Zippidy Doo Da

2012-01-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

2012-01-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

Found this piece on BartCop, Andrew Sullivan on The Daily Beast. Click on the title to see it, it's a good read; I think I'm down with this.

I always say that a good President is one who pisses off both sides. When I hear teabaggers going all apoplectic over Obama I have to smile because I know the left wing has been disappointed with him too. But we has to consider what he's done within the realm of the possible. Between the backstabbing blow-dog Democrats and the forty-seven vote GOP Senate majority, the President's hands have been tied. Sullivan says that Obama has always counted on serving two terms, and that granted re-election and adequate support in Congress his "show-don't-tell long game" will show results. He cites Politifact to say that of 508 campaign promises, one-third have been fulfilled and only two have not been acted on.

Most important, he says "the only way out of that deadlock is an electoral rout of the GOP." The next election is about more than the top of the ticket. Now, if the Supreme Court will kindly tell me what Congressional District I'm in before the next election..

2012-01-17T04:25:00.001-08:00

Affirmative Action for Rick Perry

2012-01-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

CNN announced last week that Rick Perry will be participating in their January 19th debate in South Carolina.

This despite CNN’s previously announced criteria for inclusion; that to be invited a candidate must have finished at least fourth in the Iowa or New Hampshire primaries, or polled at least 7% in three national or South Carolina polls in the month of January. Perry has met neither.

In light of this, maybe the State of Virginia will decide to allow Perry to appear on the primary ballot there, much as the State of Texas has allowed mentally handicapped persons to be executed.

CBS Airs Another Focus on the Family Ad

2012-01-16T01:23:00.001-08:00

Those who yawned through Saturday’s playoff game between New England and Denver may have noticed an ad for Focus on the Family featuring cute toddlers reciting John 3:16, Tim Tebow’s signature Bible verse. This was another departure from CBS’s supposed policy of not airing advocacy ads.

In the past CBS has declined to air an ad from Move On.Org and another from The United Church of Christ that advocated inclusiveness. (“Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.”) But apparently they have no problem with tax-exempt Christian Right parachurch Focus on the Family.

Focus, founded by anti-gay crusader and would-be theocrat James Dobson, supported Mike Huckabee in the 2008 GOP race, then refused to support nominee McCain until Sarah Palin was added to the ticket.

Strange; Dobson was the last person to interview serial killer Ted Bundy before his execution, and sold thousands of copies of the tape. He was set to do the same with Jeffrey Dahlmer, but Dahlmer was killed in prison before Dobson could meet with him. Funny family values or what?

Maybe for the Superbowl, they could have the children come back and recite Matthew 6:5.

Paul campaign pulls in cash from military donors

2012-01-09T04:15:00.000-08:00

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — An Army reservist who spoke up for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul while in uniform — and landed in trouble for it — is just one of the soldiers getting behind the Texas congressman's campaign.

Plenty of other troops simply send Paul some campaign cash.

Paul is the only Republican who says he'll bring home nearly all U.S. forces if elected, and that could be helping him draw in dollars.

Paul received at least $95,567 from military donors between January and September of last year, the most recent data available, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. That's nearly seven times what Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, who edged out Paul in Iowa, collected from military donors combined.

Retired Army Sgt. Thomas Rutherford, whose campaign contribution of $201 hit the threshold for public disclosure under federal election law, believes soldiers started taking a closer look at Paul's opposition to U.S. intervention after experiencing it firsthand.

"He has the firmest grasp on foreign policy of all of them," said Rutherford, 36. "I used to think we're the biggest, best country in the world and we have to go over there and show them how to do it. In the military, I came to the conclusion that the best way how to do it wasn't to use the Army."

Cpl. Jesse Thorsen, who gushed that it was "like meeting a rock star" when he joined Paul on stage wearing his camouflaged fatigues in Iowa this week. That ran afoul of Defense Department rules involving partisan political events, though the military doesn't prohibit soldiers from giving money to candidates.

Thorsen became Paul's best-known supporter in uniform after appearing on the podium at the campaign's Iowa headquarters Tuesday night.

"We don't need to be picking fights overseas and I think everybody knows that, too," he said to loud applause.

Thorsen later told The Associated Press that he believes many troops support Paul.

"A lot more than you would think, absolutely," he said. "And, I think one thing that would help is more people need to stop voting for what they think is best for their party and start voting for what they think is best for their country."

Military rules prohibit soldiers from expressing opinions about candidates while in uniform. Thorsen has stopped giving interviews to news media.

A spokeswoman for the Army Reserve, Maj. Angel Wallace, said Friday that Thorsen's company commander plans to meet with him in coming days to discuss his appearance with Paul while in uniform and to decide whether disciplinary action is required.

Soldiers throwing money behind Paul isn't new. The former Air Force surgeon is one of two veterans in this year's GOP field, along with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who also served in the Air Force. Paul raised more money from military donors in his 2008 presidential run than his rivals in that campaign.

Between January and September, Romney raised $13,300 and Santorum $750 among donors who listed a military affiliation as their employer. Newt Gingrich had $4,900. Paul also outpaced military donations made to President Barack Obama, who had $72,616.

2012-01-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

2012-01-01T22:49:00.000-08:00

In Williamson County, vandals are leaving reminders on John Bradley's yard signs of the District Attorney's role delaying Michael Morton's exoneration by opposing DNA testing of a bloody bandana for years on end.

-found on Grits for Breakfast

Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism, and the Common Good

2011-12-28T04:40:00.001-08:00

Last year saw the publication of a new biography of Jesse Holman Jones. Jones was a national figure at he time of his death some sixty years ago, though he is little remembered today outside of Houston (or even there.) This is unfortunate for us, as his work at the Depression-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation might be a model to address the current economic morass we face in America and across the world.

Author Steven Fenberg has been writing about Jones for twenty years; first a biographical sketch for the Houston Endowment, which Jones founded, leading to a string of projects including the PBS documentary “Brother Can You Spare a Billion.” narrated by Walter Cronkite. Fenberg jokes that “Jones: The Musical” may follow. This may not be a bad idea, considering the public appetite for karaoke shows and distaste for economics and civics.

Fenberg tells of young Jones on the family farm in Tennessee, seeing his father open his smokehouse to down-on-their-luck neighbors: “He also saw Aunt Nancy keep track of who took what so she could make sure her brother’s generosity was eventually repaid. Their charitable but frugal pas de deux showed Jesse that a loan often worked better than a handout and that, given sufficient time, most neighbors honored their obligations and helped others when they could."

The family sells the farm to go into the lumber business in Texas, where Jesse uses the business savvy he learned from his father to take on management responsibilities in his uncles lumber business. He moves to Houston, a city of 50,000 people, in 1898. He establishes credit and after running his own lumber operation becomes a builder and eventually a banker, who was able to ride out the panic of 1907 because he managed to hold more assets than obligations. This experience left his with his own opinions about the need for banking regulations and protections for depositors.

Jones was on hand as Congressman Tom Ball and Captain James A. Baker arranged federal funds for the dredging of the Houston Ship Channel, stepping in to jawbone other bankers into buying $1.25 million in navigation bonds to get the project done, in what may have been the first project to be funded jointly with local and federal money.

By 1912 Jones described himself as a capitalist. He sold off all but one of the lumberyards he’d acquired, keeping the one to assure employment for loyal employees. He built the landmark Rice Hotel (where JFK stayed on his last trip to Texas) on a block of land downtown leased from the Rice Institute, (Now Rice University) in time for the opening of the Houston Ship Channel, and busied himself building ten-story buildings in Houston.

With the coming of World War I, Jones became a more national figure, as Woodrow Wilson tapped him to run the fundraising campaign for the American Red Cross in Houston, and then called him to Washington to head the Red Cross Department of Military Relief. The next two years in Washington and Europe Jones made acquaintances and connections that would lead to him being called again to Washington by Herbert Hoover to join the board of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation after the crash of 1929. Hoover’s response to the crisis was to cut taxes and balance the budget, and his RFC had little mandate or resources to reverse the collapsing course of the U.S. economy. In the fall of 1932, with thousands of banks failing and millions thrown out of work; America elected Franklin Roosevelt to the White House and Democratic majorities to both houses of Congress. His mandate? According to FDR: “The country needs, and unless I mistake it’s temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Roosevelt appointed Jones Chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and it became the premier agency of the New Deal, the outfit that funded all the alphabet soup agencies; the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Commodity Credit Corporation, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, the Rural Electrification Administration and many others.

A conservative businessman, Jones was a hit with Congress from the start; in 1933 they passed the Emergency Banking Act in seven hours. They were generally happy to fund his agency, especially later as they saw that the loans he made were repaid with interest. Jones and his people made loans to banks, municipalities and corporations such as the railroads. They made small loans too, one went to a barber who needed clippers and scissors; another to a blacksmith who lost his anvil to a hurricane, though Jones wondered how an anvil could blow away.

The RFC under Hoover did little to increase liquidity; money lent to banks and railroads went east to Wall Street creditors. Will Rogers said at the time “The Reconstruction loaned the railroads money, medium and small banks money, and all they did with it was pay off what they owed to New York banks. So the money went uphill instead of down.” This changed under Jones. He lent to railroads with the stipulation that the money would go to hire workers and buy rail stock. When he saw that credit-worthy businesses couldn’t get bank loans, the RFC would make those loans. And loans to business had strings attached; the RFC insisted on a “look-in on management,” they might put one of their own on the Board of Directors, or replace the management altogether.

Some say today that the New Deal did nothing to end the depression; that the U.S. economy only recovered with World War II spending. I would point out that U.S. unemployment from 1933 to 1936 fell from 25% to 15% and that Roosevelt won forty-six states that year. The RFC financed the building of 2,500 hospitals, 5,900 schools, 13,000 playgrounds and improvements on 1,000 airports before they ever got involved in war production. The Farm Credit Administration and Home Owner’s Loan Corporation turned a profit re-financing mortgages of people facing foreclosure.

With his good work and reputation Jones became a well-known and powerful figure, second only to Roosevelt in those days. He well may have been elected president himself if Roosevelt hadn’t run for a third term. Of course Jones wasn’t universally loved. He feuded with Vice President Henry Wallace on the left, and there were plenty of bankers and capitalists who opposed government intervention in their business. He gave the keynote address to the American Bankers Association at four of their conventions, once telling them “Banks that accept deposits but do not extend credit in a reasonable way will not contribute to the general economic welfare nor to business recovery.” He exhorted them to “be smart for once,” and noted that the bankers “did not like my speech, and added that “all I have to say is that more than half the banks represented in front of me were insolvent, and no one knew it as well as the men in our banqueting room.”

Some more of Jones’ words:

“My wife tries to get me to come home nights when I work too late, but I cannot go home when men are waiting in distress. Sometimes I wonder at the endurance, physical and mental, by which we have been able to go on, but I have a fairly light heart now as far as the affairs of our country are concerned, compared to two years ago.”

“I have seen so many broken, distressed, and humiliated men in the last five years that my sympathies go out to every insecure person. Social security within reason, and by proper effort by those secured, is right, and we will be remiss in our duties if we do not try to achieve it.”

It is government’s responsibility to protect the weak from the strong. Human beings have the spirit of dominance. You have it in the oil business. One trouble with the strong and powerful is that they don’t appreciate how hard they hit or how ruthless they sometimes are without necessarily intending to be. To the fleetest goes the race, but we all have to eat.”

“1936 was a pretty good year as far as business goes, and we started clamoring for a balanced budget. You can balance the budget all right, personal or government, but you will get hungry when there is no meat in the smokehouse or meal in the barrel. In my opinion, the key to the situation confronting us today is intelligent, cordial, friendly, determined cooperation between government and business –government and all the people. It cannot be sectional; it cannot be class driven; it cannot be political. It cannot be achieved if we let ourselves believe that our government is our enemy. One thing is certain; we all go up together or we go down together. I prefer to believe we will go up. If we can’t manage to get along, we should give the country back to the Indians.”

After Action Report

2011-12-26T19:31:00.000-08:00

I was checking out after some last-minute Christmas shopping when I made the mistake of wishing the clerk a “Merry Christmas.”

Immediately Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi ran up with a group of jack-booted thugs and dragged me off to be vaccinated and gay-married, they took my guns too!

More when I get back from Guantanamo.

2011-12-21T04:18:00.001-08:00

2011-12-07T03:29:00.000-08:00

Great post at Half Empty today.(http://halfempth.blogspot.com/) First, Hal quotes from Obama’s speech:

“I have no problem with folks saying 'Obamacare,' I do care. If the other side wants to be the folks who don't care, that's fine with me. But, yeah, I do care about families who have been struggling because of crushing health care costs.”

Then he points out that the provision on the Affordable Care Act that limits insurance companies’ medical loss ratio went into effect this month. This means that large health insurance companies (who spent billions of dollars sending thousands of lobbyists to defeat this legislation) are now required to spend at least 85% of premiums on actual health care, or refund the money to their customers. The industry has been accustomed to spending as little as 60% of premiums on health care. The Dept. of Health and Human Services has even issued a ruling that payments to brokers do not qualify as health care. The typical 35% off the top burden for overhead and profit has been a boon for stockholders who enjoy rising stock prices and dividends, and for CEO’s making seven-figure salaries and bonuses, but help make the case for Medicare-for-all proposals, as Medicare delivers care to millions on about 3% overhead.

It baffles me when I hear Congress propose raising the age of eligibility for Medicare as a cost-saving measure when this is the most cost-effective system in the country. Some have proposed that the age of enrollment be lowered year by year to take more people into the system. Who hasn’t heard stories of seniors under the age of 65 divorcing or declaring bankruptcy to become eligible for health benefits?

The coming of this provision is probably responsible for 10% annual rate increases in recent years, which some have blamed on Obama, even though 10% is also the average rate increase during the Bush administration. As GOP presidential candidates unanimously pledge to repeal the law, I wonder how voters would feel about losing benefits already in effect; the probation of companies denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, the extension coverage under their parent’s plan to millions of young adults under the age of 26, the $1.5 billion saved by seniors this year as the prescription drug donut hole is eliminated, and now the limit on insurers medical loss ratio. I think that once Americans get to experience “socialized medicine” they’ll never give it up, and that further refinements will eventually shrink the private sector’s part in the system, as medicine becomes a public service and not an opportunity for profit-seeking.

You Might Be A Moran, If You..

2011-12-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

1. Believe your point will have a more profound effect if it is printed in all caps with exclamation marks.

2. Spice your opinions with explitives that would embarrass Snooki.

3. Insist that Barak Obama's birth certificate is still a mystery because Donald Trump wonders if the governor and every state official in Hawaii is on the take.

4. Believe if some one calls Republicans idiots, well they are obviously referring to you personally.

5. Believe if we raise taxes on millionaires to avoid closing schools, hospitals, vital infrasctructure, and emergency services, then we are obviously stealing from you.

6. Believe raising Rush Limbaugh's marginal tax rate in line with historical averages matters when you live in a van by the river.

7. Believe Obama is dependent on tele-prompters because he is too stupid to think and speak at the same time.

8. Believe scaring people will change their minds.

9. Quote and cite internet authorities that aren't there or don't report what you claim.

10. Believe people who don't support Republicans must be libruls.

2011-12-04T19:17:00.000-08:00

2011-11-28T19:48:00.000-08:00

(Click to enlarge)

The great Charles Kuffner got the same letter that I did this week. It came addressed to the name we use on our Texas Monthly subscription. They should have sent it to our disburser, Ms. Helen Wait. If they want a check from me, they'll haveta go to Helen Wait.

2011-11-28T19:03:00.000-08:00

Seen on BartCop

2011-11-28T18:53:00.001-08:00

A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway outside Washington, DC.
Nothing was moving. Suddenly, a man knocks on the window.
The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"

"Terrorists have kidnapped Congress, and they're asking for a $100 million
dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and
set them on fire. We are going from car to car, collecting donations."

"How much is everyone giving, on average?" the driver asks.

The man replies, "Roughly a gallon."

Thanks to Susan W

Chupacabra Report

2011-11-23T02:09:00.001-08:00

News that Gets My Goat..

Well, the business headline said it this way; “Market suffers a supercommittee sell-off.” The DJIA fell 250 points Monday after the Congressional supercommittee failed to reach agreement on taxes and budget cuts to reduce the deficit by one and a half trillion dollars over the next ten years.

This could be good news. If the Democrats fail to make a deal with the GOP, that means that they aren’t getting rolled. One of the Republican demands was to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. That’s a hell of a way to balance the books.

So that was their whole contribution, an idea that would reduce revenues. In return the Democrats were asked to approve cuts to Social Security and Medicare. So the one side wanted to extend benefits to their base, who would reward them with campaign contributions, while the other would cut benefits to folks who would then vote them out of office. Some compromise.

Lacking a deal, the budget is slated to be cut across the board by ten percent starting in 2013. Hawks in Congress are already talking about bringing legislation to exempt Defense spending from these cuts. President Obama has already promised to veto such a bill. Good; as Willie Sutton said, that’s where the money is. Decimating every budget category is a terrible move as the country struggles through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but it is an evenhanded way to get accounts in order without new revenues.

We have national elections coming up next year, before this ax falls. Will the electorate look beyond the acute discomfort and see that one party is offering more of what made us sick in the first place? Will we see through the hired bullshit and mandate more than half-measures and phony compromise? When FDR won forty-six states in 1936 he took 61% of the popular vote, even though the other 39% were the people who owned all the newspapers and radio stations. It will be interesting to see how loudly money talks in the wake of Citizens United v FEC.

The decision will ultimately be in the hands of American voters, who, if they don’t decide that next year’s elections are really about God, guns, gays, or who should win American Idle, can make a choice between tax cuts for millionaires and austerity for the rest of us, or a progressive tax structure with continued support for popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

"You don't own me."

2011-11-22T21:04:00.001-08:00

From The Huffington Post:

“Alaska Congressman Don Young got into a heated discussion with Rice University professor Doug Brinkley at a hearing on Friday.

“Young addressed Brinkley as "Dr. Rice" and called his testimony "garbage." Brinkley replied, "Dr. Brinkley. Rice is a university. I know you went to Yuba College and you couldn't graduate."

“"I'll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that chair. You just be quiet," Young quipped.

“"You don't own me," Brinkley shot back. "I pay your salary."

“The exchange took place at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing to discuss the possible effects of drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

“Later, Young admitted that he was "really pissed."

“This isn't the first time a Don Young outburst has disrupted a meeting. His illustrious record includes brandishing a walrus penis at the female head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and making an obscene reference to gay sex while denouncing the National Endowment for the Arts at a high school.

“Young famously called the BP oil spill "not an environmental disaster." He also has the lowest voting attendance among House members, aside from those who had to miss votes because of illness or presidential campaigns.”

Gingrich Stock Up?

2011-11-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

As the seven dwarfs in turn shrink under the pressure of being frontrunner-of-the-week, the Anybody But Romney crowd is scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of an alternative to Windsock Willard. The latest flavor-of-the-week appears to be Newt Gingrich, who has risen from single digits to join Herman Cain and Ron Paul as unelectable rivals to Romney.

I had been thinking of the Gingrich campaign as a sideshow, merely a moneymaking operation for a character whose toxic personal history has made him repugnant to voters. Gingrich’s unique “family values” may not be widely known, but would certainly surface in a nationwide campaign and turn off plenty of voters, especially women.

But if Gingrich becomes a serious candidate, I’d say that the way to attack him is through his money. When he was asked at the CNBC debate last week about his work for Freddy Mac, he said that they paid him $300,000 to be a historian. Turns out that they’ve paid him $1.6 million to lobby Republicans in Congress. Funny because he’s been a fierce critic of the Federally-sponsored mortgage dealer. Gingrich says he’s not a lobbyist for ethanol too, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking $312,000 from ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy. He’s received over a million dollars from various coal, oil and gas producers. His financial disclosure last summer gave his net worth as $6.7 million, with 2010 income of $2.6 million. Not bad for an Assistant Professor of History at West Georgia College.

His history of influence peddling and creative use of campaign funds, for example to pay the $300,000 assessed by the House Ethics Committee for giving the Committee false information about using a tax-exempt college course for political purposes, ought to raise questions about his fitness for office even for those unconcerned about his serial philandering and twenty-four carat line of bullshit.

Chupacabra Report

2011-11-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

News that Gets My Goat:

The “How They Voted” feature in Sunday’s Chronicle showed the occasionally wobbly Kay Bailey in lockstep this week with right-wing trog John Cornyn, voting positions that ought to, but probably won’t, expose them to the ire of Texas voters.

The first was a vote to repeal last year’s Net Neutrality rules from the FCC. Luckily, this move to let money talk louder on the web failed on a 46 – 52 vote. Shame on our Senators for favoring an ‘information tollroad’ where some netizens are more equal than others.

Next, the Senate unanimously voted to repeal a law requiring 3 percent of the sum of certain government contracts to be withheld and deposited with the IRS as a credit against any back taxes the contractor owes the Treasury. This would result in a loss of a billion dollars a year to the treasury, which would be made up by eliminating Medicare eligibility for 500,000 social security recipients. Congress passed this rule almost ten years ago after finding that thousands of Federal contractors owed billions in back taxes. Now they vote to let these scofflaws skate and pay for it by putting another obstacle between Americans and affordable healthcare. Go figure.

Cornyn and Hutchison of course both voted for the GOP “jobs” bill, that would, “ institute a balanced-budget constitutional amendment; reduce the top corporate and individual tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent; repeal the 2010 health law and the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill; bar the federal government from regulating greenhouse gases associated with global warming; nullify or scale back other environmental regulations; close an array of tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and others and give presidents a line-item veto.”

And last, both voted for a losing effort to repeal the EPA’s new Cross-State Air Pollution rule to require coal burning power plants in 27 states to reduce smog and soot emissions. I guess that’s just voting in the state’s interest when that state ranks 1st among states for total toxic pollutants released to air, land and water.

What He Said

2011-11-10T00:45:00.001-08:00

Asked about a potential move to the American League that could accompany the sale of the Astros:

“I think it’s a travesty,” Berkman said. “It’s a National League franchise. I think if they were going to do something like that, Milwaukee’s the choice to go back to the American League; they’re historically an American League franchise."

Perry’s Zombie Campaign

2011-11-07T22:13:00.001-08:00

If you wonder why I’m still picking on Rick Perry, after he puked all over himself in the debates, crashed in the polls like John McCain in a A-4E, and made a fool of himself in New Hampshire, consider this; in the last quarter he raised more money ($17 million) than Mitt Romney, ($14 million) and more than all the other GOP ‘candidates’ combined. This, even though the Texas Bush fundraising machine is mostly supporting Windsock Willard the establishment candidate.

When the voting starts in January, the seven dwarfs will start dropping like flies. Only a few will have the means to stick it out past Iowa and New Hampshire. Few of the three-quarters of Republican voters who oppose Romney will back Ron Paul because Paul is too sane when it comes to foreign policy. So the anybody but Romney crowd will have to settle for somebody. As Molly Ivins said; “Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president, please pay attention.”

And about that money; I about fell out laughing last week when Perry talked about taking “a wrecking ball, a sledge hammer –whatever it takes to break up the good-old-boy corporate lobbyist mentality that is putting this country’s future in jeopardy.” This from a guy whose fingerprints were on the Cattlemans Association’s hamburger suit against Oprah Winfrey, whose Governors office has had a revolving door to rival that of ‘pay to play’ Tom DeLay.

Yeah, money: Juanita at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon reports today on a new Super PAC, Texas Aggies for Perry in 2012. One of those Aggies is Wendy Gramm, appointed to the Texas A&M Board of Regents by Rick Perry. Mrs. Gramm served on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when they exempted Enron from regulation of trading in energy derivatives, and then resigned to take a seat on the Enron Board of Directors. Phil Gramm gave Perry $613,000 from his Senate Campaign Account. “Bailout Nation” author Barry Ritholtz called Phil Gramm the person third-most-responsible for the Great Recession. Juanita says Gramm has been linked to sixteen major financial crisis events, and that “If Rick Perry gets elected, you’re giving Phil Gramm the keys to Fort Knox.”

2011-11-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

FYI, the Texas photo ID law doesn't go into effect untill January, don't let some tory poll judge tell you different.

3-eyed Fish Found Near Argentinean Nuclear Power Plant

2011-11-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

"Un grupo de pescadores cordobeses capturó una tararira con tres ojos en un lago que se encuentra cerca de una central nuclear en Córdoba.

"El hallazgo ocurrió en el lago del embalse llamado "Chorro de Agua Caliente", que se encuentra en las cercanías de la central nuclear de Embalse, según publicó el sitio cordobés Cadena3.

""Estábamos pescando y nos llevamos la sorpresa de sacar este raro ejemplar. Como era de noche en ese momento no nos dimos cuenta, pero después uno lo miró con una linterna y vio que tenía un tercer ojo", relató Julián Zmutt, uno de los pescadores."

"Zmutt aseguró que es la primera vez que le pasa y que el hallazgo comenzó a preocupar a la población porque "se empieza a hablar de la central nuclear"."

"Agregó que el ejemplar está en el freezer de uno de los pescadores y que después de que se le hagan algunos exámenes piensa embalsamarlo."

-From infobae.com

From 25% to 8%

2011-10-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

"These debates are set up for nothing more than to tear down the candidates. It's pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one-minute response," the Texas governor told Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. "So, you know, if there was a mistake made, it was probably ever doing one of the [debates], when all they're interested in is stirring up between the candidates instead of really talking about the issues that are important to the American people."

-No, your mistake was leaving Haskell, Slick.

I, for one would never vote for a candidate that can't stand up before people and speak his mind. You've always gotten by parroting what the 'right' people think, and waiting for their money to sell you like a box of soap. Hopefully Dubya ruined that act for a while.

2011-10-26T01:42:00.001-07:00

2011-10-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Chupacabra Report

2011-10-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

News that Gets My Goat..

-Front page story in the Sunday chronicle about Medicare paying over sixty million dollars a year to private EMS companies in Harris County to transport poor, sick, and mentally ill patients by ambulance to clinics and hospitals, five times the rate of any other Texas city, almost ten times as much as spent in New York City. The article notes that some of these appointments are to strip centers and residential neighborhoods, and that many of the patients are “neither debilitated nor confined to a sick bed. They are not headed to, or coming from the hospital, and there is no medical need.”

Expect this story to get legs, although it’s been going on for over twenty years. I’m sure the usual suspects will try to use it as a hammer against ‘socialized medicine,’ though to me it speaks as an example of the vaunted private sector looting the public till and adds to the case for further reform. There is a crying need for low-income and indigent healthcare in Texas. Could it be that we can spend ten times as much as New York (which has twice the population of Harris County) because they better insure more people there and have adequate public transportation to get folks to their appointments?

Funny, this story reminds me of Orlando Sanchez, who the GOP expected to drive his Humvee into the mayor’s office on the strength of his Latin surname. As I remember his candidate resume, the only job he listed other than being CEO of his own ‘consulting company,’ was being an EMT for an ambulance service in North Harris County. Sanchez lost his bid for mayor, but later got elected County Treasurer over a Democratic candidate who ran on a platform of abolishing the office as extraneous. Don’t take this as a smear on Mr. Sanchez; in one quote I found, he described his EMT service as volunteer, besides; only 333 of 397 private ambulance services in Harris County were under investigation by Medicare last year for billing irregularities. Sanchez may well be re-elected to his treasurers post as long as he cares to run.

-I believe that I’ve heard just about enough praise for Herman Cain now. This sock puppet for the Koch brothers said on Meet the Press that “I’m not familiar with the Neoconservative movement.” Excuse me?! You’ve never heard of the Vulcans who took us into two wars that have cost a million lives and three trillion dollars so far? In his book he wrote “I’m not trying to escape the broader issues, but I think a president should first be briefed on classified intelligence about America’s relationships before offering opinions.” So we have to wait until he gets the President’s Daily Brief to hear what he thinks? Like that one George Bush got on August 6th 2001 maybe?

Cain is getting a lot of mileage out of his “999 tax plan,” regressive as it is. I think it’s just a case of economic illiteracy at work, or is it as George McGovern said, “maybe everybody thinks they’re going to win the lottery.” Maybe folks don’t realize that they would be paying sales tax on every loaf of bread, quart of milk, every prescription they buy. Herman Cain was co-chair of Steve Forbes presidential campaign in 2000. Remember Steve “flat tax” Forbes? Pardon me if I’m dubious about a tax plan offered by somebody who inherited a billion dollars, and note that the “999 plan” eliminates capital gains and inheritance taxes.

Alms to the State

2011-10-17T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to pass on the great news that here in SA, Methodist Healthcare Ministries has contribute $9.447 million to mental health treatment programs for the "least served and most vulnerable," among us. This was reported Thursday in the Express News', Richard A. Marini.

"Weknow that every emergency room,every jail, every special service agency in South Texas is being flooded with mentally ill patients who do not get adequate care." Kevin C. Moriarty, CEO, Methodist Healthcare.

"And when the state of Texas cut millions in funding to agencies that care for these least-served and vulnerable patients we decided to step in and help.

The money will go to The Center for Health Care Services and the University of Texas Health Science Center.

The nice side of me says thanks for this generous gift from Methodist who profit greatly by the tax-free hospital charity state-charter they have that requires no charity spending. And believe me, they haven't. This development seems mighty white of them; however, the funny thing about their charity recipients in this case are a state run mental health agency, and the medical research arm of a state-run university, (with a healthy state land-based endowment). The cynical side of me cries fowl.

Granted, the money is best-spent on two of the three largest providers of indigent mental healthcare in the county/region, but when Rick Perry commented that government short-falls, and their consequent effects are matters best left up the the Lord, I don't think charity contributions, (or church tithing) should be rolled into the state-run services experiencing the short-falls. I think we all pictured Holy miracles, or something.

Now I guess the Red Cross should give grants directly to the state forestry service to prevent grass fires. Or, the United Way should give directly to the public schools.

Now that I think about it, who's being cynical.

Occupy Houston

2011-10-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle's Loren Steffy visited the Occupy Houston protest last week and wrote about a thoughtful capitalist he met among the protesters. Here's some:

"They wonder why if they go to college, get degrees and shoulder thousands of dollars in debt, they still find themselves in the unemployment line.

"They wonder why CEO salaries continue to rise, regardless of corporate performance, while median household incomes fall.

"In other words, they wonder why, if they do their part, the system no longer works the way it was supposed to.

"They wonder why investment banks accept billions in taxpayer-funded welfare to stay in business, then show their gratitude with higher debit cards fees and other abusive practices. They wonder how the big banks can whine about increased regulation as if almost destroying the global economy was akin to a botched play in backyard football and they deserve a do-over.

"They wonder how Wall Street, the supposed engine of capitalism, has become an institution that exists with implicit government support. It privatizes its profits, but when it stumbles, it expects the public to cover its losses.

"The point, as Keeble sees it, isn't to subvert capitalism, but to save it from those who have tried to pervert it.

"The system is broken, and no one in Washington has shown much interest in fixing it. They retread the same tired arguments that either caused the problem or failed to solve it.

"We don't need to end capitalism, we need to root out the influences that have corrupted it.

"If the government won't hold the architects of the financial crisis to account, then "this needs to be addressed in the streets," Keeble said.

"We have to save capital- ism from the crony capital-ists, as he calls them.

"On the back of sign, Keeble called for revamping the tax code by ending loopholes and "tax-break largesse," reforming Wall Street regulations and campaign finance, simplifying corporate compliance and toughing enforcement of existing rules.

"That doesn't sound like a radical manifesto. It sounds like a good place to start."

Phoenix Jones Arrested

2011-10-12T01:47:00.000-07:00

Self-proclaimed superhero Phoenix Jones was arrested by Seattle Police after he allegedly hosed down several people with pepper spray. Jones, whose secret identity is Benjamin John Francis Foder, claimed that he was breaking up an unfair fight. Police say there was no fight, and charged him with fourth-degree assault.
Jones is leader of the Rain City Superhero Movement of dorks who must have seen the “Kick-Ass” movie.

hardboiled fiction

2011-10-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Winslow's quite the social critic: "protecting home and hearth from burglars and home invasion. You gotta love "home invasion" -we thought it would be Mexicans, turns out it was mortgage companies."

Time to Wake Up

2011-10-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

There is a very good post at Kos right now in which the writer makes the best point s about Occupy Wall Street that I've seen so far: let it happen.

The Tea Party "movement" was, and is, a media creation, funded by the Koch brothers, and the usual crowd of suspects on the far right, to promote pet legislation. "Keep your socialist hands off my Medicare," and other skreeds from the, mostly racist, rubes, was part of the carefully choriographed, fully funded, carefully scripted, organizational efforts of a few, and not the organic, grass-roots rage-fest it was promoted to the public.

The best thing the current occupyers could do is to eschew the hall-monitor, agenda driven types who attempt to insinuate themselves into happenings like this in order to gain personal power, or political influence.

The whole question from the power elite, along with their lap-dancing, compliant media partners of, "what do they want?" betrays their utter lack of meaningful connection with the 99% of us who are represented in NY and all over the country.

Hoarse, myself and others here have been asking the question, "where is the public anger and outrage?' for a long time now. It seems to have finally come. Maybe Mr. Obama can learn his lesson here; maybe not. It seems to me, that he has been a major part of the problem he was elected to address in the first place. He could refocus on what matters, and use the energy of this movement to bash the shit out of the Orangeman and his team of modern American traitors. Or he can muddle, dither, distance himself from what he and his spokespeople characterize as marginal and anathema to the true interests of the country, which he appears to be doing. The choice, and opportunity awaits. If he continues with the latter, he might as well pack his bag for a long vinard stay courtesy of his new friends, and live in historical infamy.

Which reminds me. Those Koch bros got some serious 'spaining to do to the teabaggers about their dealings with the Iranians. Whether it is Norquist dealing with the Taliban, Reed stealing from contributers, the sausageman stealing from his PAC, Cheney selling to Iranian terrorists or bribing officials overseas, their preachers putzing children, their pols putzing children, or some other freaky scandal, when will "conservatives" stop buying these creep's snake oil?

Let's pray that the madness on the right will stop, and Americans can start the job of rebuilding the nation.

2011-10-04T20:13:00.001-07:00

Prohibition, Civility, and Political Discourse

2011-10-04T02:26:00.001-07:00

After enjoying episode two of Ken Burn’s “Prohibition” on PBS tonight, I happened to catch him addressing the National Press Club on CSPAN3. (Available online at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/KenBur)

What a performance! He spoke about our loss of civil discourse and our inability to compromise, comparing today’s loggerheads with the Civil War and Prohibition eras. He said movements for sweeping legislation to settle moral questions such as abortion or gay marriage were unlikely to be successful in the light of American skepticism of such solutions after the experience of Prohibition. We will however continue to suffer such wedge-issue politics because the media feeds on the controversy.

He addressed the obvious parallels between Prohibition of the 1920’s and the war on drugs, noting that marijuana is America’s largest cash crop. He said that the two differ in that alcohol has been used throughout the ages while marijuana has been but a sub-culture. Drug violence would not end with legalization because we would be unwilling to sanction the use of cocaine and heroin, so their violent trafficking would continue.

Burns has spent his career making documentary films for PBS and the NEH. He defended these entities against those who would shut them down, noting that they also receive complaints about their conservative bias. He spoke of his friendship with William F. Buckley, who appeared on PBS and PBS only for 30 years. Rather than bias, his films concern themselves with the facts, which are neither Democratic nor Republican. He assembles his teams of experts, consultants and researchers from across the spectrum, and tries to present an average. He says that “newspapers are essential to the survival of our republic,” and that much internet reporting consists of rumor and innuendo. Public broadcasting, while underfunded and much maligned, provides the best in childrens, science, nature, history and news programming. “No other venue would permit me to do as deep a dive, without commercials.”

I knew that Burns was intelligent, but boy was he articulate. He spoke his piece without a halt or stammer, without a misstep. He took questions after, smart as a whip, without a pause. Even if he had been provided the questions in advance, which he apparently hadn’t, it would have been an amazing feat to memorize his responses. I would suggest you have a look at this show if only to remember what a public speaker ought to sound like; you sure won’t see anything like it watching this year’s debates.

Help Wanted?

2011-10-03T02:00:00.001-07:00

Pat Robertson’s assertion that most Halloween candy is prayed over by witches made me wonder about the rest of it. Seems to me that this is an opportunity for unemployed broomriders to find seasonal employment.

And while I’m on the subject of Halloween, let me remind young vandals meaning to observe the holiday by throwing eggs that now is the time to buy them so they have time to get good and ripe. Also remember to stock up on shaving cream to avoid shortages and price gouging.

A check of the commodities markets shows that pumpkin futures are through the roof this year. If this year’s drought finds you gourdless, remember that columnist Heloise, who by the way only looks like a witch, assures us that watermelons are an acceptable substitute for pumpkins. So you can go green this Halloween.

2011-09-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

The Godfather of the West Side

2011-09-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

I keep a little legal services clinic on the West Side of San Antonio. It is the oldest barrio in the country, as far as I'm concerned, with the culteral stamp of uniquiness and originality one would experience in Little Italy or Chinatown. Someone from the outside could not beg, borrow, or steal one of the modest old homes around here, which pass from generation to generation. It is such a closed enclave of latinos that I am not surprised when I meet old and young people alike who don't speak English (don't want to) and have left the few square miles of urban jungle only a handful of times.

The neighborhood is plagued by drugs, poverty and gang violence. There are no jobs, and I'm sure that the young have little sense of opportunity for a future with good jobs and schools. 58% of live births in Bexar County are paid for with state Medicaid funds, and on thw West Side, that figure is, no doubt, significantly higher. Children here are more likely to suffer from chronic illnesses that attend poverty often, like asthma, and developmental problems originating in early childhood. Most kids are born at Santa Rosa Hospital; run by the Catholic Church. But also, the kids here are more likely to need special education services to help with learning difficulties endemic in all poor, minority populations.

The people of the West Side are heavily dependent on Food Stamp supplements, and require a disporportionate amount of free housing. A mother of five with a 7th grade education, and no prospects, at some point would probably need a place to stay for her and her family - that's who is in housing; old people, too. The alternative is homelessness.

They need transportation for medical services, job training, mentors, Big Brothers, legal aid, continuing education and GED programs, prison transition programs, after school programs, parenting classes, nutrition education. They need homeless shelters, free clinics, veterans assistance, voter education. They even need caring people to donate and distribute toys at Christmas for children who would not otherwise have anything.

My friend, Fred Gonzales, who is a social worker here, has been helping this community with these things for 28 years. He was born to poverty, and lived with his large family in a colonia on Guadalupe Street where the streets were unpaved and water came from a communal well, all in the shadow of downtown - just a few blocks away.

Fred has helped literally thousands of folks in need for everything from housing to adoption services. Right now he needs help.

The state has sliced his contract, and they did it in such a way that appears political. The state sent a cadre of "investigators," into the neighborhood to dig up dirt, and when they couldn't readily find any, they made stuff up.

To me, it is a strong-arm effort to get rid of important social work operations under contract and then assume these court-ordered services themselves. If anybody has ever spent an hour, or more, waiting on the phone, only to hang up in disgust, or just have them hang up anyway, then it is easy to imagine the quality and efficacy of any new service, such as this, would be in the future under state control.

The individuals that soldier on on the service of humanity are almost never recognized for their self-sacrifice, and the small group of dedicated men and women who persist in helping others beyond a six-month grant, or a grad student project don't spend a lot of time seeking recognition. However, some of these folks are the proverbial, "cannary in the coal mine," and once they are lost, sometimes we lose everything.

2011-09-28T02:08:00.000-07:00

This week, as Albert Brooks gets rave reviews for playing the heavy in “Drive,” I’ve been reading his novel, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America.

Brooks paints an alarming dystopia, the elements of which are all in evidence today. Dirty bomb and smallpox attacks strike the U.S., India and Pakistan fight nuclear war, and a 9.2 magnitude earthquake sends the west coast back to the Stone Age. Climate change can no longer be denied as the eastern seaboard suffers summer- long heat waves of 105 degree temperatures. Medical science has cured cancer, which triples the senior population, the upkeep of which bankrupts the country. Our healthcare system grows more widely divided between the haves and have-nots and income disparities grow vast. On the plus side, America finally elects a Jewish president, though the job is no longer worth even a bucket of spit, electric cars safely drive themselves and billionaires fly in pilotless private jets. And thanks to advanced pharmaceuticals and cosmetic surgery, seniors look fitter and more youthful than they did in middle age.

Brooks, who according to Wikipedia changed his surname from Einstein to avoid confusion with the famous physicist, acquits himself well here, telling us a lot about our times with his witty and insightful imagining of the future. I’ll be burning the midnight oil to see how this turns out.

2011-09-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Chupacabra Report

2011-09-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

-In the wake of Talk Like A Pirate Day comes news from Berlin where upstart Pirate Party candidates have won fifteen seats in the Legislature. The Pirates won 8.9 percent of the vote with their Internet freedom platform, calling for “liquid democracy” with participation beyond merely voting in elections. The editorial board of liquiddaddy blogspot will meet in a liquid summit conference this weekend to formulate our response.

-In economic news The Chronicles Loren Steffy quotes Sandy Leeds from U.T’s McCombs Business School on the Feds efforts to boost the economy, while the congress can’t even agree to provide aid to victims of hurricanes and wildfires.

“When we’re voting against emergency relief funds it’s a reminder of what a terrible political situation we’re in.”

“Monetary policy isn’t going to solve the problems that we’re in.”

“We tend to want quick solutions. There are some things that can’t be solved quickly.”

Steffy wraps up: “With the Fed out of options and congress hopelessly ineffective, the threat of another recession now looms larger than ever.”

Don't Slap Him Like That - Do It ike This!

2011-09-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know where Mr. Obama found his, uhm, fundementals of ecomonic justice. I knew he was carrying - he just didn't seem to want to throw down with it.

I've always thought that the major difference between a Kingfish rally and a Tea Party event was crawdads, pepper sauce, and time. The idiological issues get murkier the hungrier people get. By the time we're standing in food lines, everyone's a socialist/Democrat/progressive/free soiler/free money, etc..and the rhetorical trappings of the Hoover Party become increasingly faded out.

John Kenneth Gailbreath, used to describe "trickle down" economics as the feed eaten by the birds that falls out of the horses feed bag. This running joke, that your neighbor making a killing (often tax free) makes you corresondingly richer, has been discredited in actual practice so many times that simple people like me have to scratch our heads in stark amazement at the shere bulk of cognitive dissonance now gripping (apparently) the electorate that allows these silly notions to continue as part of the national conversation on what to do about our future. Even Democrats pay lip service to this bogus notion, seemingly in order to appear polite to Republican opposition, who are armed to the teeth; dressed as Pirates, and walking them off the plank.

John Maynard Keynes, was a very, very rich, establishment, traditional British poofter, who cared about as much about the economic welfare of the every-day English Prole as the color of Mabel Normad's knickers. He knew that England had to make more money to make more money. An economy must expand or stagnate. Niggling away at he balance of accounts when the basic problem is capitalization gets you nowhere fast. As they say: go big, or get out.

America's economic health is much better than Europe's, they say. Evidently, the union borrowed heavily and now can't generate funds sufficient to meet their debt obligations, with the weakest members pealing off from the center. They face a lot of the same political choices we do, but the US's problems are essentailly made by eight prior years of Republican Tom Foolery and could be fixed quite handily by continued government investment in things that count, like infrastrucure.

Having posited this already established solution, I basically wanted to convey my very sincere amusement at right-wing radio's feigned (or real?)explosion of blustery outrage and harumphing at the President's stated intent to raise taxes to a reasonable rate on the wealthiest among us. They sound like pigs in a slaughterhouse. They started off mad with the Beckster at 9:00 all day until the evening with Davis, or Pags, or whoever the night-shift Nazis are - relentlessly shoveling everything they have in the "free market is God's way to Glory" sack, plus, endless lies about the relative un-popularity of the "soak the rich," solution. I don't know how man times I heard the sentiment that Americans don't want to, "hurt" (real quote) rich people because, "they might be rich someday, too." Boo-hoo! Folks, I'd bet my left truck nut that America would pay to watch Donald Trump stripped naked and beaten severely by truncheon weilding union thugs in Times Square. They'd bring their own pitchfork and torches. And steal his wallet.

I'm not kidding; the corporate media tools are acting extremely pissed. But they really just sound frightened. I had a law professor who used to say, "if you want to hurt 'em, take they (TSU) money."

So, fellas, keep talking about how Americans would hit the mattresses to stave off returning taxes to the Clinton-era rates for people who make millions, but pay less taxes currently than their garden hose. Oh, and be sure to say that while to super committe takes grams' oxygen tank away, and remember when you see them walking away, and the primary challengers get closer:

Every man's a king.

2011-09-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

2011-09-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

Juanita’s post today at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon about Louisiana Congressman John Fleming trying to make ends meet when he’s only netting $400,000 a year drew a comment from A Conservative Schoolteacher (!) calling her out on class warfare and socialism, to which she ably replied herself, of course. All good fun, and then I visited the schoolteacher’s site to see what they’re putting in the water up there in Michigan to turn chickens into Colonel Sanders fans.

There I found a post quoting the GOP National Platform from 1936. It sounds familiar as they decry New Deal waste, fraud and abuse, over-regulation, deficit spending and loss of liberty. They call for drastic and immediate spending cuts to balance the budget, elimination of unnecessary and hampering regulations and other measures to furnish a chance for individual enterprise, industrial expansion, and the restoration of jobs.

Back in 1936, the American people weren’t buying it. The Republicans ran Kansas Governor Alf Landon against Roosevelt. Landon was a banker and millionaire oilman who actually supported most of the New Deal. He lost forty-six states, prompting Democratic Party Chair James Farley to quip “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”

Landon’s candidacy was really ‘Plan B’ for the plutocrats of the day. Late in 1934, retired Marine General Smedley Butler alerted Congress to a Wall Street plot to install a fascist dictatorship in Washington. The businessmen raised three million dollars and asked Butler to lead a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers to march on Washington and install General Hugh S. Johnson as dictator. A special committee of the House of Representatives concluded that “ certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country...There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient." I wonder if the “Conservative Schoolteacher” teaches this story in social studies class.

2011-09-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

2011-09-17T07:36:00.000-07:00

Today I would like to direct your attention to the latest column by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

No, don’t go away; this is not about government stimulus of a moribund economy as John Maynard Keynes would advocate. And this is not about Joseph Stiglitz’s three trillion dollar estimate for the cost of the Iraq war.

Krugman today says that a little more than a year from now, Americans will be making a statement about what sort of country we want to live in; whether we will continue the progressive movement that started during the Theodore Roosevelt administration and got legs during the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt, or if we will forego the social contract forged over the last century and revert to a “crueler, harsher nation” with a devil-take-the-hindmost mentality where life outside the gated compounds resembles a Mad Max movie. (At least until that “Masque of the Red Death”)

Again, our story begins with a moment from the Tea Party debate last Monday. This, from Krugmaan..

“Wolf Blitzer asked Rep. Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six months of intensive care. Paul replied, "That's what freedom is all about - taking your own risks." Blitzer pressed him again, asking whether "society should just let him die." And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of "Yeah!"

“Now, there are two things you should know about the Blitzer-Paul exchange. The first is that after the crowd weighed in, Paul basically tried to evade the question, asserting that warm-hearted doctors and charitable individuals would always make sure that people received the care they needed - or at least they would if they hadn't been corrupted by the welfare state. Sorry, but that's a fantasy. People who can't afford essential medical care often fail to get it, and always have - and sometimes they die as a result.

“The second is that very few of those who die from lack of medical care look like Blitzer's hypothetical individual who could and should have bought insurance. In reality, most uninsured Americans either have low incomes and cannot afford insurance, or are rejected by insurers because they have chronic conditions.
“So would people on the right be willing to let those who are uninsured through no fault of their own die from lack of care? The answer, based on recent history, is a resounding "Yeah!"

“Think, in particular, of the children.

“The day after the debate, the Census Bureau released its latest estimates on income, poverty and health insurance. The overall picture was terrible: The weak economy continues to wreak havoc on American lives. One relatively bright spot, however, was health care for children: The percentage of children without health coverage was lower in 2010 than before the recession, largely thanks to the 2009 expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.

“And the reason SCHIP was expanded in 2009 but not earlier was, of course, that former President George W. Bush blocked earlier attempts to cover more children - to the cheers of many on the right. Did I mention that one in six children in Texas lacks health insurance, the second-highest rate in the nation?

“So the freedom to die extends, in practice, to children and the unlucky as well as the improvident. And the right's embrace of that notion signals an important shift in the nature of American politics.

“In the past, conservatives accepted the need for a government-provided safety net on humanitarian grounds. Don't take it from me, take it from Friedrich Hayek, the conservative intellectual hero, who specifically declared in The Road to Serfdom his support for "a comprehensive system of social insurance" to protect citizens against "the common hazards of life," and singled out health in particular.

“Now, however, compassion is out of fashion - indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle, at least among the GOP's base.

“And what this means is that modern conservatism is actually a deeply radical movement, one that is hostile to the kind of society we've had for the past three generations - that is, a society that, acting through the government, tries to mitigate some of the "common hazards of life" through such programs as Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid.

“Are voters ready to embrace such a radical rejection of the kind of America we've all grown up in? I guess we'll find out next year.”

2011-09-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

The music around here is made up of artists and musicians (some more one than the other) who get together for whatever happens to need doing. These disparate projects go under various names that sort of catagorize the type, tempo, style, etc.

For instance, festivals and parades: Night Train. Parties with covers: Black Market Surf: Tiki Torches....and on

Originals were mostly Driftwood territory. That project (very much a writers lab) persisted for almost ten years, and was a huge labor of love for me and Nails - an enormously talented lyricist and all-around creative fellow, including graphic artist, musician, producer, engineer, etc. For the others - not so much.

Our web presence, which included the sonic and musical achievments to date are gone now after all these years. So, I have taken the links down so as to rid the site of pathetic reminders of that stage in our life.

Why is Driftwood no mas? I'd love to act puzzled, but I suspect it was a matter of neglect and a lack of respect for Nails - things seemed to plow along without his presence or input. His music was being used without proper credit being rendered, or permission being sought. He was not consulted at times when he most deserved to be.

I don't blame him if such a thing occurred. I'm not sure I'm right in my assumption because I don't speak with him much. To imply he did something wrong is not my purpose here, but rather, I'd really like to personally apologize to him for not being the friend, and colleague I should have been, whether the stuff was still up, or not. Nails, whose name is Gary, will always be my brother whom I love. I will look forward to hearing from him some time - I hope soon.

Chupacabra Report

2011-09-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

News That Gets My Goat..

-One of the funnier moments of the GOP debate last night happened when Michele Bachmann suggested that Rick Perry ordered that Texas schoolgirls get the HPV vaccine because Merck Pharmaceutical gave thousands of dollars to his campaign. Perry answered that Merck donated only $5,000 of the $30 million he raised, and that “if you’re saying that I can be bought for $5,000 I’m offended.” Susan Bankston at Juanita Jean’s The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon asks “Well then, what is your price, Governor? Because most estimates put it at $200,000.”

-Mitt Romney laid out his plan for middle-class tax relief: eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for people making under $200,000. This is rich coming from a silver-spoon vulture capitalist. Most sources consider households making from $35,000 to $100,000 to be middle class. As one in the middle of that demographic, my interest income most years is in the tens of dollars, and taxes on dividends and capital gains is not a problem either. I wonder if Romney remembers how many houses he owns.

-Libertarian Ron Paul was soundly booed by the audience when he made a rare foray into the realm of good sense during the foreign policy segment of the debate. After all the recent noise about “the lessons of nine-eleven,” I see little evidence that we’ve learned anything. See what you think..

“There's a lot of room to cut on the military, but not on the defense. You can slash the military spending,” Paul explained, “We don't need to be building airplanes that were used in World War II -- we're always fighting the last war.”

“Most of the danger comes by our lack of wisdom on how we run our foreign policy,”

“We're under great threat, because we occupy so many countries. We're in 130 countries. We have 900 bases around the world. We're going broke. The purpose of al Qaeda was to attack us, invite us over there, where they can target us. And they have been doing it.”

“Al Qaeda has committed “more attacks against us and the American interests per month than occurred in all the years before 9/11” -- because the U.S. is “occupying their land.”

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this, and they're attacking us because we're free and prosperous, that is just not true. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit... They wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for 10 years. Would you be annoyed? If you're not annoyed, then there's some problem.”

Tea Party Express debate

2011-09-13T01:53:00.001-07:00

I missed the part where the candidates told Wolf Blitzer “what I would bring to the White House," so I’ll take the liberty of answering for them..

Michele Bachmann: Sixty foot cross

Herman Cain: Fast food restaurant

Newt Gingrich: ATM machine

Jon Huntsman: Subscription to Scientific American

Rick Perry: Shooting range

Ron Paul: Child labor

Mitt Romney: Business plan to lay off the help and sell off assets

Rick Santorum: Pink triangles

The Gore Nightmare

2011-09-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

• Here's a column from the Wall Street Journal I remember from 10 years ago. I believe it, considering how well the GOP is following Grover Norquist's directive to "make it impossible to govern as a Democrat."

“Share, for a fleeting moment, Al Gore's daily dream: that what counted in Florida a year ago was the intent, rather than the actual practice, of voters. And today he's the one running the White House.

“The truth is that in the aftermath of Sept. 11 we're probably better off, in the short term, with George W. Bush. But not for the reasons usually cited.

“The Bush foreign-policy team gets exceptionally high marks. But a Gore foreign-policy team -- Dick Holbrooke at State, Sam Nunn at Defense, Leon Fuerth as national security adviser and George Mitchell as a roving troubleshooter -- would be equal in experience, expertise and resolve. They also would be bolder.

“Today's basic policy formulation -- state-building, a strong reliance on the United Nations, and multilateralism -- all were articulated during the 2000 campaign by the Democratic candidate. "Bush has bought into the Clinton/Gore policy," notes Democratic Rep. Barney Frank.

“A Gore economic team -- Larry Summers, former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and Wall Street whiz Steven Rattner -- would be vastly superior to Mr. Bush's team, as would their policies. Certainly, a Gore administration would have pushed a more coherent and comprehensive homeland security initiative.

“A President Gore would micromanage the terrorist crisis but would be more knowledgeable. The imponderable would be whether Mr. Gore, in a time of crisis, would be inspiring and constructively challenging, or unctuous and pedantic.

“But the real reason a President Gore would have more difficulty, under identical circumstances, is that the political right wouldn't have given him the leeway and support that President Bush has received.

“In the same situation, the vocal right in Congress would have blamed Sept. 11 on the "weakness" of the Clinton-Gore policies. Jesse Helms would be ranting about the crippling of the CIA that began with Jimmy Carter and accelerated under Bill Clinton. (Somehow the Ronald Reagan, Bill Casey and George H.W. Bush years don't count.) The critics would go on to assert that capitulating to the Chinese with a semi-apology when they downed a U.S. plane only encouraged Osama bin Laden.

“If President Gore had waited almost four weeks to militarily respond -- as President Bush prudently did -- does anyone doubt the congressional mullahs would have embellished the "weakness" charge with protests about the pitiful state of the American military? (Remarkable, isn't it, how quickly this administration turned a decaying mess into a lean, mean fighting machine -- just like the Kennedy administration 40 years ago when it rapidly closed the missile gap.)

“Recent history provides a guide to the response of the congressional right once a conflict starts. In 1999, House Republicans refused to support the Clinton/NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo after it was launched. The GOP House and Senate whips, Tom DeLay and Don Nickles, both suggested the atrocities in Kosovo were more the fault of Mr. Clinton than war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. A few months earlier, when the U.S. bombed Saddam Hussein, Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott said it was done to deflect from President Clinton's impeachment problems -- presumably with the complicity of Defense Secretary Bill Cohen and Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“On homeland security there has been some criticism of President Bush, but it has been relatively mild. But suppose it had been Democrat Seth Waxman as attorney general and Robert Mueller as the new Gore-appointed FBI director when the same hijackers did exactly what they did.

“Nawaq Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, who drove the plane into the Pentagon, were on the CIA's "watch list" of potential terrorists; Almihdhar, the government knew, met with the al Qaeda in Kuala Lumpur nearly two years earlier. Yet this information wasn't shared and both men came into and traveled freely around the U.S. In August, the Justice Department turned down a request to search the computer of a Minnesota man -- who sought to learn to fly a plane without takeoffs or landings, and who was labeled a terrorist by French intelligence. He now is suspected of being an accomplice.

“Perhaps all this is unavoidable in an open society. But envision the harangues from Orrin Hatch about the administration's ACLU mindset that gave the terrorists free rein.

“Top House GOP sleuth Dan Burton, no doubt, would have found some Arab contribution to the Gore-Lieberman campaign and launched a new round of headline-grabbing witch hunts. When that fizzled -- all Burton investigations do -- he would have turned to a government that, eight weeks after anthrax attack, still couldn't tell us whether the culprit was foreign or domestic.

“The full-moon crowd would have gone into conspiracy hysterics if these anthrax-laden letters had been sent to Dick Armey and a handful of radio talk show hosts.

“Then there would have been the economic stimulus package. In addition to extended unemployment benefits, temporary tax cuts, New York City rebuilding aid and bailouts for the insurance industry, the Gore White House might have overreached for items like more highway security (building roads), or have placated labor allies by proposing collective bargaining rights for all public safety workers.

“The DeLay-Armey criticism would have been vicious. Yet the Bush White House, under the guise of economic stimulus, is trying to pay off all of the campaign contributors and K Street lobbyists who didn't get a piece of the earlier tax cut, a move that is far more injurious and costly.

“There would have been constructive critics in the Republican ranks. Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel and John McCain would have been every bit as honest in any critique of Democratic war plans as they are today. Lawmakers like Fred Thompson would have avoided cheap-shot hearings and House Speaker Dennis Hastert would have sought the same bipartisan support that Democrats Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle are offering today.

“There is a need for legitimate argument and disagreement over economic policy and the criminal-justice approach, and certainly over sending young American men and women into harm's way. Such a debate will escalate in the coming weeks and months, just as it did during previous conflicts.

“But if Al Gore had been president, the narrow right would have turned that desirable debate into a vindictive, petty one.”

The Ripple Effect

2011-09-08T00:48:00.001-07:00

I’ve been reading Alex Prudhomme’s book “The Ripple Effect.” This book is all about water; drought, flooding, groundwater, surface water, drinking water, wastewater, water treatment, management and mismanagement.

A friend saw this and called it a ‘gloom and doom’ book. I suppose so, but it’s a fascinating read on a vital subject. Water is an “axis resource,” meaning it is essential to the production of other necessities, such as food and energy. With Texas experiencing the worst drought in fifty years, we’re starting to see how essential it really is. Lack of rainfall has clobbered agriculture and drawn reserves down to sixty percent of normal levels, prompting water restrictions across the state. If the drought holds through next year the situation will be desperate. With smoke from wildfires darkening the Houston sky, this is a good time to consider how we think about this precious resource.

I don’t have a three-page screed ready today but in a nutshell I’d say that water is another thing that we use in an unsustainable manner. Hydrologists use the term “water mining” to describe the practice of drawing water from the aquifers faster than it can be replenished. Prudhomme speculates on which will be the first “ghost city” to empty out as its water supply becomes untenable. He gives examples of tax averse citizens voting down needed water projects and lays out the pros and cons of possible solutions. There are no easy answers, and costs will go nowhere but up.

2011-09-08T00:43:00.000-07:00

Roadside view between Smithville and Bastrop Texas. Photo by Mitch Herring.

2011-09-06T20:14:00.001-07:00

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

2011-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Come to Texas, everybody!

It's a miracle!

I know this because the TV says so. And, Rick Perry, that strong, handsome, man's man - he's got all the answers.

If governments would just follow his lead by not having any taxes, cut all government services, sweep all the debt under the "rug," (of course, blame everything on homos, "illegals" and liburals) and then give all responsibility for any bad stuff to the imaginary clowd Being - everything would be just fine.

Silly U-S-of-A-of-America.

2011-09-03T15:39:00.000-07:00

Great letter in the Chronicle today responding to an op-ed from former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, who wants to be a Senator:

“In Leppert's world, boldness is not addressing the deep structural problems at the heart of America's economic woes but in trotting out the very policies that created the problems in the first place and boldly proclaiming them as a cure.

“Since the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan somehow redefined the country's government as the country's primary problem, top marginal tax rates and capital gains taxes have been cut in half.

“In the 1990s, welfare was pretty much reformed out of existence, reducing cash benefits to a life-time limit of five years. The number of federal government employees as a percentage of total population is at its lowest since the 1950s. There have been massive rollbacks in government regulation of the energy, communication, transportation and finance industries.

“The end result of this 30-year tax-cutting, deregulating, privatizing experiment is a collapsed housing market, enormous income inequality, ruined pensions, decreased access to affordable healthcare and a child poverty rate of 20 percent.

“Whereas Leppert presents his plan as something new, it is anything but. Rather than a blueprint for rebuilding America's economy, it merely represents a continuation of the dismantling of the American dream, already 30 years in the unmaking.”

- Hugh Sample, Pasadena

Candidate Perry addresses the VFW

2011-08-30T18:39:00.000-07:00

Chupacabra Report

2011-08-30T03:33:00.001-07:00

News that Gets My Goat:

-This goes out to those of us who have risked nausea watching the Faux News talking heads riff on their meme that “half the people in this country pay no taxes.” The Daily Show does their thing with clips of all the Fox personalities and a sample of GOP Congressmen repeating the exact same lines. Makes me wanna puke. It’s insulting to the intelligent viewer to listen to $5 million-a-year-contract Hannity say that the folks at the bottom end of the income chart don’t pay enough taxes, when the fact is that low income folks pay sales and payroll taxes that make their effective rate about twice that of the average millionaire. They won’t air the facts, but rather scream about “class warfare.” A quick look at the numbers tells that it’s the folks in the lower income brackets who are getting their asses blitzkrieged. Middle-class incomes have been flat for thirty years!

GOP Congressmen, who have suddenly discovered the National Debt now that a Democrat is in the White House, have finally found a tax that they will raise. No, it’s not the Bush tax cuts, corporate taxes, estate taxes or capital gains tax, it’s the Making Work Pay provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that cut payroll taxes for millions of low-income Americans, due to expire this year. Grover Norquist, once bagman for Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, whose “Americans for Tax Reform” has sworn most Republican politicians to his anti-tax pledge, who has called the proposed repeal of ethanol subsidies a tax increase, is not on board, saying he’d have to study proposals to extend the tax holiday. I guess he’s waiting for low-income Americans to stuff checks in his mailbox.

-I get that creepy feeling when I read about Rick Perry being a protégée of former Senator Phil Gramm. Yes, that Phil Gramm; the klepto-pol who has been called the single person most responsible for the Crash of 2007. Author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 that repealed Depression-era banking reforms and unleashed a debt-fueled frenzy of trading in commodities futures and derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, Gramm gave up his Senate seat and place on the Banking Committee to become a Vice Chairman for investment banking at Swiss Banking giant UBS to help them sell crooked tax shelters; running them afoul of US authorities, liable for millions in fines and holding billions in sub-prime loans. Some genius. Gramm is also cited as mentor to Congressman Pete Olson, the GOP’s replacement for convicted felon Tom DeLay, and Congressman Jeb Hensarling, who will soon be famous for bringing his Devil-take-the-hindmost philosophy to his new post of co-chair of the Debt Reduction Supercommittee.

Maybe Perry’s handlers only mention Gramm to distract from the fact that Perry takes marching orders from on-the-outs megalomaniacs Karl Rove and Dick Rumsfeld. Many folks remember Rove and Rumsfeld, but it’s been over three years since Gramm embarrassed the McCain campaign by calling the recession “mental,” saying that “we have sort of become a nation of whiners.”

America meet Rick Perry

2011-08-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

This from Peggy Fikac in The Chronicle:

Lest we think politics is all games, a KIDS COUNT report released last week, and reported on by my colleague Gary Scharrer showed an aspect of Texas that Perry's unlikely to highlight in his presidential race. One of every four Texas children lives in poverty, and Texas has the worst rate of “food insecure” children in the country — one in four children live in homes in which their parents don't know where they'll get their next meal or how they'll pay for it. It reminded me of a post on the Capital Area Food Bank's website under the haunting headline, “Ten-year-old Jose stays active to prevent thinking about hunger.” It quotes the child: “Sometimes we don't have that much food. I just play some board games or I sleep, or do something active so I don't think about it. We're just trying to get the family to keep on going.”

Inbox Fw: RE:

2011-08-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

“It was the young people of this nation who elected Obama and the Democratic Congress.

“You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." You have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face, and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Cool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it. No jobs, lost mortgages, higher taxes, and less freedom. This is what you voted for and this is what you got.

“Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey Haired Brigade is here, and in 2012 we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like but we get where we're going, and in 2012 we're going to the polls by the millions. This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It belongs to "We the People" and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom.”

- Well thanks, gray panthers, but remember that your generation, like every other, did the right thing after exhausting every other possibility.

Say what you will about the Executive, Judiciary and our ‘Parliament of Whores,’ but we can’t simply blame this trainwreck on Mr. Obama. The Bush bailouts and the Recovery and Reinvestment Act, flawed as they were, probably prevented the Great Recession from becoming the Greatest Depression yet. I shudder to think what we would have if we’d elected the addled and belligerent Senator McCain three years ago. Think war with Iran for one thing.

This latest mess has been years in the making, the financialization of the economy, corporate take-over of government, militarization that has us spending more on defense than the rest of the world put together, and economic injustice that has the richest 400 families in America owning half the country while middle class incomes have been flat for thirty years. The American people have been voting for this rubbish all along; as H.L. Mencken said, "the Boobus Americanus is a bird that knows no season."

I guess you triggered a rant with this one. I didn't 'reply all,' but the "lies, evil and socialism" stuff is too much for me. I'm disappointed with the Pres too, but for different reasons. I take comfort in my belief that a good president is one who makes both sides mad. Reminds me of what FDR said when pullman porters came to tell him what a raw deal they were getting, He said 'I agree with you, now make me do something about it.' The presidency is a 'bully pulpit,' but it doesn't have the power to move mountains. That job is reserved for 'we the people.'

But, Hands Off My Medicare!

2011-08-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

This has been around for a week or so, but the truth does not have a shelf life

Perry Quotables That Didn't Make News

2011-08-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

1. I don't know about you folks in Iowa, but down in Texas, if a man orders a Whopper with mustard, he's liable to be taken out back and anal raped with a lead pipe until he's begging to die;

2. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack can munch on the corn in my stool;

3. Ambassador, Kristie Kelly of the Phillipines, is so fat that when she buys clothes they change the tags to, "one size fits some."

4. Michelle Bachman didn't always look this way. No, Sir. When she ran for congress the first time she was so ugly that when she went in the bank, they'd turn the surveillence cameras off.

5. Josaia Vorege, the Prime Minister of Fiji, can suck my rosey red dick!

6. They tell me that John Bellows, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, always smells like B.O.

7. Mary Schapiro, Co-Chair of the SEC?! Baby, I got your Sarbane-Oxley Act right here! (grabs crotch)

8. Mass, St. Patrick's Cathedral: "pooot."

White House Debates Fight on Economy

2011-08-15T21:53:00.001-07:00

Here’s a bit from Binyamin Appelbaum and Helene Cooper in Sunday’s New York Times:

“WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens, President Obama and his senior aides are considering whether to adopt a more combative approach on economic issues, seeking to highlight substantive differences with Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail rather than continuing to pursue elusive compromises, advisers to the president say.

“Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Plouffe, and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, want him to maintain a pragmatic strategy of appealing to independent voters by advocating ideas that can pass Congress, even if they may not have much economic impact. These include free trade agreements and improved patent protections for inventors.

“But others, including Gene Sperling, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, say public anger over the debt ceiling debate has weakened Republicans and created an opening for bigger ideas like tax incentives for businesses that hire more workers, according to Congressional Democrats who share that view. Democrats are also pushing the White House to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

“Even if the ideas cannot pass Congress, they say, the president would gain a campaign issue by pushing for them.”

-I’m with Sperling on this one. Obama has been settling for half a loaf all along, and that’s not getting it done. After the Bush bail-out, Congress had little stomach for stimulus spending to address the Great Recession, and the half-measures that passed served little better than the ‘helicopter theory’ of pump priming would have done.

Economists say this recovery will take years. What are we to do in the meantime? People need work, and there’s work to be done in this country. State and local governments are strapped for cash and have been laying off workers and putting off public works. Consumer demand is off because people are either broke or worried about going broke.

We’ve been hearing the GOP’s answers, and they’re all about comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. They want to privatize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and even Unemployment Insurance. By way of stimulus they would cut corporate tax rates and capital gains taxes, forego taxation on repatriated corporate profits, and make permanent the lowest tax rates on top earners in fifty years. At the same time, they adamantly oppose any reform of the tax code to close loopholes such as those that benefit Big Oil, Agribusiness, and owners of McMansions and vacation homes. Does anybody really believe this will move corporate America, already sitting on huge cash reserves, to create millions of jobs? It sure didn’t happen when Bush did it. What we would see is record salaries and bonuses for corporate titans, higher dividends, stock buybacks, and a new wave of job-killing mergers and acquisitions.

With progressive tax reform, sustainable energy policy, improved healthcare reform, right-sizing of defense spending, a tax on transactions between financial institutions (a segment of the economy that has doubled in size these last thirty years) and means testing of entitlements, we could afford a new National Recovery Administration to put Americans to work on projects with real pay-back. Energy saving building retrofits, renewable power projects, transit systems, schools, libraries, Wi-Fi networks; all are candidates for investment. Hell, there are millions of Americans that don’t have access to decent supermarkets. The G.I. Bill of 1944 returned between $5 and $10 for every dollar invested. Sensible spending like this could tide us over while the economy recovers from its debt hang-over and put us in position for growth and prosperity down the road.

Now I know that none of this would pass through the present Congress. That’s no reason not to propose it. President Obama should channel “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman and not let up until he is re-elected with a super-majority in Congress. Truman berated the “do-nothing Congress” saying “I don’t give them Hell, I just tell the truth about them and they think it’s Hell.”

He could quote Theodore Roosevelt, a great Republican who 100 years before the Crash of 2007 said “It may well be that the determination of the government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver) to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own evil-doing. . . . I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”

NY Times Editorial: 3/19/14

2011-08-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

Corinthians 14:2 For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.

"Washington, DC - Globba lobba zeedy crip nagga hanna hoooooooooooo! Glip - glip heena mohad nagga glep. Glep. Slotto mozu hamma ran slong babba kran noostrah. President Perry, cleed babba honna leesy han slobby rham klo neeba sloong. "Give it over to God, and let Him sort it out," caca lomy slud grip, Medicare."

Calling Mr. Pulitzer!!!!

Rick Perry to Announce

2011-08-12T18:06:00.000-07:00

Spokesman Mike Miner announced Thursday that Texas Governor Rick Perry will declare himself a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination at the RedState Gathering Saturday in Charleston, South Carolina. Ah, South Carolina: “too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum.”

Perry could have announced this week and taken part in the Ames Iowa debates with eight other Republican candidates last night. Perhaps he was doing like his buddy Sarah Palin and avoiding those darn “gotcha questions.” Chances are that nobody in Charleston will be asking him about Texas-style crony capitalism, or the revolving door that sends top staffers out to become high-paid lobbyists and brings them back to the Governors office to write policy and legislation. There will be no questions about his crazy preacher friends such as Pastor John Hagee, who has made millions telling his flock to be friends of Israel, so that God can start a fire there that burns the whole world. Nobody will point out that Perry, who is so “Fed-up” with government, hasn’t had a job in the private sector since he sold Bibles as a student at Texas A&M forty years ago.

Is Perry for real, or maybe he just doesn’t want to go back to Haskell? He’s done well in government and is living high on the hog with his travel, $10,000 a month digs, and security detail. He may simply be enjoying the high life on what used to be called the “rubber chicken circuit” as some other candidates, declared or otherwise, are doing. Right-wing think tanks pay good these years, and there seems to be a ready if artificial market for books by “conservatives.” RedState.com owner Human Events Magazine’s Regnery Publishing, once publisher for Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, now sells millions of books by G. Gordon Liddy, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and Newt Gingrich, though I don’t know how many people read the stuff. Campaigning is a license to raise millions from wealthy companies and individuals, something Rick Perry has never had a problem with. Opportunities abound for some who know which side their bread is buttered on.

From the, "only in Texas" Department

2011-08-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

I noticed that either 'coons or homeless people were disturbing my recycle bin this morning. So naturally I was heading outside with my trusty 30.06 to kill whatever I found when I glanced at the expressnews.com, and saw that an owner/resident of a private game preserve shot and killed a hapless black bear yesterday that invaded his Mountain Home garden paradise.

Game wardens who were conducting, "routine investigation," into the slaying of the endangered animal speculated that it had wandered up to Kerr County from Mexico in search of food and water. "Why it didn't stop in Ft. Stockton, Menard, Junction, Harper, Ingram, or any other place with food and water along the bear's 200 mile hike is anybody's guess."

Rick Perry is reported to have bragged at a South Carolina Republican gathering yesterday that Texans are proven safe from a plague of starving, thirsty bears intering the state illegally and blamed Obama for lax border security.

"America needs a strong leader who isn't afraid to do what it takes to stand up to bears," Perry reminded the crowd.

Stephen Colbert could not be reached for comment.

Ouch! The Stupid! It Burns!

2011-08-10T07:53:00.001-07:00

I did a random sampling of Bachman photos beginning with Christmas morning in 1965. Basically, she looks, "as crazy as a shithouse rat," (thanks, Molly) in every single f-in' photo she ever took.

It doesn't surprise me that NOW stuck their public foot in their mouth (again) by labeling the News Week cover, "sexist," etc. They have a talent for snuggling with strange bedfellows. But can't someone there make a quick Google machine check on the photographic record of 'Ol Crazy Eyes before going all stupid on us?

2011-08-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

Well, last week’s Teaparty Downgrade became the Teaparty Crash. After hearing parts of Standard and Poors’ Research Update, I thought I’d put some of it up here. It may seem like pretty dry stuff until you consider the fact that all that drama is costing us money. I know that my retirement accounts are down over 5%, which really stings after I was anticipating good returns after seeing the DJIA back up over 12,500 just over a week ago. How exasperating!

The GOP has shown that they’ll go to any extreme trying to take back the White House. Well, election year starts in a few months, and I hope this coup attempt blows up in their faces. If the voting public can see who the real culprits are here, and not lose focus over the next fifteen months, maybe they’ll re-elect the president and throw those baggy-assed freshman out of the House. That’s a big ‘if,’ and there are tough times ahead between now and then. For all the talk about jobs, you know the only job measures to come out of this congress will be in the form of corporate give-aways and tax breaks for “job creators.” –I don’t believe in that type of creationism either. If we want to see a new Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, or Rural Electrification Administration type agenda to address unemployment while improving public health, education and infrastructure, we’re going to have to hang in there and vote for it.

Meanwhile; a word from Standard and Poors:

United States of America Long-Term Rating
Lowered To 'AA+' On Political Risks And
Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as
America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective,
and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt
ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in
the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our
view, the differences between political parties have proven to be
extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting
agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program
that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and
Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on
discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on
more comprehensive measures. It appears that for now, new revenues have
dropped down on the menu of policy options. In addition, the plan envisions
only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements,
the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key
to long-term fiscal sustainability. Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a 'AAA' rating and with 'AAA' rated sovereign peers (see Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions," June 30, 2011, especially Paragraphs 36-41). In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government's ability to
manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to
achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal
stringency and private-sector deleveraging (ibid). A new political consensus
might (or might not) emerge after the 2012 elections, but we believe that by
then, the government debt burden will likely be higher, the needed medium-term
fiscal adjustment potentially greater, and the inflection point on the U.S.
population's demographics and other age-related spending drivers closer at
hand.

2011-08-08T20:14:00.000-07:00

Here at ZDD, we're committed to telling our friends what a tool Rick Perry is, but that doesn't mean we can neglect the front-runner..

Support The President

2011-08-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

The President is going to the place where the giants of American history invariably find themselves when the country faces the times that try men's souls. Lincoln, FDR, JFK, and maybe Truman, all endured the challenges that transformed them from parochrial, ordinary politicians into great statesmen that live forever now in American mythology.

And when one visits the historical record on these men and the stream of events that coincided to drop them into the breach of crisis, it is interesting to contemplate how close decisions often were that saved the day. An unforseen factor; a lucky turn, here and there makes the difference between victory and infamy.

Jimmy Carter, who found himself whipsawed by the competing tugs of opposing politcal forces was ultimately was brought down by skull and dagger-type treachery through an October Surprise engineered by agents of Ronald Reagan and the Iranians, but as historians revisit the story of the Carter administration with judgement after-the-fact that the mild-mannered Georgia governor did much better in difficult circumstances than given credit, the question of whether or not greater support from his own party might have made the outcome of a close election possible, deserves some careful pondering.

With markets plunging from lost investor confidence stemming from worries about Europe and America's (for the matter the world's) economic future, Obama, whose task is to lead ALL of the country through the hard times ahead, has his work cut out for him. As strange and ironic as it sounds from some body like me; an admitted cynic, and self-styled non-conformist, a healthy dose of patriotism, combined with genuine optimism, might help Mr. Obama, and in so doing, ourselves.

Who are these S & P jerks anyway? Where did they learn to count? And since when (heavy Mittens supporters) should an outfit that helped make this mess inthe first place be holding so much power over their own country?

We must support our President. If he's wrong, then let him know, but let's give him the chance to do what's right. I believe his heart is good, and it will lead him down the right path. I don't know of any other way to go.S

Good day at the beach

2011-08-04T13:33:00.001-07:00

The dawn patrol, a bit tardy, hit East Beach Monday for the best day fishing this year so far. Wind was off a bit, SSW, but pretty flat, and water was green to the beach.

While The Creature netted up a bucket of mullet, Joey and I free lined live shrimp in the surf and soon were wrestling speckled trout. A couple were solid slot fish, near 24.” Those went on ice. After this bite slowed down we bounced mullet off the bottom in the 2^nd gut and found enough little black tip sharks to keep it interesting. All in all a great day, especially to have fish show up when I had company. Most trips lately featured gale-force winds and sandy surf. I hope this trend holds, every year seems to bring at least one ‘ice cream’ day with big shrimp on the beach and pompano there eating them. Maybe tomorrow..

Is That A Bible In Your Pocket?

2011-08-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Why do I keep acting like Rick Perry is light in the loafers? Because credible witnesses tell me about their expereince with Perry's circumstances that appear very much reasonable to conclude as something that has come up in the past.

I don't like politicans, such as the governor, who do things like facilitate cuts to services for handicapped children with so much apparent glee. It is seemingly reflexive on the part of these guys to deamonize their victims so that whatever happens makes it appear that they had it comin' to 'em. Teachers, environmentalist, latinos, the poor, are all bad people. But gay folks get special treatment, and in light of Perry's possible polarity in that regard, this relentless homophobic bashing strikes me as hypocritical beyond my ability to tolerate. Even from the party of incredible macho men like Ralph Reed, Gary Bauer, and Orin "Chaps" Hatch.

Perry's Texas miracle: 1. Texas debt = 28 billion; 2. Texas 45 -50th in per capita social services spending; 3. Texas No. 1 in uninsured people; 4. Texas No. 1 in minimum wage jobs; 5. 45% of wages below the poverty line; 6. Unemployment = 8.5%; 7. Six states with lower unemployment.

I don't care how much of a Christian he pretends to be, the suffering he helps cause in order to look after his friends is not very Christian, to me. But let's not confuse religion with sexual orientation; he does that by himself just fine. He has called upon the people everywhere to join him in a day of prayer:

"In a video invitation, Perry says it was inspired by the Old Testament Book of Joel, with an apocalyptic passage on God's army marching on the Israelites to punish them for their moral decline. Perry says America is facing a similar moral crisis today. In Joel, God calls on the Israelites to come together in a "sacred assembly" with "fasting, with weeping and with mourning." Perry said Americans should do the same at the gathering at Reliant Stadium, where the 2004 Super Bowl was held." *

The Super Bowl??? Wow!

He sent out 71,000 invitations, but only got 8,000 back. None of the politicians he invited dare to appear at such a spectical. The event became a bit of an abortion (ironic?) just about as soon as it began. Perry had the thing catered by the Fred Phelps Ladies Auxilliary - just kidding. No, really:

The American Family Association is paying for the event – no public money is involved. The evangelical association is a nonprofit that describes itself as being "on the front lines of America's culture war" and was previously known as the National Federation for Decency. The group, based in Tupelo, Miss., publishes a magazine and operates 200 radio stations. The group condemns homosexuality, opposes abortion rights and argues that the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom only applies to Christians.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the association a hate group for spreading misinformation about homosexuals and transgender people. Perry has dismissed such characterizations and appeared on a Christian radio show with the association's president, Tim Wildmon.
The prayer gathering "is not political, it's not about promoting an organization. ... It's about people calling out to God," Perry said on July 14. "I want God helping me, guiding me, giving me direction." *

Even though Fox News will make the thing look as big as Woodstock on TV, the air is already out of the whoopie cushion. It's a dud. In fact, I've heard smart-alec hippies and rubber neckers are making plans to attend to get free Jesus gear...Oh, and the hundreds of protestors.

At this point, my advice to Gov. Goodhair is to pray. In a closet.

*Many thanks to Huffinton Post.

And the Winner Is.....

2011-08-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

There is seemingly a lot of back and forth among the chattering class about who rolled whom in the recent debt crisis, as if that issue was what really mattered. It demonstrates to me the utter spectacle our politics have become, because it was so much as admitted by Tim Geitner, today that the world was so disappointed in the process that we will probably have our bond rating dropped to AA from AAA, anyway, thus raising interest rates and lending costs on consumers. When it is readily agreed that any improvement in the economy relies on consumer spending, this turn of events is obviously not helpful. So, who are the winners?

A stat that popped up last week that caught my eye related that 80% of families polled reported that they couldn't get $2,000 together within two weeks time. Without help with financing what hope does a regular American family have of replacing that old car, (or anything else) this year? For that matter, since Obama, and our new breed of Democratic politicians view "fairness," conceptually as the guy in the wheelchair has to sacrifice as much as the hedge fund manager, next year don't look so good either. We will cut our way to prosperity - no taxes allowed.

Obama boosters, (an encreasingly endangered species) intimate that POTUS, by some awsome display of political Kung Fu, has boxed the Pukes in to where the Bush tax cuts will expire unless they relent on future budget talks with regard to revenue increases. But this would happen by December 2012 - after he is gone and Mitt Romney basks in his one-term honeymoon. John Boehner might look scared, but that's his post-drunk after-glow, I think.

Everybody lost this time, except the Tea Baggers, who are so mean that they wouldn't ever admit it anyway, and like all rabid Jacobites, they won't declare victory until everybody's dead including themselves.

2011-07-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting letter in the Chronicle yesterday concerning calls from Texas GOP Congressmen Culberson, Olson, Poe and McCaul for the firing of V A Cemetery Director Arleen Ocasio, after Focus on the Family’s Liberty Institute charged her with banning God and Jesus from the cemetery.

“Regarding "Lawmaker says he'll zero out VA official's job" (Page B3, July 21), I am a pastor and a veteran. I've done many funerals at the Veterans Affairs cemetery, and no one has ever tried to censor my speech. That's because when I'm there, the family has invited me. It is their choice to have a religious ceremony.

“Military honors are every veteran's right. They are not in themselves religious. They are meant to be simple and austere — taps, a volley, the silent folding of the flag and its presentation with a standard formula.

“Some veterans groups have their own rituals, but these are not military honors. If someone wants the ceremonies of these groups, they can ask for them. You only get 15 minutes to do a graveside service at a national cemetery. It is not fair to the family or the pastor for any other organization to interject their ceremony unrequested - just do the standard military honors, nothing more.

“Finally, a funeral is not the place for volunteers to inject their own beliefs when these are not requested by the family. The VA is doing the right thing here. Please, leave politics - and politicized religion - out if it.”

William J. Cork, Houston

We'll Take a Rain Check

2011-07-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Mom and dad are at it again. She will remorsefully sweep the broken plates and chine into the dustbin for Monday pick up as unsual; they'll promise not to fight in front of me, or use me as the foil. Again.

The doctors and therapists are divided about whether or not this fueding will psychically harm me is some way. Although, I say distinctively yes, the experts believe that communication geared towards problem solving (read democracy) is the better end.

Verbal violence coupled with threats and calumny are simply what they are in the final analysis. TV politics crave the brinkmanship story because it keeps the cameras around and the story going. Men make names for themselves by pretending to be strong (or, in Perry's case- not gay) once matters are settled, the whole system gets ready for more brinkmanship. It's exciting TV!

I believe American hubris has finally gotten the better of us. The current"debt crisis" negotiations have taken us to a place that I fear spells the beginning of the end of the American Empire. They'll just fix it after zero-hour negotiations and shake hands, and our bond rating will be just fine, right?

I don't think so.

We seem to have forgot these last ten years that the rest of the world firmly believes that mom and dad want to kill each other; that they are the number-one most dangerous threat to peace and civility in the neighbor hood. Dad has so many guns, they are laying around in the yard, and he shoots people all the time, like the mailman and screams, "castle law, castle law! No one goes there anymore. Mom and dad have an ugly trash fire in the backyard that they burn tires and PCB's in 24/7. They have about 20 strange men in battle fatigues living in the garage that the call, "Uncle Carlos," or, "Uncle Xieu."

And now they want the neighborhood to come buy everything at their yard sale cause the need the money.

Naw. I don't think so.

FACEBOOK Must Die!

2011-07-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

I met a girl the other day who did not use FaceBook. Bravo!

She sensibly pointed out that no real communication exists betwteen partites and getsured by cupping her hand that a telephone call (old school) is much more effective.

I'll admit that she's not so very popular as those measues from young people stand. I mean, she doesn't have hundreds, or thousands of friends.

Back in 2004, my idea for a blog was very trendy. The word "blog," was trendier still, and became fodder for comedians that pointed out that we're were hitting comunication saturation rate that would be our downfall.

However, this platform was intended to be interactive. If I told everyone I was going to swim the English Channel (seeVol XXIV) covered in steak fat and goose berries, I had expected anyone who had a comment to offer one in the comments section. It would be a lot like Facebook except without the weird stuff, and by that I mean, huhm..posing.

The system seems to work well (kinda). But there seems something difficult at getting members of the tribe to use this vehicle as opposed to social networking sights as there first choice.

The thing that bothers me the most is when some issues about rehearsing or musical engagements immediately pinned on "wall paper." If I have no ability to talk to one person without speaking with several others at the same time, I'll remain content to use the phone.

If you find me Twittering about putting on my socks in real-time, shoot me dead as an act of mercy.

The Deadbeat Show

2011-07-26T15:16:00.000-07:00

The radio gig went really well. The phones wrang off the hook during the show from listeners marking their approval. We were invited back, and got a gig out of it.

We just need to keep pressing on and get back in the flow.

Potential conflicts appear to remain among us, unfortunately, that I think probably can't, and shouldn't - it is natural to have artistic differences, and the resulting tension can be healthy.

Thanks to Sandy and everyone at KPFT, and those who listened.

Dos Pachangas is slowly recovering from back surgey and deserves everyone's well-wishes, as well as Beato who is getting better.

I had a heart stent put in a couple of weeks ago, and since then, my brother has left to hospital.

So, there is no reason not to again look forward to some normalcy.

God bless everyone.

Party Like its 1937

2011-07-22T16:03:00.001-07:00

I’ve often said that a good president is one ready and willing to piss people off on both sides of the aisle. So maybe Obama’s attempts to reach a compromise with the Republicans on budget cuts and tax increases in order to raise the debt ceiling is not like Charley Brown expecting Lucy to hold the football. Maybe he is going out on a limb to prevent an economic disaster. He must be aware of the parallels with FDR, who cut back on New Deal spending in 1937 to bring the budget back in line, only to see the country start slipping back into recession. Obama must be familiar with economists such as Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong, who are saying that contractionary fiscal policy now will only aggravate future debt problems.

The GOP might talk a lot about jobs, but they’re killing them. Here in Texas the Republican governor and legislature refused to fix the structural deficit caused by their property tax cuts and the loophole-ridden business tax that was supposed to make up the lost revenue, and passed a bare-bones budget that will cost 100,000 schoolteachers their jobs and put tens of thousands of state employees out of work.

And the teabaggers are all against raising the debt limit. I heard them at Pete Olson’s town hall meeting, as I’m sure he did, from the sound of him pledging allegiance to the Paul Ryan budget plan. But those tea-nuts are mostly older retirement-aged folks; what are they going to do when their Social Security checks are late, when Medicare doesn’t pay their doctor bills? They’ve got this cognitive dissonance going, like “keep government out of my Medicare.”

Here’s what business writer Loren Steffy says will happen if the Congress lets the treasury run dry:

“Soaring interest rates — think 30 percent or more - that would crush U.S. households, and make homes and cars unaffordable, plunging those industries back into chaos.

“Further devaluing of the dollar, causing the price of petroleum products from gasoline to diapers to skyrocket even as oil-exporting countries abandon the dollar as a reserve currency.

“A Black Monday-style stock market collapse that would wipe out whatever savings Americans managed to salvage from the recession.

“Scores of small businesses, already struggling to find access to capital, wiped out because what loans are available will be too expensive for many to afford.

“And widespread job cuts as a result of plunging consumer demand and sky-high interest rates.

“Unable to borrow, the U.S. would be powerless to shield companies or individuals from the ferocity of the economic crisis. At least we couldn't complain about bailouts. The government wouldn't have the money to pay for them, but it wouldn't matter. The economic instability that is likely to follow default is the kind that causes nations to collapse.”

-That’s what these ass-hats in Washington are playing with. Think it might be worth your time to call or write your representatives and tell them play time is over? Here’s a link: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtmlI’

2011-07-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

The Chronicle ran this cartoon from right-winger Michael Ramirez last week. Mothballing the Space Shuttles is a sore subject around Clear Lake, where thousands of NASA employees are worrying about their jobs, and blaming the President; but I have to wonder how many people noticed the following, from the second GOP debate in Manchester New Hampshire last month. From The Chronicle blogs:

“Republican presidential candidates agree: No more federal money for human space flight

“The Republican presidential field sent a clear message to NASA workers in Texas and Florida: They don’t see a federal role in funding human space flight.

“The unanimous verdict came during a New Hampshire presidential debate tonight and following a scathing assessment of NASA management by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

““NASA has become an absolute case study in why bureaucracy cannot innovate,” he said. “What we have is bureaucracy after bureaucracy, failure after failure.”

“Gingrich, a longtime supporter of space research, said the private sector and not government should lead the nation into the future of space innovation.

““Unfortunately,” he said, “NASA is standing in the way of it.”

“Debate moderator John King of CNN asked the other six candidates in attendance — including Texas Rep. Ron Paul — whether they would continue federal funding for human space flight.

“Not a single candidate — Paul, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain — raised their hand.”

2011-07-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

"There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippidy doo-dah." - Townes Van Zandt

Chupacabra Report

2011-06-28T01:11:00.001-07:00

-“And it is made up of Americans from all walks of life like a three-legged stool. It's the peace through strength Republicans, and I'm one of them, it's fiscal conservatives, and I'm one of them, and it's social conservatives, and I'm one of them. It's the Tea Party movement and I'm one of them.”
-Michelle Bachman today in Waterloo Iowa.

For some reason, that line reminded me of this:

“I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
-Eugene V. Debs in 1918 after he was convicted for violating the Sedition Act for telling Americans to resist the draft in World War I.

American Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for president in 1912 and 1920, getting over 900,000 votes each time; the latter while he was serving time in federal prison. The U. S. population was under 100 million in those days. I think it’s a fair bet that he surpassed any vote total that Bachman will garner next year.

-I had mixed feelings about President Obama loosing 30 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last week. He did it as a response to inaction by OPEC, and along with an equal release by other members of the International Energy Agency, but this country uses over 20 million barrels a day, three-quarters of that imported. On the other hand, I thought that maybe he was simply taking a page from the Bush family playbook, as Clinton did. Maybe he’s finally learning how to play the game, in time for his re-election campaign.
Still another angle is that Obama did this to check speculation in the futures market that has been driving up the price of oil absent any real shortage or demand. If this is his motive, I suggest he listen to Senator Bernie Sanders, who points out that under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act passed last year, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has authority to regulate such derivatives trading, but has yet to exercise it. Sanders suggests that the President asks for the resignation of some of these sluggish watchdogs.

-And last, the Sunday Chronicle had an ad from Houston Area Realtors thanking six area congressmen for cosponsoring H. Res. 25, a resolution to preserve the current federal income tax deduction for interest paid on a first or second home mortgage. Well holy Mom and apple pie. This is the sort of issue that divides the Joe Biden/ Eric Cantor group that’s been negotiating raising the debt ceiling. The Democrats propose limiting tax deductions to families with over $500,000 in income to 10% of gross adjusted income. At my house, we’ve never been able to claim more than the standard deduction unless we were buying a house or having a baby that year, and I’m not happy about helping people buy McMansions or lake houses on my dime. Grover Norquist may call it a tax hike; I call it socialism for millionaires.

2011-06-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

-From BartCop

Leaders blame ideology for failure to fix budget

2011-06-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

By PEGGY FIKAC, AUSTIN BUREAU

"Lawmakers entered the 2011 legislative session facing a chronically under-performing business tax, a school finance system in need of a revamp and pointed questions about billions of dollars in tax exemptions while the state faced a massive budget shortfall.
"They could enter the 2013 session the same way, having failed to come to agreement on any of the three, potentially guaranteeing themselves a repeat of the budget woes that bedeviled the regular session's 140 days.
"Because of the ideological nature of this session, and because we have a bicameral Legislature, we didn't get a lot of the big reform ideas on the table and debated and resolved," said Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. "And that's probably my biggest disappointment - that we basically kicked the can down the road in almost every area."

-Another landmark session for the Lege. The GOP supermajority has managed to achieve gridlock all on their own. The voters are getting what they asked for, I guess; this is the equivalent of what you could expect if you were to hire a demolition company to build your house. Though many Texans may not be mindful of the consequences of what the wrecking crew they elected has been up to, having been busy watching important sports games and reality shows; spending cuts in education, healthcare, nutrition assistance, nursing homes and mental health facilities will hit home in coming months. Hopefully next year the electorate will remember who brought us here and turn things around before the state gets to looking like a Mad Max movie.

More ‘Running Government Like A Business’

2011-06-14T23:21:00.001-07:00

I’ve been hearing Tim Pawlenty talk about the ‘Google Test;’ he says that if a service is listed in Google then the government shouldn’t be in that business. This idea has been rattling around the GOP brainpan for years, also called the ‘Yellow Pages Test.’

This conservative dogma has sparked fiascos across the country, as when the State of Texas fired the bureaucrats that administered the Children’s Health Insurance Program and awarded a contract to an offshore corporation started by some old Arthur Anderson beancounters out of work after the Enron scandal, (They couldn’t do the job, and 200,000 poor children lost their health coverage.) How about when Cheney and Rumsfeld decided to hire Blackwater or Halliburton to do jobs formerly done by G.I.’s, because the people wouldn’t buy into the war if it meant that their children might be drafted to serve in it. Better to spend billions on contractors and use a backdoor, or ‘economic draft’ to staff the military. What these schemes do is privatize the profits and socialize the costs. And you hear a lot of them when the Torys are in power. Rick Perry pitched a deal for a Spanish consortium to build highways in Texas to operate as toll roads. Texans used to build their own roads and drive them for free. Perry also wanted to sell off the Texas Lottery. Phil Gramm wanted Texas to buy ‘dead peasant’ insurance policies on retired schoolteachers so the state could collect when they died. The biggest scheme of all would be to privatize Social Security. This would be a billion dollar boon to the financial conjurors of Wall Street but just imagine what would have happened if Bush had pulled this off in time for the crash of 2008.

Ideology aside, the purpose here is not to save money, or better serve the public good; it’s all self serving, to feed at the public trough and dole out favors to cronies.

According to the Google Test, we ought to shut down Medicare and rely on the insurance industry to provide health coverage to seniors, as the Ryan Plan prescribes. After all, Medicare spending, adjusted for inflation, rose 400% over the last 40 years. Makes sense right? But over the same 40 years, the cost of private health insurance has risen 700%. If you ‘follow the money,’ you find that the GOP receives the lion’s share of contributions from insurance and pharmaceutical interests, which totaled over $70 million last year.

These so-called conservatives really do want to run government like a business, but that business is a chop shop, where they steal your car and break it down to sell off the parts, sort of like Mitt Romney’s vulture capital business does. It’s like junkies that destroy thousands of dollars worth of electrical work so they can sell the copper as scrap. Good business model?

Running Government Like A Business?

2011-06-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

The U S Dept of Labor filed suit Wednesday alleging that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services Child Protective Services Division forces employees to work off the clock and owes them over $1 million in overtime back wages.

Although the Texas Legislatures has added a billion dollars in funding to the department in the past six years, shrinking caseworkers caseloads form 40.4 to 29.5, caseloads still exceed the national average of 18.9, and Texas caseworkers' pay still is at or near the lowest in the country, averaging under $31,000.

But protecting neglected and abused children is like 'supporting the troops,' sounds good when you say it, but that doesn't mean much when it comes time to pay for it. If Texas officials really wanted to 'run government like a business,' another widely over-used term, they would pay competitive salaries to a staff sized for the workload.

Another handgun tragedy..

2011-06-06T23:03:00.000-07:00

I hardly know what to say about this but I will try to put some thoughts in order here. Another one of our neighbors is dead, along with his wife, this time in a murder suicide. This quiet and friendly young man, who worked in a local business that we patronize, succumbed to trouble in his life thinking that a small handgun held an answer to his problems. We can take solace only in the fact that he didn’t feel the need to turn the weapon on their two small children too. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their family and friends.

As the shocking news sinks in, my thoughts turn to other friends and acquaintances that have died from gunfire. There have been so many over the years.

Some may not believe this, but I do not favor a “nanny state.” I heartily approve of all of the Bill of Rights, and am an advocate of liberty (Stupendous.)

But I do believe in progress, that humanity is ultimately perfectible, and wonder what we can do to change this culture of ours, a country where there are more guns than people, and more folks die from shootings every year than in automobile accidents. Are we safer because so many of us are armed? I don’t see how that can be when most victims are shot by people they know, yet to hear the 2nd Amendment fanatics, gun ownership is the essence of patriotism and good citizenship. Yet for every “armed citizen” story in the NRA Magazine, there are certainly hundreds of tragedies like the one I heard of this morning. There is a good reason why your doctor asks if you own guns.

I’ve said that I would allow guns to be carried anywhere if we could only get them off the television. We are a nation of vidiots, and staring in to the “wasteland” one sees hundreds of actors shot every day. Toddlers pick up guns and fire them. Where did they learn this?

As with many problems, the solution lies with education and sensible regulation. We can rise above our culture of death; but first we have to stop moving in the wrong direction.

Chupacabra Report

2011-05-31T00:40:00.001-07:00

News that Gets My Goat:

-Just in time for Memorial day, House Republicans defeated a bill that would have increased bonus pay for US servicemen and women serving “under hostile fire’ or “in imminent danger” from $225 to $325 per month.

-The House also defeated an amendment to the fiscal year 2012 Military Budget that would have given President Obama 60 days to improve on his plan to begin troop withdrawals from Afghanistan beginning this July, and to set a date for completing the withdrawal. The vote on the amendment was 204 for and 215 against. That’s a six-vote margin. Just think, if we had defeated just six Republican or Tory Democrat candidates last November, thousands more US troops would be home for Christmas. Shame on us.

-The Daily Beast ran a column last week by retired Army Colonel and Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich titled “How America Screws Its Soldiers.” In it, he makes the same point that Sebastian Junger did in his Afghanistan book “War,” that “for some reason, the closer you are to combat the less inclined you are to question it, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.”

2011-05-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

The CCA Anglers Rodeo kicked off at dawn Saturday and I was in West Bay at sunrise netting up bait. I had picked this spot to get out of the 20 kt winds that had the surf head-high at the beach. Pretty morning but for the wind, but only hooked up a croaker on shrimp, a blue crab, and a royal tern who wanted the mullet I was flogging.

I fished topwaters on the Seabrook flats and back bay this morning, trying for a big bite while the holiday crowd around me fed bait to the panfish. No bite, but I did get to christen my new belt, a ski belt rigged for wading. Swims better than the vests I’ve been wearing, and looks sharp too (yeah.)

The STAR tournament is great incentive to get in the water, what with boats and trucks for prizes. The CCA membership is always one of my favorite checks to write. They’re the fisherman’s lobby, working for conservation, research, restocking, and to counter commercial interests on behalf of the rod and reel guys. I used to enjoy paying my license fee too when the monies were dedicated to conservation and enforcement, but recent legislatures trying to ‘starve the beast’ have long since raided those funds.

Jammin at Moe's Garage with Night Train

2011-05-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is a shot of us in our 7^th Artcar Parade. This year we broke off from the Venus mother ship and pulled our own weight. The usual last-minute preparations were complicated by a balky generator, sparky inverter and buggy trailer lights; always something.

This list included some originals, featuring ‘Hello Hopeville,’ classics “Night Train” and “I Feel Good,” we covered “Watchin the River Flow,” and Miss Lucy channeled Lucinda on “Can’t Let Go.” The crowd of 300,000 was kind enough to clap, wave, dance and sing along. We had a good time and nobody fell off the float. Whoo-hoo!

Thinking About Things.

2011-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have spent the better part of my life since mid-2009, with my tear bucket. It makes it hard to write; very frustrating.

I've back-logged so much writing that I feel a bit more of a fraud in all things than I usually do. As mentioned in the past, everybody has been up against it.

Beto is doing OK, but my brother had a heart attack a few days later that has kept him hospitalized since three weeks ago. He still isn't out of the woods. Your thoughts and prayers are welcome.

Fortunately, we are all still here last time I counted heads. Good things still happen, just not as frequently.

For instance, the Houston Art Car Parade is on Sunday. Many factors have changed this year that makes me hope it will change our luck. It used to be on Saturday, so the crowd I had estimated as maybe twice as large as usual (350K?) might be somewhat smaller on Sunday - some people still go to church. Plus, for many years there were no vendors to speak of, but last year the funnel cake and worthless stuff-crowd showed up. In fact, there might be somewhat of a rift between old-timers and new blood in the Orang Show organization. We'll see if this traditionally weird, (and fairly nationally obscure event) turns into something bad.

We broke official ties with Venus this year, so the Hairse is no longer the mother ship. Act-wise, Night Train is going old school by way of a garage band-themed set of old standards. Wish us luck. Last year, Beto got stuck in the Pot 'O Potty when the parade started and things kind of went down hill from there.

In politics, here's wishes that I could return to my '67 borders.

In a day and age when hookers know more about politicians than reporters do, I find myself avoiding keeping informed.

God's Speed to the Teamster's Pionier Flour strike. I see them everyday and honk my horn in solidarity. They are fighting just not be any further behind than they are now. Lucy lived through a lot of strikes - it hits worker families hard.

We'll see you Sunday.

2011-05-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

I am tapping with sticks
on a plastic spackle bucket
humming your name
and wishing for you
a bird in a tree
a dream of music from outer space
a feeling of love
and nothing to prove
for your birthday

-That's from N.Y. artist Robin Winters. I haven't seen him in 30 years and he facebooked me a poem. This may explain why he has thirty times as many friends as I do. Thanks Robin.

2011-05-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

Common Ground?

2011-05-17T03:27:00.001-07:00

As a radical centrist, I’m always looking to find common ground with unlikely allies. I like nothing better than to praise Republicans, Conservatives, or Teabaggers when they land on the correct side of an issue. So, I have to applaud Paleo-Conservative Senator Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, for joining with Democrat Diane Feinstein to call for an end to subsidies for corn ethanol. We will spend around $6 billion this year on a $0.45 per gallon tax credit for ethanol use, and protect producers with a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imports.

The biggest problem with producing ethanol from corn here is the ‘energy balance.’ With the fuel, fertilizer and pesticides used in farming and distilling, it takes one gallon of oil to produce 1.3 gallons of ethanol. In Brazil, they make it out of sugar cane and come away with an energy balance of one to eight. They started 30 years ago and have phased out their subsidies. Vehicles run on 25% ethanol there; the world’s only sustainable biofuels economy.

To do that here, we’ll have to raise hell with the lobbied-up corn and sugar producers, as well as the oil companies. It’s almost election season and no candidates want to face Iowa Caucus voters and tell them they want to cut ethanol subsidies. And they want those big campaign checks from Archer Daniels Midland. Professional tax bitch Grover Norquist, bagman for Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, is calling any cut in ethanol money a ‘tax hike.’

But our situation is ridiculous, loaded with perverse incentives. Maybe the stars will align and give some in Congress the nuts to take on the status quo. After all, we are literally paying in blood for oil.

2011-05-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Redlight Cameras

2011-05-11T03:15:00.001-07:00

Interesting bit in the Tuesday Chronicle about how car crashes are down at intersections where the red light cameras were turned off. This could be an important finding because almost as many Americans are killed in auto accidents as by gunfire every year.

This phenomena makes sense; drivers were accustomed to running redlights, but modified their behavior when threatened with a camera-generated tickets. This made for lots of sudden stops, and lots of people got rear-ended. Now that the cameras are turned-off, fewer panic stops, fewer collisions.

Myself, I voted to keep the cameras. I can think of two people I knew who might be alive today but for somebody running a red light. But when the referendum to remove the cameras passed, I was pleased too because I spend a lot of time waiting at redlights in this city, where the lights still aren’t all repaired from the last hurricane. So now when there’s no traffic I’ll go back to disregarding the signals. With caution.

Does this story speak to the law of unintended consequences, the ‘be careful what you wish for’ syndrome? Maybe not; given time, we may have seen less carnage as people learned to observe and obey traffic signals. It’s not always true that “government governs best which governs least.” In a city of 3 million people, anarchy on the roads would be tragic.

Chupacabra Report

2011-05-01T20:55:00.001-07:00

News that Gets My Goat..

Chronicle News Services report that Aetna has raised its earnings forecast for 2011 after first quarter net income rose 4% to $586 million. In related news, my Aetna HMO coverage for our family of four will cost my employer and me $24,000 this year. Apparently the Medical Loss Ratio provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have yet to come into effect, and Americas Health Insurance Plans have moved to maximize profits in the meantime. I’m waiting to see how Medicare clients react to Paul Ryan’s plan to throw them to these wolves.

The 82nd Texas Legislature, with Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate is struggling to pass a budget. The $27 billion revenue shortfall, along with their pledge to not raise taxes, has led to estimates of 100,000 schoolteachers, and as many state employees, losing their jobs.

I see that the Ways and Means Committee of the Texas House approved HB262, the bill to extend the $1,000,000 Business Franchise Tax exemption. The exemption is scheduled to expire this year making the tax apply to businesses with revenues of over $600,000. This is the tax that was supposed to make up revenue lost when the Lege cut property taxes in 2006. Instead, we’ve been operating with a ‘structural deficit’ that left state budget writers $27 billion in the red this session.

Even more ridiculous, if possible, is the bill by Representative John Davis to forego sales tax on the sale of yachts priced over $250,000. At the same time, the Lege is looking to make up revenue by discontinuing the annual sales tax holiday in the summer for purchases of school uniforms and supplies.

In other news, The Chronicle reports that a coalition of ministers, charities, advocacy groups and legislators are pushing for regulation of payday and auto title lenders, who have spent $3.8 million this session to forestall such measures. We’ll see if this effort brings a break with lawmaker’s usual practice of afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.

ANN: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards

2011-04-25T23:30:00.001-07:00

We went to the 1894 Opera House Saturday to see Holland Taylor in her one-woman play of Governor Ann Richards. It was well received by a full house of folks who were no doubt grateful to remember a time when this state had leadership, not the cynical pandering and cronyism we’ve suffered lately. (Can you imagine people cueing up to see a show about Rick Perry?)

It must be a thrill for Holland to inhabit such a larger-than-life character and she made the most of it, reminding us of the charm and wit that made Richards a Texas treasure and national figure. Speechmaking, working the phone and needling her staff, friends and family, Holland’s Richards delivered well-known lines with the candor and humor she was known for, and the audience was with her all the way. Holland must have been thinking of this role when she quoted Richards once saying “Do you believe we get to do this?”

Richards became Governor amidst a severe economic downturn. She put Texas on a path to growth even as we learned that oil revenues could no longer carry the state. She took on the heavy lifting required to address the school finance system and worked to bring the prison system into the twentieth century. Her veto of a concealed carry bill probably cost her a second term. That was ten thousand shooting deaths ago.

Someday Texans will again elect honest and able leadership. When we do, Ann Richards “will be very near.”

Keep Your Sunny Side Up

2011-04-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

My brother is one of the few, (maybe none) optomists left I know of. There are bunches of phoney optimists, that are really just cynics deep down, that don't want to admit this place we call home is in a shitstorm of bad mojo. Of course, there are morons, too.

But my bubba is a true-believer of the sort who is convinced that humanity can whup any trouble once we get our collective mind to it. Incidently, where the President's quality of positive outlook lies on this human scale is anybody's guess. I have a feeling he has a box of canned goods, macaroni and a flashlight stored somewhere in the house. After all, he was vigorously hawking Volts yesterday with an earnest smile.

With all the gloom around; made that much worse from the hazey smoke of burning Abilene suburbs, I was cheered a little to see this week that the Senate found a little bit of money to save state athletic programs and slightly weaken cuts to HHS, ironically, from the "Rainy Day Fund." Of little note, a local court did temporarily enjoin further spending on an unpopular flood control program, but since Nature obviously never intens to let it rain again, such measures fail to generate much excitement.

Anyway, mi hermano allows himself little patience for Henny Penny's telling him to wear a helmet. Finally, we both agreed that at our age, hiding with a shotgun in the Hill Country, nervously clutching our gold coins and un-engineered seed corn is petty silly. If a Strangelovian underground compound stocked with a 100 to 1 babes was offered up, that's different; but, I don't think Newt Gingrich has me on his list.

It's the children that need the help. We don't seem to be helping much. And the conviction that humanity will wake up soon to realize that the time to pull together is slipping away might come too late.

There's a guy who has kids that are relying on them to be strong, optimistic and hopeful that needs us to think positively about his current struggle. If you know him, you can affirm that he always gives and never complains, and in that sense, is the real optimist.

Gary Raymon "Beat-O" Spring survived complicated heart valve surgery in Houston on Thursday, and is recovering at home. I, and all of the ZDD tribe wish him God's Speed.

I will forward him any messages, but feel free to say hello.

Chupacabra Report: News that Gets My Goat

2011-04-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

Today Juanita linked to a Texas Observer story about my State Representative John Davis. He has introduced a bill, HB2187, to cap the sales tax on yacht sales at $15,625; that is the usual 6.25% sales tax on a yacht costing $250,000. So if you’re in the market for a million dollar boat, this could be good news for you.

Proponents say that this measure would keep rich Texans from buying and docking in Florida, which passed a similar measure last year. Poopdeck. In a state facing a $27 billion budget shortfall, laying off schoolteachers, cutting children’s health insurance and closing nursing homes, this just sounds too Louis the Sixteenth. If the state of Florida wants to give away the store to millionaires, (and they do: last year they elected a governor, Rick Scott, who lead insurance giant Colombia/HCA to commit 14 felony crimes involving overbilling Medicare and paying kickbacks to doctors. Colombia/HCA paid $600 million in fines, and Scott resigned with $350 million in stock) they are free to do so. But I would hope that even our smarmy legislators would be ashamed to vote for a bill like this.

IPeanuts With That?

2011-04-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

With folks water in Japan being tainted with nuke material, along with the milk, I wonder at what point mom's might consider beer as a delicious substitute for their thirsty tots. Kind of like up-grading from bread to cake. This is an old concept that never quite took off in times past as the official government respnse to shortages, and the like. Heck, disasters and revolution can be fun, from a certain point of view.

"Hey, what kind of society let's babies and children stay drunk all the time?"

The kind that doesn't seem to care very much about things that used to matter, or in which information about the truth becomes so perverted that no one can make a good choice anymore.

My sympathy for Japanese moms is deeper and more profound than I can put into words here. But at least this sad plight visited on them resulted from relatively accidental consequences. However, the public health emergency imposed by such circumstances can be measured and dealt with based on known facts, (which are demonstrably in short supply from the sheepish Japanese authroities who seem to revise their estimates of the danger as they go along) and efforts can be made to repair the harm. In the case of the public health catastrophy underway here made real by misguided public policy based on ig norance, greed and hate - not so much.

It appears likely to me that the state and federal budgets are going to be balanced on the backs of the poor, and little can be done to change this apparent reality. This is a decision we have made collectively and it is bound to run its course in terms of immediate and lasting consequences to public health.

For instance, children alive today because of treatment covered under Medicaid, who require regular therapy and other services currently covered under Medicaid can expect this to end. CF kids will choke and die, CP kids will never function independently, MD kids will wither away and expire, hungry kids will goo without food, MR kids will go into state institutions; premies will be still-born. Moms will suffer mal-nutrition and sub-standard prenatal care. I could go on, but I won't. Instead, I will endeavor to report what I see, and hope for the best.

Pop a top for the fools that born you, junior.