Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas. Show all posts

Thursday, February 18, 2021

The Perfect Winter Storm: Texas, Arctic Cold and Power Outages

by Nomad

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The huge winter storm that swept across the southern US has killed at least 21 in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, North Carolina and Missouri
The news out of the Lone Star State has gone from bad to worse. Record-breaking winter temperatures have strained the energy grid leading to widespread outages across the state. 

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

How Covid-19 In South Texas Underscores Republican Apathy for Latino Families

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In the Twitter universe, accusations can be made that can never be properly substantiated. With that in mind, I wanted to share a series of tweets from a nurse in Texas, where medical professionals are struggling with the Covid-19 outbreak.

Serving the lower Rio Grande Valley, Doctor’s Hospital Renaissance (DHR Health) is a 500+ bed general acute care hospital, with a medical staff of over 700 physicians covering 75 specialties, based in Edinburg, Texas. In order to deal with the pandemic, a special facility was contracted and converted from a hospice facility into a Covid unit.

Unfortunately, according to this whistleblower, it soon became apparent that the facility was completely inadequate. Medical staff from outside of the area were appalled at the situation.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Film Friday: Liberty Hill

by Nomad


For this Film Friday, I'd like to introduce you Karen Collins from Texas. Until the election of 2016, Collins admits that she took little interest in politics. 
"The election caught me off-guard. I did not really believe that Donald Trump was going to win. I couldn't believe that people could say those things about other religions, about other groups of people, and I was kind of depressed for a couple of weeks. And then, I got mad."

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Houston: Scenes from a City Under Water

 by Nomad

Embed from Getty Images
Houston, the nation's fourth largest city and the most populous city in the state of Texas, is under water in the wake of the persistent Hurricane Harvey. The Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds made its first landfall on Friday, 25 August and raged throughout the weekend. By Monday, it was clear that Harvey was going nowhere. By Wednesday, Harvey was making its second landfall.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

ACLU: “Sanctuary Cities” Law Wrongheaded, Racist, Undemocratic and Un-Texan

by Nomad


On the issue of the new laws banning "sanctuary cities" in Texas, there's a showdown on the calendar between the state, civil rights groups and city governments.


ACLU and the Strike of Pecan Shellers

When 12,000 pecan shellers- mostly Hispanic women- went on strike in San Antonio in January 1938, one of the effects of that three-month labor action was the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas

At that time, Texas was famous for its pecan production and accounted for nearly half of the nation's pecan production. The center of that production was- you guessed it- San Antonio. It might have been a big business but there wasn't much of a trickle down effect for the workers.
The pecan-shelling industry was one of the lowest-paid industries in the United States, with a typical wage ranging between two and three dollars a week. In addition that, the fine brown dust of the pecan shells was the suspected cause of the high rates of tuberculosis in San Antonio. 

When workers demanded better working conditions and something closer to a living wage, local law enforcement cracked down on the picketers despite their right to free speech and free assembly. 

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

"Essentially Impossible"- Texas Officials Dismiss Trump's Desperate Claims of Rigged Elections

by Nomad


Officials in the Republican-dominated state of Texas have strongly rejected Trump's allegation that the election will be rigged against him. It's not going to happen in Texas, they assure the voters of the Lone Star State.


Wild Flailings of the Desperate Deceiver

Trump is in trouble. 
The man who has always considered himself the winner is now facing a defeat of a historical scale in the upcoming election. And the end for his political aspirations is fast approaching. 

In his denial and despair, Trump has resorted to a foolhardy, dangerous and unprecedented strategy of claiming the elections are rigged. On the campaign trail, the candidate has repeatedly claimed that there's a conspiracy afoot and his enemies are plotting to snatch victory away from him on the 8th of November. But who are these villains?
Well, by the woman he cast as his arch-nemesis, Hillary, and the once-friendly, now untraitorous media, and, finally a lineup of perfidious Republicans.

In short, nearly everybody is against poor Donald except for his increasingly overwrought supporters. (We have come a long way since the day when Trump proclaimed that "everybody" loved him.)

Despite Trump offering absolutely no evidence of election fraud in the making, many of his supporters appear to believe Trump's allegation.  

That brings us to the Lone Star State.
On Tuesday the Washington Post revealed something few people could have foreseen. Trump lead in Texas is a mere 2 percentage points over Hillary Clinton.
That officially makes Texas, once considered a Republican sure-thing, a battleground state, joining  Ohio, Florida, and Arizona. 
(In Nevada- another Republican state- Clinton reportedly has an astonishing 7-point lead over Trump, according to the latest survey from Monmouth University.)

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Texas Senator's Passivity to Trump's Rigged Election Lies is Just an Example of GOP Weakness

by Nomad


We are in uncharted waters when it comes to this year's election. Clearly, GOP nominee Donald Trump's recent bizarre behavior coupled with a series of sexual misconduct allegations has thrown the Republican Party into a paralyzing panic.
Faced with a political nightmare of an unprecedented scale, they seem too shell-shocked to do much of anything. That's understandable. At no time in American history has a political party faced such a calamity like this.


Meltdown Dwarfing Chernobyl

Trump has said a lot of unnerving things and of late, his remarks go well beyond those of any responsible politician. They go beyond the limits of a public figure. Indeed, some are beginning to say Trump's statements reflect a disturbed mind. 

None of his remarks have been more destructive, in terms of national security, than Trump's repeated claims that the US elections will be rigged. Across the country, he has told his supporters it is a foregone conclusion that Democratic Hillary Clinton will "steal" the election away from him.
As recently as this week, Trump told his supporters that the election could be “stolen” from him, calling on them to “watch other communities” for fraud at the polls.
Nowhere is the confusion greater than in red-state Texas. A recent poll showed something that Republicans could never have thought possible. Trump leads Clinton by a mere four percentage points - with a margin of error of four percent. Technically, that might just mean that Trump and Clinton are neck and neck in- of all places- the Lone Star State. 

Monday, May 9, 2016

Karma Teaches Former Anti-Clinton Crusader and Baylor President Ken Starr a Lesson

by Nomad

In the late 1990s, Ken Starr was a name on everybody's lips. This was the independent prosecutor whom the Republicans hoped would derail the Clinton presidency.
Today, as president of Baylor University, Starr has been struggling to deal with criticism over the university's handling of a series of rape allegations.


Runaway Investigations

As a walking footnote to history, Kenneth Starr was once a name of everybody's lips. He was portrayed by the Far Right as a heroic independent prosecutor determined to expose all of the scandals of the Clinton administration. Others claimed that he was a commissioned by the Republican party with attempting to destroy the credibility of the president, and to provide the basis for the impeachment of President Clinton. Suffice to say, for awhile, he was a controversial figure. 

Starr was head of what was in some ways a runaway investigation. Initially, Starr was appointed to investigate the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster.

After three years, Starr made the disappointing discovery that the severely depressed Foster had killed himself, and was not the victim of foul play. This reaffirmed previous findings.
The Republicans were not ready to call it quits.

When that line of questioning proved to fruitless, the investigation was expanded to include the Whitewater real estate investments of Bill Clinton. That too reached a dead end.
In December 1997, Starr shut down the Whitewater investigation because of insufficient evidence.

That inquiry was revived one more time. in January 1998 to include an extramarital affair that Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky

Harrassment and Bullying 

The justification for this expansion was the allegation that the president had engaged in a form of workplace sexual harrassment. The idea that this was a personal matter between two people made no difference whosoever to Starr's case. 

Monday, February 29, 2016

Trump's Texas: Where the Republican Party Will Soon Become an Elephant Graveyard

by Nomad

Texas has always been good for a few eye-rolls and bitter laughs when it comes to politics. In the last few years, the barrel's bottom went bottomless.
Yet, we may soon find that Texas holds all the cards when it comes to the results of the next election. And, that's really bad news for Republicans.


It must have been a daunting task for ProgressTexas to narrow the list of worst Texans down to only ten. Texas takes a lot of bad press for the Far Right politicians it has produced. Some of them have been extraordinarily embarrassing.


The list includes such people as Cecil Bell, Jr.- named by Texas Monthly as one of 2015’s worst legislators.
Bell became famous mainly for two things, wearing a cowboy hat and filing bills to prevent gay marriage in Texas. Of the 20 anti-LGBTQ bills Bell and other Texas Republicans introduced in the legislature, all of them failed to pass.
Not only a complete waste of time but a neglect of other more important responsibilities that did not entail depriving anybody of any rights.

There's Will Hurd from Texas' 23rd congressional district. He earned his place on the 2015 list for having "voted to cut education, health care, veteran benefits and, most recently, to let terror list suspects buy guns."
Lt. Governor Dan Patrick qualifies too.
The moment he took over the Texas Senate, he changed a decades-long rule to give himself and his Tea Party buddies more power to pass his horrendous priority legislation. You can thank Patrick for open carry and campus carry. He further abused his power to wade in on repealing equal rights in Houston — so much for local control — and he’s got big plans to cut health care for the most needy Texans and to legislate discrimination under the false banner of “religious liberty.”
As I said, ten is far too small a number to capture the full scope of the political recklessness found in Austin but it's a good start. Wait til you see who ranks top on the list.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Capital Punishment: Another Example of How Ted Cruz is On the Wrong Side of Public Opinion

by Nomad

Ted CruzCandidate Cruz's long-held support for capital punishment may have helped build his career but today, given the shift in public attitudes, it could be the kiss of death in the general election.


Since the time he was a Supreme Court clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, Presidential candidate Ted Cruz has been an ardent supporter of the death penalty. The adjective may actually be an understatement.

In some ways, Supreme Court clerks have the power of life and death in their hands. They are charged with evaluating death row petitions and issuing memos about the cases. Such memos normally consist of a brief review of the facts and then a dispassionate legal analysis as to whether the court should hear the case.

Cruz took that responsibility seriously. From what you read, his determination to justify the death penalty in the cases before him was a bit unseemly. Many who worked with Ted Cruz as a clerk, felt that he took a personal interest in highlighting the most gruesome aspect of each case.

Monday, January 11, 2016

What You Must Do to Opt-Out of Texas' New Open Carry Handgun Law

by Nomad

Not everybody in Texas is overjoyed about the idea of the open carry gun laws that came into effect on 1 January. There's a way to opt-out but the rules are very specific.  


Since the start of the year, Texas' new open carry handgun law has been in effect. From now on, people with proper registration can openly carry their firearms. In the past, the law required firearms be concealed.

There are, we are told, an astounding 12.8 registered firearms per 1,000 residents.The last time people of the Lone Star state were allowed such open carry privileges was 140 years ago- back in the good old Wild West days when rootin' tootin' cowboys engaged in shootouts in public streets.

When it comes to such laws, Texas is not alone. It's actually the 45th state to allow open carry in some form. (Shockingly, thirty states do not require the carrier to have a license.)
In terms of sheer population, Texas (population roughly 27 million) is the most populous in the nation now allowing for open carry. 

The new law allows nearly 1 million gun-licensed Texans to publicly display their holstered handguns, as long as they have a permit and they have passed a safety course.
One website for the national gun safety course says, "It doesn’t hurt to learn the basics." True that. It hurts less than, say, accidentally shooting yourself in the eye.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

History and Texas Anti-Abortion Laws Show How Futile and Dangerous Conservative Efforts Are

by Nomad

A new study in Texas about self-induced abortions underscores that truth that conservatives have long denied. Making something illegal won't make it go away and could have unintended consequences.


Republican leaders in Texas are jubilant about their attempts to close down Planned Parenthood clinics  in their state. When deciding to cut off Medicaid funding for the organization, Governor Greg Abbott led the charge even to the point of breaking federal law. The rush is on now to close down to remaining abortion clinics in operation. 
Planned Parenthood, as most people know, is not solely an abortion provider. It also provides valuable reproductive health care services for women. Inevitably, there will sooner or later be consequences for half-baked policy.

But then this is Texas where, when it comes to conservative bombast, there are no holds barred.Conservative crazy comes at a two-for-one price there. Republican president candidate Canadian-cum-Texan Ted Cruz called Planned Parenthood "an ongoing criminal enterprise."

JEB! couldn't understand why it was necessary to spend half a billion dollars for women's health issues at all. Apparently nobody has explained to JEB (the "smart" Bush) that women make up 50.8% of the population and 43.5 million of those women have children. These mothers gave birth to 95.8 million children. Somebody forgot to inform JEB that the health of women naturally has an impact of the children they have.)

Rep. Steve Stockman not long ago contributed his excuse for cleverness with a bumper sticker campaign which linked two seemingly unrelated issues close to the hearts of Texas right-wingers: Guns and fetuses.
The stickers read: 
If babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted. 
This was matched with pro-choice signs that read: 
If my vagina could fire bullets, you wouldn't regulate it.
Who could possibly argue with logic like that?

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Did Texas Gov. Rick Perry Help Scuttle in a Medical Licence Revocation Case in Oklahoma?

by Nomad

Another allegation of abuse of power against former Texas governor Rick Perry has emerged.


Get Rid of This
Medical authorities in Oklahoma spent more than 3 years and $600,000 in an attempt to revoke the license of a doctor accused of performing operations that left patients paralyzed, in perpetual pain – or dead. Many of the charges against the surgeon were serious and deserved careful consideration. 

Yet all these efforts abruptly came to nothing after a call from Texas Governor Rick Perry to Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin. if one report is correct,. 
According to one investigative organization, a memo recently found suggests that Perry called Fallin, a fellow Republican, on Dr. Steven Anagnost’s behalf as a favor to a generous campaign donor.
When Fallin’s general counsel, Steve Mullins, met with key staff members at the Oklahoma Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision in March 2013, Perry’s intervention was part of the discussion.
“He (Mullins) told us that he wasn’t here to interfere with the work of the board but Gov. Fallin didn’t want any more calls from Rick Perry about this, that Gov. Perry said it was a travesty and what would it take to make it go away,” Dr. Eric Frische, the medical board’s medical advisor, later wrote in a memo.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Return of Freedom Fries in Texas Means Increased Obesity for High School Students

by Nomad

Texas state officials continue to march backwards in the name of deregulation. Serving fat and sugar to Texas children is a salute of freedom.


According to a top official at the Texas Department of Agriculture, Commissioner Sid Miller, a decade-old statewide ban on deep fat fryers in public schools must be repealed. 
That ban prohibits deep fat fryers and soda machines on school campuses and places limits on the time and place that junk food can be sold there.

Miller says he thinks that repealing these parts of the Texas Public School Nutrition Policy will streamline things, pulling the state into line with less-strict national standards. Under his plans, the presently-mandated schools will be free to decide for themselves whether to abide by the policy. 

Miller claims that “it isn't about french fries, it's about freedom." 

And who on Earth could be against freedom?

For the Love of Freedom and Fat
The deep fat fryer and soda machine ban are the last of strict nutritional policies introduced by former Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs. In 2004, in addition to those bans, Combs introduced the more comprehensive Texas Public School Nutrition Policy, which banned foods with high levels of sugar and fats in public schools. The policy was repealed last year, when Todd Staples was commissioner, and Miller has consistently expressed his support for less regulation of food in schools.
Three Texas whoops for de-regulation!

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Unintended Pregnancies, Contraception and The High Cost of Right Wing Ignorance

 by Nomad

The Republican Congress may be hell-bent on restricting abortive services for women but in the end, all of their misguided efforts are going to end up. in real terms, costing the nation a lot more.


The Washington Post recently reported on the taxpayer costs  of blindly following Republican policies when it comes to women's health and sex education.  
According to a new analysis released by the Guttmacher Institute, unintended  pregnancies cost American taxpayers $21 billion each year.
That averages out to a cost of about $366 per every woman of childbearing age in the U.S. Overall, more than half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and roughly 1-in-20 American women of reproductive age have an unplanned pregnancy each year.
A full 68 percent of the million unplanned births are paid for by public insurance programs like Medicaid.  

These costs cover prenatal care, labor, delivery post-partum care and infant care for the first year. All those medical costs can quickly add up to something in the range of $21,000 per child. 

How many of those children end up in foster homes- costing the state even more- or are raised in households requiring government assistance is yet another problem without a solution. 

A Southern Problem
And there is a real North-South divide between the states when it comes to unplanned births. 
The lowest rates could be found in New England and the West, while the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy were found in Southern States. More than half of all births in Mississippi (56%) were unplanned.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Texas Draft Law Forces Legally-Dead Pregnant Women to Deliver Unwanted Babies

by Nomad

One Texas legislator seems determined to stop at nothing to protect the life of the unborn. Even if it means keeping a clinically-dead mother alive long enough for the baby to be born. 


Fort Worth boasts one of the most conservative legislators that Texas has produced. Republican Rep. Matt Krause is the son of a Tyler, Texas pastor for- I kid you not- at Green Acres Baptist Church. 

Before entering politics, Krause was a intern and then Texas director of Liberty Counsel which is a non-profit legal and educational organization that, according to its mission statement, is committed to “restoring the culture one case at a time by defending the sanctity of human life, the traditional family, and religious liberties.”

His background therefore undoubtedly played a part in his decision to draft legislation that would open up a lot of complicated questions about patient and family rights versus the rights of the unborn. 

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Barbara Jordan Remembered

by Nomad

Today, February 21, marks the birthday of Texas Congresswoman Barbara Charline Jordan, arguably one of the most influential black women in American political history.


Representative Jordan from Texas was the first in many categories: the first African American to serve in the Texas Senate since Reconstruction, the first black woman elected to Congress from the South. Additionally, in, July 1976, she became the first African American woman to deliver a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.

In fact, on an individual level, it's hard to find, in one person of this period who symbolized the breadth of American diversity. She was an African American, she was a woman and, although it was an aspect of her life she preferred to remain undisclosed, she was most likely a lesbian.

On that basis alone, she had a right to speak on behalf of many people. She once said of the first words of the preamble of the Constitution:
It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”:

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Gay Cure Therapy and How the GOP in Texas Officially Endorses Consumer Fraud

by Nomad

Try to picture this. The official party platform of a key state giving its stamp of approval for consumer fraud, namely a kind of therapy which has been thoroughly discredited by professionals and is possibly dangerous.

What does this say about the ethics of that party?


Quackery Therapy


This week, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Peter F. BarsioJr. ruled  against the gay conversion therapy provider Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH). His official ruling in the case filed by Southern Poverty Law Center against the company states:
It is a misrepresentation in violation of [New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act], in advertising or selling conversion therapy services, to describe homosexuality, not as being a normal variation of human sexuality, but as being a mental illness, disease, disorder, or equivalent thereof.
David Dinielli, SPLC deputy legal director, commenting on the court decision,
“For the first time, a court has ruled that it is fraudulent as a matter of law for conversion therapists to tell clients that they have a mental disorder that can be cured. This is the principal lie the conversion therapy industry uses throughout the country to peddle its quackery to vulnerable clients. Gay people don’t need to be cured, and we are thrilled that the court has recognized this.”
Over the years, organizations, mostly religion-based, were set up  to push  conversion therapy. The idea was that homosexuality was something that could, or needed to be fixed. 


Friday, February 6, 2015

Uninsured Texas and ObamaCare: Republicans in Washington Ignore Realities Back Home

by Nomad

Nearly a million Texans have signed up for Obamacare since November surpassing all expectations. Although Texas is the uninsured capital of the nation, Texas Republicans in Washington are leading the crusade to gut affordable health care for all Americans.


Three days ago, the House of Representatives under Republican control, passed a bill attempting to shut down the Affordable Care Act. It was an exercise in futility and was the 56th vote to repeal the controversial healthcare reform. Even in the unlikely event, it passes the Senate, President Obama stands poised with his veto pen in hand to kill the legislation.

Meanwhile, back in Texas, the Republican heartland, it was a completely different story. Since open enrollment began on Nov. 15, nearly a million Texans have signed up.

According to an article in the Dallas Morning Observer, this year's enrollment figures are up by a third compared to last year's statewide enrollment campaign. Marjorie Petty, Texas regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. is quoted as saying.
"This is the second year, and I think we’ve surpassed the numbers that were expected"

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Why Palin's Incoherent Iowa Speech is Just the Beginning of Republican Humiliation

by Nomad

After Palin appearance in Iowa, many Republicans snapped awake from their hypnotic trance and asked "Who is this character?" It's a little late in the day, of course. As one columnist points out, looking at the next wave coming out of Texas, the fun has only just begun.

There's no denying it. Sarah Palin's speech in Des Moines had a lot of conservatives shaking their heads in dismay. Could it be possible that they have finally awaken from their "long infatuation" with that woman from Wasilla? 

Jim Schutze, writing for the Dallas Observer, has an interesting op-ed piece on that very subject. It seems that when it comes to Palin, the thrill is definitely gone.
Schutze quotes conservative Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast :
"It's worth considering that maybe her early critics saw some fundamental character flaw -- some harbinger of things to come -- that escaped me."
Harbinger, shmarbinger!
It might have escaped you, Matt, but the truth about Palin and her character flaws was pretty damned obvious to the rest of us.