Houston Leadership Vacuum: $1.7MM to solve an undefined problem.

Even after reading today's story on Houston's $1.7MM donation to a private business in order to build a grocery store I have no idea what a food desert is.  What I do know is that the city is now in the business of giving large amounts of cash to businesses that are high risk.  This during a time when the roads are rapidly descending into moonscape territory and it's almost a flip of a coin whether or not your fire, crime or medical emergency will be responded to in a timely manner, or at all.

In the run-up to the passing of the last city budget Mayor Parker moaned often and loudly about $1MM in spending by City Councilmembers who set up a slush-fund to reward pet-projects in their districts. Apparently it wasn't the amount of spending that Parker had an issue with but that it didn't go to one of her primary priorities: doing things that polish her resume for a planned state wide run.

Here's the area in question via Google Maps, with locations that (admittedly) are loosely considered grocery stores marked:

As near as I can tell, there's an HEB (with fresh produce) around 5000 feet (just under a mile) from the current location, and a Fiesta food mart about 2 miles away.  There's also an organic market, and several small produce sellers approximately 2 miles away.

On the other side of 288 (not pictured) there's a fairly large Kroger as well.  Again, this Kroger is about a mile away from the new store. 

By means of comparison, I compared roughly the same geographical area in two relatively well-off areas of Houston and found the following:

 

In Copperfield, a suburb to the Northwest of Houston, there were even fewer traditional "grocery stores" within approximately the same geographical area.  Just to the South there is a Sprouts, and there's a Kroger to the North. 

Then we get to the Heights:

Again you see just about the same distribution of grocery-type stores as you find in South Union.

One would guess that the argument is that residents in Copperfield and the Heights are more likely to have vehicles that can make the grocery run for them.  OK, I'll give you that but, this doesn't mean there's a food desert as much as it means Metro is creating transit deserts that aren't allowing residents of these areas to commute to grocery stores and buy the healthy produce they need.

What's not being discussed by what currently passes for leadership in Houston is that Metro is on the verge of making these transit deserts worse. Anytime you create a plan to reduce coverage but increase ridership, as Metro is currently doing, then you're admitting that there are going to be increasingly large areas of the region with massively reduced coverage.  In areas such as Copperfield and the Heights, this would be more of a nuisance than an actual problem. In poor areas such as South Union, this is potentially very harmful.

Look how much the connecting service is reduced from the old system:

To the new:

 

Before we go on spending $1.7MM to rid ourselves of a problem that seemingly doesn't exist, let's focus on a problem that does. Namely, a group of New Urbanist devotees doing their level best to make it harder for the poor to use transit (that they are dependent upon most) to run chores, buy groceries, get to employment centers in favor of allowing the wealthy to use the transit system as a plaything.

We've been told for years that Houston having a workable light-rail system is needed for us to be World Class(y). There's nothing world class about hanging the poorest among us out to dry so that the so-called creative class can feel good about themselves (seeing as they don't have to interact with the rabble) as they listen to their music on iPads, iPhones and iPods, riding trains and buses on their way to the coffee shop.

A real leader would understand how this all works together, and would promote policies that make sense when viewed as a whole. In Houston's current leadership vacuum we're given political pay-offs masked as solutions while the administration obsesses over our bathroom habits.

Election 2014: The Bright and Starry Night of Texas Democrats

Reading news coverage from Houston's former newspaper of record one could be forgiven for thinking it's been the Texas Republicans on a 20-year victory drought and not, as is reality, Texas Democrats.

From glowing opinion pieces about the relative strength of the two top of ticket "sisters" to gushing news/opinion pieces about the star turn of Wendy! Davis to fawning news/opinion coverage of a group of "rising stars" that discuss all things perceived (by the reporters) as "good" about the candidates and fail to mention that they still are traveling along policy paths repeatedly rejected by 55-60% of Texas voters. One wonders why Texas Democrats haven't been dominating the electorate in recent years.

Contrast that with Chronicle coverage of the Texas State GOP convention where even resounding victories are cast in ominous tones and typical policy skirmishes are treated as political disasters and you might wonder how this GOP Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight ever won an election in the first place.

Granted, it's easier to provide fawning coverage on ideas where you're ideologically in-sync and very hard to be neutral when you stand opposed. This has always been proof-of-case for those who claim a "liberal bias" in the media.  Those who oppose the idea of any bias choose to frame the argument in terms of party ID, picking up any story that's moderately negative toward their party of choice as being the ending point in an argument that there is no bias.

Both sides are wrong, of course, because the entire issue of bias in media is more nuanced than a single-issue story here or a anti-party story there.  The issue encompasses ALL media stories and requires viewing them as trends, over a long time frame.

When doing this it is very clear that the Houston Chronicle, both editorially and in their so-called "hard news" coverage of politics, clearly falls closer to the left on political issues than the right. The problem with ALL of their coverage however is that they, and many other members of the Texas Lock Step Political Media, fail to take into account anything even remotely approaching an ideological spectrum.

To the editorial and news-gathering staff of the Chronicle you are either a fire-breathing member of the Tea Party/extreme-right-wing, a member of the sensible GOP establishment, or you are a common-sense, moderate liberal with the State's best interest at heart.  In the world of the TLSPM, there can be no blurring of these lines because that runs against the political orthodoxy which has been established by Burka the Clown, Slater the Rove-Obsessed, Greider the Newly Risen Star and other political wonks who have made a good living pretty much getting it wrong for the last 20 (or so) years.

There are three main reasons the TLSPM is so off-base when reporting on their primary topic:

The TLSPM doesn't have the kind of access to conservatives that they enjoy with Republican moderates and (most) Democrats. Limitation of access leads to reporting by heresy and reporting of this type is typically incomplete. That most, not all, reporters are transcribers rather actual fact-finders (as Kevin Whited of Blog Houston calls them, secretarial journalists) results in too many reporters practicing journalism behind a desk, which most often results in bad reporting.

When you couple ideological homogenization with an incurious reporting mind, you quite often end up with reporting on issues that is incapable of providing proper context. Too often the news gathering organizations focus on diversity of bodies than they do diversity of opinion.  When this is the case reporting on issues becomes blatantly one-sided and opens itself up to criticism. It also leads to shoddy editing, allowing politically charged statements to slip through the editorial net unaltered.

Finally, when you couple lack of access, intellectual laziness and a lack of diversity in perspective with the idea that experience automatically equals expertise, you get a full picture of the failures of the TLSPM. When you hear a reporter suggest that they are an authority because they have "X experience covering" any issue that's your key to tune them out when they start opining about what "should" happen.  I've been watching Formula One racing for most of my adult life. You should not mistake this to mean that I could hop into a F1 car tomorrow and complete a lap at speed without plowing it in to the wall at Casino Square. Nor could I, as a Texas political blogger of almost a decade, tell you how the state education system can best be fixed.  While I have strong opinions on the same and I vote for candidates who support those opinions, that doesn't mean that I consider myself an expert.  Unfortunately, many members of the TLSPM clearly do. This leads to them dismissing potentially workable ideas out of hand and, usually, not giving them proper coverage or column inches.

In a way a lot of the reporting you are seeing today is due to boredom. There is nothing a political reporter wants more than a competitive race with lots of scandal, regardless of who eventually ends up winning. The excitement over King Dan Patrick vs. Van De Putte isn't about a liberal media being hopeful that Van de Putte will win. It's more about the TLSPM (many of them who are rooting for VdP FWIW) hoping beyond hope that controversy, a mild amount of hilarity and some mild demagoguery might make for some easy copy and provide good column inches.

King Dan is an easy target, one that even I can make use of. That it's been enough to create an overarching theme that Texas Dems are on the verge of a comeback shows just how shallow political reporting talent pool is. Right now all we have to go on are the words of a few political journalists who are being very secretarial, reporting the Democratic talking point that "demographics are destiny" despite numbers that reveal no evident trend to support this. Why repeat the lie?  For one, it's what they're being told and they're too lazy to do some digging. (Plus, it just sounds right) Most importantly however this provides them hope that one day they will get to cover one of the larger shifts in political history. It doesn't matter which Democrat wins, just that one does, someday perhaps.

Until then the educated voter is going to have to continue navigating the bumpy swells of Texas politics with little help from the TLSPM. This would suggest a rise in the alternative media but just as it's needed most we're seeing signs that it's on the verge of either falling away or becoming just another one of many party house organs, which does no one much good.

None of the above should be read to say that Texas Democrats should have no hope.  During their convention, when they attempt to put on their best face to the voters, of course they should. I would just say that it's curious to focus on one party singing Kum-bai-yah while suggesting that the party riding the winning streak is falling apart at the seams. Curious and disingenuous, Texas voters deserve better.

Houston Leadership Vacuum: A spending binge on the eve of the supposed fiscal apocalypse.

A strange thing happened as Houston, supposedly, begins its inevitable slide toward fiscal calamity.  The Houston City Council decided things were not as dire as predicted and added all kinds of spending provisions to Mayor Antionnette Parker's proposed $5.2 Billion dollar budget.

City increases after school spending, gives each District $1Million for projects. Mike Morris, Houston Chronicle

The most curious line of spending was forwarded by a Councilmember who had, up until this point, acted as somewhat of a fiscal hawk.  C.O. Bradford forwarded the amendment providing each council district with $1Million dollars to use as they please.  Borrowing a quote from the above linked article (but only a quote mind you, so as not to interfere with the Chron's pay wall.) one can see how many hoops some Councilmembers are willing to go through to get their hands on this money:

"I don't want this splashed around the media as a slush fund. That's not what it is," said district Councilwoman Ellen Cohen, who supported the amendment. "This is discretionary funds we can use in our district to expedite some of the issues. I have 80 civic clubs in my district. I promise you I hear from all of them what they need."

In other words, it's a slush fund.

Mr. Morris goes on to say that these monies will be drawn from "savings" that Mayor Parker had included in the budget to ostensibly ward off fiscal Armageddon in the 2016 budget, when things are really projected to go haywire.

Amazingly, in the face of all of this financial doom, the Councilmembers were able to maintain their laser-like focus on getting themselves re-elected rather than acting as stewards for the financial health of Houston. Parker, as is her style, seems more interested in celebrating with her staff (hopefully not at "pricey" hot-spots in Central Houston) than working to find cost savings in the budget in the face of a Council that seems not to care.

Where does this leave Houston?  Depending on which side you take it means either looking at potential deep cuts in the 2016 annual budget, more policies of the type we've seen in recent history that kick the can further down the road or a ballot referendum in November which will relieve the City of its pillow-soft revenue cap. 

Since I'm a betting man I'll give you some odds:

Actual Spending cuts: 20/1
Kick the can "cuts": 2/1
Referendum: 1/9

In reality I think we're going to see a combination of the latter two.  Unlike say, a private business or household, the idea of living within budget restraints is foreign to those who feel that every problem (real or imagined) requires a large government solution. Since they do nothing to earn revenues, and have control over how much is taken, there's no fiduciary duty inherent in elected officials to be good stewards of the public dime.  While it's understood on the campaign trail that each and every candidate is to wave the "fiscal watchdog" flag. The reality is that it's more important for an elected official to spend money than it is to try and save.  Trimming 10% off of the budget gets less press coverage than spending an additional 10% to help save the squirrel population in one's district for quality of life reasons.

The problem is emotive voters like squirrels and they like big shiny trinkets which make them feel good about themselves. Does Houston really need an art installation saying "I 'heart' Houston" looming over a freeway?  Of course not. But it's purchase allows elected officials to give good campaign glossy so it gets funded while the coffers are increasingly drained. Houston may be broke, but, by God, we have the finest example of a public art installation in a dog-park that you will find anywhere.  Dare we say it: It's world class.

Which, if things don't change, will be Houston's future in a nut-shell.  Full of World-Classiness and shiny trinkets but broke as hell and trying desperately to keep the police and fire departments minimally staffed.

A day in the life of a #BadMedia organization

At times of late, the Houston Chronicle has surprised us with a surprise story or two (the HPD non-investigation stories, which (strangely) the Chron has all but hidden on their website, was an example of this). Then there is the rest of the time, when the Chron reminds us that they are the undisputed leader in the #BadMedia Sweepstakes.

For Example:

Their slideshows - This slideshow focuses on the "best" and "worst" World Cup uniforms as seemingly decided by an unpaid intern who knows very little about the WC or fashion.  For example, England's home and away kits are deemed the "worst" due to them being simple, as England's kits have always been since the beginning of time.  In the same slide-show however the author praises the Netherlands and Ivory Coast who are wearing kits that look exactly the same, except in their traditional colors and with different patches. 

Also, if you think the US Men's National Team home kits, the ones that look like the US bought them off the French second hand, look good then there's not much I can do for you.

Their quizzes - I can almost see this one being formed in an editorial meeting.  Hey! Houston is diverse! So let's give a 20-something-year-old unpaid intern the task of coming up with a quiz that tells people in Houston where they should live!  Of course, the kid is clearly Caucasian, the questions being filled with stuff white people like (Your favorite band choices are classical, the Black Keys, Iggy Azalea and Jimmy Buffett!) and the answer choices are so limited (your favorite type of blue jean? [J.Crew, slim cut, cuffed skinnies, custom tailored and distressed]) as to exclude any neighborhood where someone say, north of 25 would want to live. What if you prefer Mariachi music? (The new urbanist nitwits that the Chron-kiddies share drinks with are busy trying to drive poor and minority families out of Houston so there's that) How about loose fit jeans from Levis?  What if you don't drive a Vespa, a "sleek new Audi", walk or ride the danger train even?  Is there no place in Houston that you can live?

Sadly, we'll just never know.

Finally, their front page.

I mean, c'mon folks.  This from a publication with a staff blogger who recently chastised Maureen Dowd's editors (giggle) Clearly the Chron is in no position to crack on ANYONE for their editing.

Take a gander at today's headline: Ethics panels details Stockman Allegations.  I'm willing to bet they think that Newspapers reports on this as well?  Or that peoples is interested?

My subscription (Wed-Sunday useful if only for the coupons) is coming up soon and I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth renewing.  My thought is I can contribute more to the local economy by giving $1.75 to the homeless out peddling Sunday's paper in medians at all of the intersections.  Maybe then I'll be helping to eradicate that income gap Mrs. White and her 1% cohorts are always going on about.

Looking to November: Out with a whimper.

Today's news that the Wendy! Davis Campaign is making big changes has set off a flurry of activity amongst the TLSPM (h/t Kevin) trying to explain that it's really not a negative, Wendy! Davis changing out her campaign manager, but a sign that she's "fighting back" and is on the verge of preventing herself from falling into the scrap-heap of not ready for prime time Democratic candidates past.

This is all well and good, and fits the TLSPM narrative that Wendy! is more than just pink tennis shoes, some talk about unrestricted abortion and throwing money at problems in hopes they go away. The reality is we're seeing the first signs that the national spigot of Democratic effort flowing into Texas is about to be shut off.

Remember, the Johnson hire was used as proof national Democrats were targeting Texas in a big way. Between her, former Obama numbers guy Joel Benenson and Battleground Texas hopes were high that instead of being a financial donor, Texas was about to benefit from the largesse of national Democratic donors.  Wendy! Davis was the main cog in that machine.  Hers was a political story that everyone could love. A struggling single mom who, despite a system that worked against her, rose through the ranks to prominence and who would soon be Texas' first female governor since Ann Richards.

What happened next was reality. Many of the heart-string facts in the Wendy! life story were found to be bogus. Instead of a "starving single mother" it was found out that she married rich, used her husband to pay for law school (filing for divorce the day after the last payment was made) and then dumped him. Her campaign has also been a series of missteps, clearly leading national Democrats to decide their time and energy is better spent at home in the North East, watching grass grow.

Oh sure, you'll have the decreasingly public Battleground Texas puttering around for a while longer and there's still the whole "demographics is destiny" crowd who are waiting for everyone to die off but, from a practical standpoint, the 'Turn Texas Blue!" movement is just about as dead as the Wendy! campaign for Governor. Barring a huge error from Greg Abbott, this one is as done as a steak from the buffet at Golden Corral.

Somebody better alert the TLSPM, because they don't seem to have gotten the memo.

MileagePlus: Dead horse, beaten.

For a while now United has been slowly chipping away at the value of their MileagePlus program for low price, budget fliers in an attempt to cull the ranks and (ostensibly) provide better service, and more perks, to what they consider high-value fliers (or, those who frequently travel in business/first often paying full fare on the company dime).

Yesterday the travel internets went all akimbo over United's announcement that they're changing the model to a purely revenue based one in imitation of Delta an it's SkyMiles program. As is usual, the jokes were ever present. As was the opining that United has lost it's way.  Both are valid points. It does appear that United has no current strategy other than "me too!" allowing Delta (and soon, American) to become a market leader while the blue and gold tailed planes fall further and further behind.

A summary of the changes can be found here.

A run-down of just how bad the changes are (for all levels of Premier status) look here.

So, in the past year United has made it more expensive to redeem miles and now it has cut in half the number of miles you can earn, taken away the benefits of purchasing Business/First, but kept the miles requirement for qualification regardless of how much you spend.

Considering where United (and MileagePlus) is currently, this is just another logical step.  United needs to do something to cull the ranks of their Premier members.  Since the merger it's been very clear that they have too many.  Getting an upgrade on several routes is almost impossible. On several occasions I've spoken with upper-tier (Platinum and 1K) Premier passengers who are experiencing upgrade success rates around 25%.  If you're spending a lot of money flying an airline, that type of rate is unacceptable.

I still stand by my theory that the lower tiers (Silver and Gold) are soon to be no more. United is working desperately to move many perks to reward their profitable credit card partners.  I predict that those changes will be announced in 2016 or 17 at the latest.

Does it matter?  In short. No.

Unless you are a traveler who hyper-leveraged low/mistake fares for Premier status then it won't affect you much at all.  In crap-class, air travel is a commodity and increasingly fliers are going to treat it that way.  There are plenty of good seats available in crap-class for cheap rates that will allow recreational travelers to move around the globe. Quite often, these are on carriers offering better service/amenities than United.

Ancillary to all of this is the fact that United is currently a ship without a rudder or, seemingly, anything involving a long-term strategy.  They make noises that they want to improve the in-flight experience and then move slowly on the roll-outs, equip planes with seats that are about as comfortable as traction and offer service not with a smile but, quite often, with a shrug of the shoulders.

United is leaking money, still having operational issues, struggling with the very technologies that will help them implement these changes and is linking itself to the 787, a plane that has spotty reliability at best. There are calls for President and CEO Jeff Smisek to resign and it's past time that he should.

As the largest airline in the world, before the AA/USAir merger that is, United failed in execution on the simplest of issues namely, getting planes into gates on-time. Now that they've lost their market advantage, there's little evidence that they can compete long-term. This is an airline that needs new leadership and a new strategy. It's going to take more to turn United around than continuing to try and beat additional value out of the dead horse that is MileagePlus.

The 2014 Texas Republican Party Convention: Rotting Planks

Unfortunately, despite some good fiscal policy introduced in the Texas Republican Platform for 2014, almost all of the oxygen is going to be sucked up by two issues.

First, LGBT 'reparative' therapy and second, the revocation of the "Texas Solution" for immigration. Neither of these developments is good news since both planks cater to, and were forwarded by, the further reaches of the right-side of Texas politics.

Already we're starting to see some blow-back. The Young Republicans of Texas have rejected the State platform and progressive writers are already giddily projecting a GOP demise electorally because of the two issues.  As I've explained previously I don't think there will be much of a political price to be paid for the former issue, but I do think some in the Texas Republican Party are short-sighted when it comes to the latter.

So far as I can tell, most of the support for denying immigrants temporary work visas has much to do with the maintenance of "culture", or of protecting the "language" of America. That this is patently ridiculous seems to be lost on some in Texas Republican circles.

In short, there is no monolithic American culture, nor has there ever been. The vision of America as a great melting pot has always been a little-bit over romanticized as the truth was more segregated than older history books would have you believe.  Also a myth is the "speak English" cry that some have adopted, suggesting that first generation immigrants throughout history have done this. The premise is patently false of course, as first generation Italians spoke Italian, first generation Germans spoke German, and (in Texas) first Generation Czechs spoke Czech.  As with the current Hispanic immigrants, it was and is the 2nd generation that became conversational in the language of business.*

This presents a unique challenge for Texas candidates carrying (R)'s behind their names on the ballot.  On the one hand, there's party loyalty and worrying about losing the base that would suggest adoption of these issues. On the other, there's the reality that both planks on this platform are rotten and do the State no long-term good. You realize the damage of the party language on immigration when you understand that even King Dan is starting to frame the issue differently by suggesting that securing the border is key (which he has done all along) but also making hints that there will have to be a viable solution, once security is completed, for those who are already here.

Of equal concern to Republicans should be the fact that it appears King Dan, and not Greg Abbott, is driving the agenda for the state party leading up to the general election.  While I think that, even if Dan (Goeb) Patrick runs in full-on demagogue mode, there's little chance the Democratic squeals of delight come true, there's still long-term damage that can be done to Republicans should they decide to hitch their future electoral wagon to a man whose knack for self-promotion is only (slightly) overshadowed by his need to frame himself in Messianic terms.

All of that said, it could be a good thing for Republicans that the State convention ended with just a small wheeze and TLSPM bloviating over a couple of issues. Party platforms are always exercises in party extremism. It's where single-issue advocates come out and play. So far the political impact has been limited to a few silly, insignificant writers on the left and the decreasingly influential TLSPM. Given that, and the fact that the base appears motivated, I'd say the convention was a success.

























*Not really the language of "America" English is really the language of worldwide business. From that perspective it's less of a cultural item and more of a cog in the engine of prosperity. It behooves immigrants to learn to converse in English for their own economic well-being, not for any cultural reasons that some like to bandy about.