropolitan areas that are in Tornado Alley. Again, the largest one out of those areas is the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with (according to 2012 estimates) 6.7 million people. We saw a jump in our population between the Census counts of 2000 and 2010 that the area gained an extra representative in the US House. It was one of the four additional congressional districts that Texas got after the 2010 Census.

People are moving to this area for a lot of reasons. We need to ensure that we are funding research and drawing people in who have an interest in this field to improve our weather forecasting techniques along with designing and constructing buildings that are resistant to these types of tornadoes.

Lives are at stake.

#TWEET10K

This post is my 10,000th Tweet on Twitter.

It's like watching the odometer on my car reach 100,000 miles.

Kinda hard to describe this occasion in under 140 characters. I'd say most of the tweets are from me linking my Facebook with my Twitter account and vice versa and posting that information.

I post a wide variety of information. Mostly news, political commentary, sports, favorite youtube videos, stuff I write.... well, you know.... Y'all follow me on this blog and the various outlets that the Watts News Network has in communicating the message.

What is the message you ask?

We live in a very unique time where social media has earned a place with conventional forms of media: television, radio, and print. Despite the centralization of media sources by a small number of persons with various interests, there is still a Balkanization of our media. I believe that Chris Hayes's book "Twilight of The Elites" points out this very idea. A lot of the media I get is from opening up my Facebook page and seeing what my friends are posting, sharing, and commenting on. Twitter is good about showing what stories are trending and categorizing them.

This idea of a new media outlet infiltrating traditional media is nothing new in the short time humans occupied the planet. Drawing and written words revolutionized record keeping in early human history as they formed communities. Moveable type expanded access to information, decreased the amount of time to produce, and thus increasing the amount of information readily available. Newspapers fueled the American Revolution, Civil War, and Spanish-American War. Lincoln learned election results via the telegraph. Coolidge was the first to give a State of the Union over the radio. In 1947, Truman did it over television. Fifty years later, Clinton was the first to deliver a State of the Union over the internet. Today President Obama's weekly address is offered over an iTunes podcast and YouTube posting.

I still watch the television news though I am disappointed in the decline of quality in local news broadcast in my lifetime and only rely on it for local weather.

We still have newspapers though due to the changing business dynamic of the industry many have gone to online subscriptions and have hired bloggers to cover various issues. Someone shared with me a story about Veterans Issues and what the Texas Legislature (or "The Lege" as we call it in Texas) is doing to help my community out but because I don't have a subscription I can't read it.

I follow what "The Lege" has been doing to help us out because I follow State Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D, SD-26) on twitterand her legislative Facebook page. She's serves as Chair of the Veteran Affairs and Military Installations Committee in the State Senate. Maybe that story has something that I missed in the time period that I am not on social media (like the times that I am in class, reading a book, driving and running errands, sleeping, taking a break from the internet, or like right now... doing some writing). I have my limits after all I am human. Sometimes things fall through the cracks and I do what I can to better educate myself on that topic and item I did not catch.

Speaking of newspapers, even though their dynamic is different than what I grew up with as a child, they still publish letters. I read the letters in the Star-Telegram and Dallas Morning News (and I've been published in those papers). If I need a chuckle, I'll read what's in the Denton Record Chronicle.

All and all, I feel that my contribution on twitter (though small in the grand scope of humanity) is part of documenting history.

Think about it? Someone might study my tweets and Facebook posts a century, maybe two centuries from now as part of a study of Early Social Media Studies.*

(* Provided that we don't destroy ourselves due to global climate change, submitting to our new space ant overlords, or we send astronauts to that HORRIBLE Planet of The Apes.... wait a second)

Again, I thank my small cult band of followers and I look forward to another 10,000 tweets.

WHO SHOULD'VE SPOKEN