What Burka misses in regards to Texas candidates/voters

The (election day) ballots haven't even been cast, and already Paul Burka is having a pre-emptive sad....

The Silent Majority, Paul (The Clown) Burka, Texas Monthly

The silent majority of Republican voters has allowed the most vocal, and the most radical, elements of the Republican party to take control of the primaries. But the problem isn't with the voters--the problem is the candidates themselves.

The problem with Burka's thesis is that the Republican primary voters, as well as a majority of voters in the general elections, aren't choosing to elect what he terms to be "sensible, moderate" Republicans who are, in reality, Democrat-Lite Republicans or the ideological equivalent to what used to be called conservative Democrats back when Texas being a one-party state was viewed as a positive.

For all of the TLSPM hand-wringing over the dearth of moderates in the Texas Republican Party, it's telling that the same level of angst wasn't leveled toward Democrats when they purged their party of the squishy middle after the Republican ascendancy.

What is really happening, and don't let the blathering of Burka fool you, is that Texas is polarizing in advance of the same trend at the national level. Yes, to some extent, the Tea Party gets credit (blame) for this but it's also reflective of a long-term trend toward polarization as each political side listens to the echo-chamber of their chosen media outlets.

Whether you're a fan of MSNBC (on the left) or FoxNews (on the right) there's no doubt that the views presented on both of those outlets (as well as the increasing amount of online news-ish sites that don't even pretend to report it down the middle) don't pretend to lend themselves to anything approaching moderate tones.

Conservatives, for years frustrated by what they feel to be a persuasive media bias to the left, have all but abandoned traditional media outlets for talk radio, conservative blogs and websites as well as newsletters and magazines that report the news they want to hear. Liberals mock Conservatives for this. Then they head out to MSNBC, Mother Jones, Daily Kos and (recently) Vox to have their biases confirmed while throwing fits over corporate media and all of its ills.

Part of the problem is that America has decided to make politics a game of personal pride. Winning, or losing, an election cannot be the failure of the candidate, or the electorate just selecting the other person, it's now a personal shot against one's moral code. For journalists like Burka, Dewhurst losing isn't the State rejecting a poor candidate who is not a movement conservative, but a personal blow to his belief of how politics should be done and that just can't stand.

It's the same reason people have reacted with hatred toward Bush the Younger and Barack Obama. It's also the same reason partisans defended them with such vigor even when it was pretty clear they were wrong. Bushitler and Barack Hussein Obama sprout from the same place in the human soul.

All of this does make for pretty poor politics, but also for pretty poor political journalism. It's become the norm rather than the exception from the TLSPM. Public policy-based, investigative reporting has been co-opted by Ego's in Chief whose view of journalism is a graph attached to a story suggesting that a policy they don't like is going to turn Texas into a barren, eco-tragic wasteland governed by the dim and gormless whilst the intelligent set work hard to turn cities into mini-replicas of California.

It's easy to point fingers at a low-turnout primary run-off and say that the so-called "silent majority" is not getting their way. It's going to be harder to make that argument however should Patrick win in the general.  Given that Van de Putte is a bad candidate I think this will probably be the case.

Worse still, for Democrats, I believe that Van de Putte is going to go negative which is going to further cast Patrick as a victim in the eyes of Texas voters.  At least, the moderate voters. The 30% of progressive voters could care less how bad of a candidate Van de Putte is. All they care about is breaking the Republican stranglehold on state-wide elections.  Conversely, however, the around 40% of voters who identify as Republicans aren't going to care much about the personal quirks of King Dan, they just want to preserve the long-run of party domination.*

Even worse for the Democrats is this:  The so-called "moderate center" in Texas politics is not the swing vote that many think.  Over time the average margin of Republican victory** has remained fairly constant at around 55% (R) and 40% (D). If you exclude 2006 which had two name independents that skewed the results, trend is pretty consistent in major, statewide races.  What this means is that the so-called swing vote in Texas is staying remarkably constant, suggesting that 'so-called' swing voters aren't as independent as they like to pretend but instead are fairly reliable voters for one party or another.

All of this runs counter to Burka's claim that the silent majority is being hijacked. If anything, the vocal majority is having more of a say in Texas politics and that say is increasingly trending toward the more conservative candidates that the TLSPM likes to suggest are outside the mainstream.

If you define the mainstream as being exclusive of those who vote, then you get a predictable Paul Burka "the will of the people is being subverted" missive. If, on the other hand, you define the mainstream as the majority of Texas voters, you realize that the only wills being subverted are those of Burka and the rest of the TLSPM.

Go vote today, whatever your party. Make sure that the candidates on the general slate in November are the ones you want and not the ones that Burka thinks should be on there because they give him inside information for stories.










































*There is a point to be made about the lack of quality in candidates resulting from single-party domination, but it wasn't made when Democrats were in power and it's not really being made now. There are plenty of elected officials in office now who are only there because they can fog a mirror and happen to have the correct letter behind their name. This is a trend that I don't see improving over time.

**I'm referring to state-wide races only.  Clearly in district-specific races the swings are much greater.

Mayor Parker crying wolf on the (soft) revenue cap?

Last week there were fired the first, quiet, shots in Mayor Parker's coming offensive against the City revenue cap approved by voters in 2004 and (although pillowy soft) the new sign for what ails the city amongst the increased expenditures crowd. Missing from the argument is that the "cap" places restrictions on revenue but fails do the same for spending. This omission by the local media is a big one. Secretarial journalists are good at regurgitating the truism that the cap might be met, but they're not so good at examining why hitting revenue ceilings might be a problem when there's no problem now meeting needs when revenue falls within limits.

Consider this:  For the 2015 fiscal year budget Houston has not bumped into the cap. This means that revenues (exempting raises in enterprise funds which were excluded in Prop 1) have not yet risen at rates higher than what would be calculated based on population growth and inflation.  In 2016 however, this is expected to change.

The short argument that's already been presented because of this (projected) change are dire warnings that Houston will need to, in some way, (maybe) reduce revenues to those levels prescribed by the cap. This would not mean that the budget would be "cut" only that the increase would be rolled back to the capped limits. It's the same lie that we saw almost daily in the state education funding debate, you know, the one where a reduction in increases morphed to a $4 Billion dollar "cut" in education funding.

The second piece of the cuts puzzle, the one that's not being reported, is that in order for the cap roll-back to be an issue budgeted expenditures must rise at a level that would exceed the revenue ceilings. In 2015 the City is operating under the cap structure just fine. We are being led to believe that this is going to change but there has been nothing outlining what those changing factors might possibly be. True, during the economic down-turn there were budgetary restraints. Those weren't caused by the cap however, they were caused by a sluggish economy. What we're seeing now is an unaccountable local government with no effective fiscal watchdog suggesting that a restriction not previously a concern is suddenly going to become one because......well just because. Because of this because the city will be looking at mass lay-offs, an even worse pot-hole situation and future Mayors being required to take their executive staff to lunch at McDonald's instead of pricey haunts in the Heights.

Yes, it's a harrowing thing to consider.

You can think about this in terms of a vacuum. The default setting of a vacuum is to suck up all debris in it's path leaving nothing hanging around. During the process of this sucking the vacuum bag gets bigger and bigger, expanding to a point that it needs to be emptied out. If a vacuum doesn't suck up all of this debris then we consider the vacuum to be faulty and look for a model that will do a better job sucking.  Should there come a time that the vacuum is forced to return the debris through it's business end, the results are typically loud, dirty and viewed with much dismay.

The City of Houston government has, for several years now, operated in the same manner, expanding (as does a vacuum bag) to suck up all available revenue regardless of actual need. If, on the rare occasion, the vacuum is asked to regurgitate debris, the result is typically messy and comes with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Tax refunds, which are darlings of conservative politicians on the campaign trail but very, very rare, are to progressives the same as asking them to put their lips on the vacuum hose while it's in reverse mode. If you're wondering the biennial budget cycle is the equivalent of changing the bag. (Just to cap the analogy)

In many ways the fight that you're going to see over the revenue cap will be all about asking the vacuum to give back what it's sucked up. Currently city expenditures fit the revenue that's being collected in accordance with the cap. By casting the cap as potentially a creator of job cuts, the Parker administration is admitting that plans are in place for expenditures to rise at a level unauthorized by the cap as well. This would mean a foreseeable increase in city budgets beyond population growth and inflation. What this really means is that Mayor Parker is preparing to roll out several costly initiatives, or that the city is doing a horrific job in controlling costs. Either this or it means that the making of, and sticking to, budgets is not something they're all that interested in. It's much easier to just use the money up, whether you need it or not, than to exercise fiscal discipline.

There's no reason, other than expansive budgeting or poor cost control, that expenditures currently fitting under capped revenues would need to be cut due to the imposition of the latter in future years. A failure to be able to plan for this contingency suggests that the fiscal leadership of Mayor Parker and her staff is out to lunch (probably at great taxpayer expense) while the City decides who can use urinals, when they can use them and what companies with which iPhone apps can allow people to hitch a ride outside the auspices of Yellow Cab. One can't help but wonder when in the course of worrying about Phil from Duck Dynasty, weighing in on Johnny Manziel, closing down Houston streets to car traffic in support of the "things white people like" blog or settling in for awkward photo ops on bicycles did Parker come up with this idea?

One thing is for certain, the leadership and journalism vacuums within the Houston region (I'm looking at you Harris County and your Astrodome, traffic, etc.) are continuing to expand as fewer and fewer outlets provide real, non-secretarial reporting. Investigative journalism forces elected officials to justify their lack of action and chicken-little cries of doom. It is a hedge against the city gorging itself while real needs go unmet. Secretarial journalism searches for crumbs that fall off the table of the ruling class and hopes to keep their invitations intact for the next soiree. One wonders, if the vacuum bag of the city budget under Mayor Parker stretches past the breaking point, just how bad of a loud, cacophonous mess it will be? And, furthermore, will Houston's secretarial journalists even hear the noise as they pat themselves on the back for their Pulitzer nomination selfies?

An argument without merit in a city without leadership.

Yesterday, when writing about the Grand Urinal Bargain of 2014 I discussed fears of protestors surrounding issues of who can use what bathroom and where:

Let's say a child predator male is willing to put on a dress in order to get into the ladies room and do whatever it is they do, under the wording in the ordinance, the businesses would be powerless to prevent them from going in. Even more concerning was a clause in the paragraph saying businesses could deny the transgendered access to their preferred bathroom if they had a "good faith belief" that the subject's transgender (um...ing) was not "genuine".  I'm sorry, but the only real way to tell if a transgendering is "genuine" is to either do a public check of the fun-factory, or request a demonstration. I don't know about you but that's not a job I think would be in high demand.

I thought, upon writing this piece, that it was fairly clear I was not singling out the transgender community as sexual predators.  What concerns me was the wording of the law and how high a bar was set to prove malfeasance on the part of those who were NOT transgendered, but who could use the law as an enabler. In other words, what concerned me was the law of unintended consequences, which never is, but always should, be a discussion point when passing ANY law.

As is their wont, Mrs. White responded today with a carefully constructed straw-man.

Pass the NDO. Mrs. White, Chron.com

They also should feel ashamed that many of their movement's leaders have resorted to lies and hatred in an attempt to promote their cause - baselessly accusing Houston's transgender community of being a refuge for sexual predators who prey on women and children. Harris County Republican Party Chairman Jared Woodfill, whom Republican voters wisely booted in this year's primary election, has even taken to calling the ordinance the "Sexual Predator Protection Act."

Except that, the problems that these conservative groups are voicing are not about transgender residents picking and choosing the restrooms of their choice, it's about sexual predators posing as transgender to gain access. It very well could be that this issue is a solution looking for a problem. But to prove that point reasoned debate and statistics are needed, not logical fallacies and preaching from an editorial board who is desperately out of touch with it's customer base. It is also highly probable that some are voicing opposition to this ordinance out of a genuine dislike for the GLBT community. However, just because some are forwarding an argument for spurious reasons does not necessarily mean that the argument is invalid.

Secondarily, I had major concerns with the amount of latitude that the proposed ordinance allowed businesses in determining whether or not one's transgender identity was legitimate or no. Were I a member of the transgender community I would have screamed long and hard about that as well.

Now that the clause has been removed by Mayor Parker in an attempt to silence critics, the issue hasn't gone away, in fact, it's been made worse.  Now instead of providing guidelines for protections provided to transgender citizens the new bill is opaque and will spur several calls to HPD who will then be put in the impossible position of determining thought.

IF a business truly believes that the transgender identity of a certain person is not legitimate, they may refuse service without discrimination. However, if they refuse service without these beliefs then they are discriminating. We are going to leave it up to HPD to determine this?

I believe that in the culture wars, the GLBT community has won their case and that the argument is over. I see no reason to deny them marriage rights, benefits or divorce rights for that matter. However, I also don't think the attitude of "inclusion" is aided by a bill that basically makes it easier for the winning side to comb the city picking off the defeated survivors.  That is, in effect, all this ordinance is designed to do. As much as I am firmly in support of equal treatment for the GLBT community, I am ardently against vilifying those who are still opposed due to legitimate reasons of faith and/or morality.  That is not inclusion, it's an attempt to ostracize.

A true leader would understand the difference, would call for open and honest debate about the best way to prevent it from happening. Because neither of them have opted to engage in this debate, but have decided to treat the other side's issues as having zero merit. I'm convinced that Mayor Parker and Mrs. White are not the leaders they imagine themselves to be.

The Grand Urinal Bargain of 2014

In Modern Houston, where to potty is a problem.

What's causing the issue is a clause in the proposed non-discrimination ordinance allowing the trans-gendered to use a public restroom of their choosing. 

Unfortunately (but thankfully as well) there's no (legal, public) way to tell whether or not one is REALLY transgendered.  Let's say a child predator male is willing to put on a dress in order to get into the ladies room and do whatever it is they do, under the wording in the ordinance, the businesses would be powerless to prevent them from going in. Even more concerning was a clause in the paragraph saying businesses could deny the transgendered access to their preferred bathroom if they had a "good faith belief" that the subject's transgender (um...ing) was not "genuine".  I'm sorry, but the only real way to tell if a transgendering is "genuine" is to either do a public check of the fun-factory, or request a demonstration. I don't know about you but that's not a job I think would be in high demand.

In short, it's a mess of a clause in a mess of an ordinance designed primarily to excite the base and position Parker as a civil rights champion for her eventual state-wide political run. It's a return to business as usual for Parker who (when campaigning) decides to distance herself from what she has described as "being a GLBT advocate for over 40 years".

As you can imagine, upon being told of the existence of this paragraph many are upset, angry even that the public restrooms at Texans games could soon become a new wild West full of skirted, mustachioed men sitting in stalls waiting for the one across from them to swing open, if only for a second. On the other side of the coin, the humor potential of one not properly equipped trying to navigate a urinal is sadly being overlooked.

These are serious issues however, for serious times. Way more serious than the potholes that threaten to homogenize your children when you drive down Houston's streets, more serious than HFD brown-outs which threaten to reduce response times to disasters, and even more serious than addressing Houston's pension, which is always hotly debated but addressed with band-aids over the cancer of future obligations.

This is a big time, and a big issue which Mayor Parker has boldly decided to address by......

.....sticking her fingers in her ears and going "Nyah, Nyah, Nayh. I can't hear you!"


That's correct, the grand plan in the issue of who may stand in front of what urinal is to remove the offending paragraph and let the HPD sort it out when the inevitable discrimination calls come pouring in.


That's right Houston, while all of these major issues are still unaddressed your elected leaders are focusing on who can pee where, and for the most part, doubling down with needless legislation that cannot override, and is made duplicitous by, State and Federal law.

Casting stones at Wallace Hall from glass houses

The TLSPM has been all over the Wallace Hall/UT Board of Regents mess lately. While it's true that they've been bungling the reporting by trying to focus on a non-existant A&M/UT-Austin angle they have been spending an inordinate amount of time on what is basically an internal argument over a Regent poking his nose where some don't want him to, the get Rick Perry angle is proving too hard for them to ignore.

It's easy to see why the TLSPM is after Perry, after all, this is a man who brushed aside the TLSPM during his last campaign for re-election, and won. Thus proving that they're no longer relevant in modern political debate.  This has angered them, and it's led to some curious reporting in the case of Wallace Hall.

It's also opened up a blind spot.  Let us consider the case of Transparency in State Agency Operations Select Committee member State Representative Naomi Gonzales.  Ms. Gonzales, if you remember, was named to the Texas Monthly "worst" legislators list after getting behind the wheel of her car with a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. Ms. Gonzales then proceeded to strike another vehicle, which then hit a bicyclist. In the immediate aftermath of the accident first responders reported that she was dismissive of the injuries of the other parties.

All of this was OK because Ms. Gonzales made a tearful speech which earned her a standing ovation from Democrats, including Committee chair Rep. Carol Alvarado. For her transgressions Ms. Gonzales received a sentence of 15 days in jail and the voters decided, in the March primary, that she should no longer represent them.

This is not to say that Ms. Gonzales should not have been on the committee. That would be an Ad Hominem argument which has no place in the debate.  What it does reflect is the broken string in the instrument of ethics in Texas politics.

After her wreck there was no serious move within the Texas Legislature to either censure or impeach Ms. Gonzales from office.  There was no move to punish her at all.  This is a woman who got drunk, showed no regard for the life and health of her fellow Texans, injured some of them, and then got a standing ovation for tearing up and giving a canned apology.

In contrast, the Transparency in State Agency Operations decided to vote to begin impeachment proceedings against Wallace Hall in a closed-door meeting, shielded from the public eye. Think about that for a moment.

Based on the evidence that I've seen, if Hall was guilty of anything it was a failure to work and play well with others. Perhaps he could have handled his investigation with more tact, could have worked with the board he was appointed to sit on.  These actions reveal a weakness in professional skills but hardly seem like an impeachable offense. Given the discord in today's Texas political system however it makes perfect sense that his actions (which, by the way, seem to have uncovered evidence of financial irregularities) are treated as worse offenses then injuring non-members of the ruling class.

Houston would be great if we could just get rid of those pesky Houstonians.

Houston, the Nation's undisputed leader in job growth since the recession, seems to thrive in spite of itself. Whether it's the unfriendly climate, horrible drivers, streets that closely resemble a moonscape or just a majority of citizens who choose to live in the suburbs the city seems to continually overcome what many consider are challenges to it's greatness.

The problem Houstonians, is you. That's right, you. Especially those of you who have the audacity to work in the regions largest industry for jobs. An industry that the Houston Chronicle's new leadership team has obviously decided is in need of some good old-fashioned journalistic review. That the review inevitably calls for increased regulation and stringent pollution controls that would, by necessity, kill this job growth is a feature not a bug.

Of course, any dissent from the established mantra that prosperity kills Gaia is treated as blasphemy, the idea that economic growth and conservation can co-exist is a heresy punished by banishment from Houston's political conversation.

The reason for this is pretty simple. Those of a "smart-growth" disposition truly feel that Houston's growth has become an undesirable thing, that hordes of working and middle-class, middle-management Suburanites are a detriment and not, as previously assumed, a boon to the economy. A Houston region of 6 Million is automatically viewed as worse than a Houston region of say 2 Million.

Of course, this growth would be OK were it of the approved type: Young, 20-something DINK's willing to shell out premium rents to live in what passes for luxury high-rises built on the foundation of former poor, predominantly minority, neighborhoods. Bonus points are given if you decide to renovate a bungalow that has fallen into disrepair. Those who want to live next to established enclaves of the, predominantly white, and wealthy?  Your growth is not welcome here.

Over the years I've watched with some amusement the contortions of those obsessed with shoe-horning Houston's growth into acceptable parameters as they try to explain why some life choices are good and some are bad.  The word 'unsustainable' gets thrown around, a lot, and it's typically used to heap disdain on lifestyle decisions that don't meet the approval of the unproductive class.

The problem with most of these arguments is that they center on the mistaken belief that there is moral superiority in choosing to live a.) without a car and b.) in a multi-family domicile without a yard. The idea that different housing choices are simply that does not compute with the new-urbanist set. As a matter of fact, it runs so counter to their moral code that they feel the need to chastise others for it (anonymously of course) in newspaper and blog comments. It's much easier to feel good about yourself if you have made the decision that everyone else is morally deficient in some way.

So, that's it then. In order to save Houston and allow her to achieve the greatness that many have planned for her a large portion of you must go away. There's no other option, I'm sorry about your kids and their (comparatively) good suburban schools but you're making HISD look bad and that just can't stand.

Fortunately, I've been thinking about this for about 10 minutes or so and I believe I have a solution. It's not a perfect solution by any means but I think it's the fairest way to cull the Houstonian herd and bring a little sanity back to our roads, schools, living condition.

Everyone who lives outside the Beltway and commutes to a location inside the Loop needs to immediately relocate, preferably to Beaumont. Aggies will be allowed to move to College Station, but SHSU graduates can't choose Huntsville, that would be too close. Of course, you also have the option of moving out of state entirely or to Austin, which opens up a bevvy of options for our progressive friends. The first ones out should be those in the oil and gas industry, you're not wanted anyway.  However, because it gives good slide-show you are allowed to come back temporarily to the Offshore Technology Conference, but you have to stay in one of the Downtown hotels even though there's a good chance you'll get hit by the toy train or step in dog poo.

For those of you staying?

There are going to be new "luxury" apartments built downtown, we will discuss your relocation to those buildings soon.  We will also discuss pet disposal at the time of your move because these buildings, understandably, will be pet-free zones.  Your kids will be placed in the appropriate school and you will be given a 10% off coupon to help with your first bike purchase. All cars will be donated to the Art-car parade which will soon announce it's expansion from one day to an entire week. Attendance will be mandatory.

If you're unable to afford/find an apartment in one of Houston's new luxury spaces guess what?

I've also solved the problem of what to do with the Astrodome.

The Myth of Affordable Houston (Inside the Loop that is)

Last week the Chron stuck an article behind their pay wall asking whether or not Houston's reputation for being affordable was still accurate given the rising cost of real estate. The answer to the question was both yes and no depending on where you were looking to buy.

Inside the Loop, Houston is becoming increasingly unaffordable as prices rise in harmony with falling supply and increasing demand.  Outside of normal market forces, and all but unacknowledged in the article, there is the reality that these rising rents and bevy of subsidized projects focusing on "luxury" multi-family dwellings are specifically designed to reduce the affordability of the urban-core, not increase it.

The new density plans for the area outside the Loop to Beltway 8 will move that circle of increased expense outward.  The article goes on to mention that the middle-class and poor are increasingly looking at homes in the Ex-burbs, beyond Beltway 8 in areas such as the Energy Corridor, Sugar Land, and even Fulshear.

None of this is occurring inside a vacuum. As New Urbanist thinking continues to dominate the conversation surrounding Houston's development future it is becoming clear that certain socio-economic groups need not apply. Sadly, those who work in Houston serving the ruling and creative classes are being priced out of the market by design.

Furthering the problem is the fact that much of the planning for access to the Inner Loop areas include either rising or new tolls or increasingly gridlocked freeways which make for an increasingly expensive living condition for the servant class who will find it difficult to get around.  An additional hurdle is the decidedly commuter-unfriendly vision of the current Metro leadership. This is a leadership which views transit as nothing more than a plaything for the relatively wealthy. Leaving the great unwashed with reduced commuter bus service, no commuter rail to speak of, but some really neat Sepia toned photos of the well-to-do having black-tie wedding parties on the toy-train.

You can find evidence of this trend almost everywhere, from the disputed "Ashby" high-rise that pit developers against a well-off neighborhood who liked the concept of densification in theory, but who balked at the idea that it might interfere with their decidedly un-dense, suburban-style single family neighborhood to Sunday Streets which is less a celebration of neighborhood and place than it is a walking advertisement for things (wealthy) white people like.

The vision of Houston future has morphed from that of a functional city where business gets done to a fuzzy 3D copy of places the courtesans hail from or wish they could live. Instead of upping stakes and moving to say Paris, the Houston elite are trying their level best to re-create it. Minus the couple of thousand years history, a topography and views that could double for God's back-yard, or the suburban riots of the poor who have been omitted from Haussmann's vision.

Or, maybe not. Given the attitude of the current administration toward Houston's poor and the Mayor's penchant for Tweeting out the details of pricey (her words) executive luncheons it's highly probable that the playful elite have identified a friendly leader in Annise Antionette. In Houston however, the poor won't be eating cake because the food-desert crowd has decided they should eat kale.