Taking a break: Life gets in the way

Over the past few weeks I've been able to keep  fairly constant with daily posts. Unfortunately life, as it does, gets in the way from time to time.

Based on that I'll be slowing down a little bit in February until I get some more free time in the evenings to blog.

Given what I'm sure is going to be an uneven posting schedule this month might I take a moment and direct you to the following:


My Twitter Feed - Which is where all of the things I'm currently reading/writing end up. Not only do I tweet out when I make a blog post (either on here or on The Public Money) it also updates my links on....

My Pinboard Feed. - Not as in depth as my blog but it is almost like micro-blogging about different things every day.


So, keep up with those and, until we get back on a regular schedule, enjoy the caucuses and all of the assorted bad political commentary that is going to result.

Without guessing on percentages, here's my pick of how things turn out tonight.....


Republican:

1. Ted Cruz - I think he holds on, mainly because almost no one has Trump listed as their "second choice". 

2. Donald Trump - Honestly, #1 and #2 could be reversed.  If that happens then the Cruz campaign could be in a lot of trouble.

3. Marco Rubio - I will leave it to Evan to point out to you why this might be the best position of them all.

4. Ben Carson - Fading fast.

The rest?    Time to close up shop and call it a campaign.


Democrat:

1. Hillary Clinton - In another close one, and her victory speech again reminds Democratic voters of all the reasons they didn't like her in the first place.

2. Bernie Sanders - Comes close enough that everyone starts freaking out and Democrats slowly begin to understand the ballot implications of a Sanders victory.

3. Martin O'Malley - Should drop out immediately after this.

The rest?  Oh, that's right, the Democrats don't have any other 'mainstream' candidates on the ballot. I'm still surprised that Biden didn't jump in here, he could have been the nominee hands down.



If Trump and Sanders pull out wins in their respective races then Katie bar the door.  The panic from the Cruz and Clinton campaigns is going to lead to some pretty comical campaign tactics.

Tales of a Sub-Par Media Outlet: Why is this news?

In Texas, the property tax valuation system works as follows:

1. Property tax rates are set by the appropriate authorities.
2. The responsible appraisal districts provide property owners with their appraised value on which taxes will be based.
3. The property owner has the ability to appeal the appraised valuation through a process laid out via statute.

Everyone, from a single family homeowner to the biggest corporation has the ability to appeal their appraised valuation. Tens of thousands do every year.

So why is this a news story:

Exxon Mobil, Harris County engage in tax feud. Nancy Sarnoff, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

Exxon Mobil is fighting the Harris County Appraisal District over the $1.04 billion value placed on its sprawling new office complex in Spring, just south of The Woodlands.
The oil giant, which has been guarded about the campus project, would not provide its own estimation of the property's value. But its appeal claims the actual value "is substantially below" what was assessed.

There is absolutely nothing unusual about this, nothing especially newsworthy, and certainly nothing that elevates it to the level of "tax feud".

Unless that is, you're trying (through the headline) to make it seem that Exxon-Mobil is trying to be sneaky and somehow not pay "their fair share" of taxes, to take money away "from the children".  Which is what big, evil oil companies do right?

Of course, "Exxon-Mobil disputes their property taxes, as do thousands of others" doesn't make for a click-bait headline in a news outlet that's increasingly devolving into a review of social media running in between slide-shows of scantily-dressed women.

It should be noted, I don't blame the reporter, Nancy Sarnoff, for this. It's pretty clear reading the article that she's not trying to cast this as a "feud".  As a matter of fact, reading the article the entire thing sounds pretty mundane (which, it is FWIW).

But then you have to wonder what editor thought this was a good story line to begin with?

To be honest, Kate Middleton's childhood pictures are more newsworthy. At least she's got a title.

For a while it seemed that the Chron was going to be content to keep the behind-the-paywall content on their website pretty straight-forward and newsy.  After the decision was made to hide the Editorial Board however, the content bleed has slowly continued. That's a bad thing for those who would like their news straight, with little hype, but it's another bullet-point in the argument that the Houston Chronicle should drop the pretense of unbiased journalism and embrace their role as left-of-center journal.  Because big, evil oil not paying their "fair share" of taxes IS a big deal to the left after all, and a truly unbiased news source might think it prudent to mention that.

Or, at the least, not try and engage in such hyperbole regarding the same.

Houston Area Leadership Vacuum: Suddenly, this whole Grand Jury system is working like a charm.

In the end, I guess, it's only going to take one grand jury outcome that the courtesan class likes for some of them to declare that the system is fixed.

Amazing what can happen when a grand jury works as it should. Lisa Falkenberg, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)


Her work is done here. Everything worked out as it should (In Falkenberg's mind) so justice was served and God Save the Queen.


All of the "journalism" that occurs, all of the columns second-guessing the political motivations when grand juries issue indictments Ms. Falkenberg and her contemporaries don't like?  There will be none of that here.

There will be no questioning of justice allowed because the right side lost and the 'correct" side won.  Because the people who were trying to 'buy' baby organs were guilty and the people clearly trying to 'sell' baby organs (on the full videos, which were not, as Falkenberg has erroneously claimed, 'heavily edited' at all) were not guilty of anything at all.

In other words: Pay no attention to the (wo)man behind the curtain. Nothing to see here.

Had this played out differently, had PP been indicted for attempting to traffic in human organs (as they clearly were)? Falkenberg and company would have been apoplectic in their rage against both Anderson and the system. Yes, that same system that Falkenberg is now claiming is "fixed".

At the beginning of her, now Pulitzer prize-winning (as she and the Chron will be sure to tell you every five minutes) career Falkenberg wrote a column or two about "synchronizing traffic lights". This was something that a lot of people were talking about and had worked on for a while but she wrote two columns about it and, shortly after then-Mayor Bill White, instituted the software (which "sequenced" the lights rather than "synchronized" them FWIW) Falkenberg then took a victory lap around town, took credit for it in a column, and pretty much ignored Houston traffic issues to this day.

Try to drive downtown today. The lights are currently a mess, as are the roads, as is most of Houston's crumbling infrastructure, something that Ms. Falkenberg has chosen to not focus on in her whimsical teen-beat political column.  Hey, once you declare something to be "fixed" it's best to move on. Mission Accomplished and all of that.

Now, lucky us, Falkenberg's work on the grand jury system has resulted in a high-profile decision with which she (and most others at the Chron) agree with politically. Nothing to see here, move on. Ms. Falkenberg has "fixed" the problem and has now taken a victory lap fitting of someone who's editor sat as chair of the Pulitzer Judging Panel and, basically, gifted her the award. 

For the sake of the less high-profile accused, let's hope the long-term prognosis for the grand jury system doesn't work out the same way that Downtown Houston's mobility did.  Sadly, however, given the political nature of the entire legal system today I don't see any way we're going to not puncture tires going forward.

But hey, for now the baby-part profiteers are still baby-part profiteering (although it's unclear if they ever got their Lamborghini [license plate: DED FTUS]) and that is good enough for Lisa.

Houston Area Leadership Vacuum: Maybe Emmett Should Punt?

Another day, another desperate attempt to not go down in history as "the man who demolished the Astrodome".

County to Consider "Under-the-Dome" Options. Gabrielle Banks, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

A dozen Astrodome enthusiasts from business and government have been meeting over the past year to hash out a plan for converting the aging landmark into an indoor park. 

As those discussions continue, Harris County Commissioners Court moved forward on Tuesday with one piece of the Astrodome revival that needs to happen whether or not the park plan is achieved, according to County Judge Ed Emmett.

The court asked for an internal cost assessment for building two floors of underground parking, or a large underground storage facility, beneath the ground floor of the Astrodome.

This is not entirely true, as these discussions would NOT need to happen if demolishing the structure was a consideration.  Since it's clearly not, Harris County is currently operating with imperfect information. When you don't have the full picture, and take into account all data points, then the conclusions you make are likely to be flawed.

Because of this might it be suggested that Ed Emmett punt on the Astrodome?

It's clear that, at this point, he's incapable of making a truly informed decision due to his increasing obsession over the bulbous structure. So, thanks Ed, appreciate your time in office, don't let the door hit you etc.  Now, will you please stop begging the question on the Astrodome and leave it to the next group?

If you're desperate for something to do you could, as my friend Tom Kirkendall has suggested, focus on the Harris County Jail.  Goodness knows it has problems.  And fixing the jail mess would create a much bigger legacy than would turning the dilapidated old girl that is the Astrodome into some kind of publicly ran indoor Main Event. (Taxpayer subsidized of course)

Just take a step back and let's handle this the old fashioned way, via election.  Whoever decides they want to run as your replacement should be able to offer two key planks in their election platform. 1. A comprehensive plan (which is political speak for expensive) to fix the jail.  2. A plan for what to do with the Dome.  One would think that, given the number of people who are expected to vie for your old office, there will be at least a couple of people who come with the idea to put the old girl out of her misery.

Until then, if you're not willing to work on the jail, just sit back, put your feet up and have a drink (or three). Go to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo and help them work out the sticky issue of open carry while you judge the Bar-B-Q.  Then, late at night, after you've gorged on dodgy brisket and watered down beer you can sit in a chair and look wistfully at the Dome.

She'll probably look back at you, smile and say. "What the hell were you thinking with that whole Astrodome Experience thing?"

Houston Area Leadership Vacuum: Devon Anderson vs. The Center for Medical Progress.

This is getting very close to running off the rails.....

Planned Parenthood Cleared, but 2 Indicted Over Videos. Brian J. Rosenthal, Chron.com

A grand jury convened to investigate whether a Houston Planned Parenthood clinic had sold the organs of aborted fetuses on Monday cleared the clinic and instead indicted the undercover videographers behind the allegations, surprising the officials who called for the probe and delighting supporters of the women's health organization.

Already District Attorney Devon Anderson, and her supporters are heralding this as a triumph of justice over party politics.  While her detractors are suggesting that this is purely political and, at least in part, driven by the fact that Anderson is facing no electoral pressure from the Right.  In fact, Ms. Anderson's next contested election will be against Democratic candidate for D.A. Kim Ogg.

On a State level, both Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Abbott both weighed in that the State's investigation is continuing despite these indictments, something (oddly) Anderson's supporters are now suggesting IS pure politics.

There is an old saying of questionable provenance which goes something like this: "In Texas, a prosecutor could get an indictment against a ham sandwich."  With a pick-a-pal selection system (recently done away with) the odds have always been tilted in the favor of indictment, IF the DA wishes to indict. Even without pick-a-pal, the evidentiary rules are still more favorable to obtaining an indictment then not.  What this means is that the indictments that were handed down were done so because D.A. Devon Anderson wanted them to be. Whether her reasons were based on the rule of law (as supporters claim) for electoral reasons (as detractors claim) or because her and her staff are sympathetic toward (and in at least one case work for) Planned Parenthood is open to debate.

What is not debatable is that this process has played out exactly as Anderson desired. While we may never fully know Anderson's motivations, we at least know that we're going to be treated to a circus show of a trial that could potentially ask some fairly serious 1st Amendment questions. As I've stated before, many people believe that only certain (state-approved) media outlets truly enjoy free speech protection under the 1st Amendment. The question of whether or not an issues-based activist group does or no is something the courts will have to decide.

For now we wait, and see exactly how this is going to play out.  Before I end this however I have one question that I have yet to find an answer for.

If you've viewed the footage, and I have, then what you see in some cases is a negotiation over price for an illegal transaction regarding aborted baby organs.  Given that the act of buying and selling of human organs is illegal, then how can you charge the Center for Medical Progress with buying and not charge Planned Parenthood with solicitation of the same?  Going back to the ham sandwich theory of indictments I think that's a fair question to ask DA Anderson.

It will be interesting to see if anyone in the media has interest in asking it.

Texas Politics: It's the little things.

It was deemed newsworthy that a driver was ticketed going 117 MPH in Austin over the weekend. I point this out because you probably see people driving that fast every day. At least, you could if you drove on Beltway 8.

The speed limit on the Beltway is, for the most part, 65 MPH.  I would remind you that this is the posted LIMIT.  However, try driving in the left lane doing 65 during a non-peak hour and you're more than likely to get someone killed.  That's because the REAL speed limit on Houston's version of the Autobahn is actually however fast your car can go and how fast you can comfortably drive it. I've been driving at, or near, 65 on the Beltway on many occasions and have been passed like I was standing still.

So what does any of this have to do with politics?

For politicians, the little rules and inconveniences that make up every day life are the bread and butter of politics. Forget meat and vegetables, we're at a much more basic level than that. Seemingly mundane items like the setting of speed limits, the timing (or lack thereof) of traffic lights etc. don't grab many headlines, but they involve years of study and planning (in some cases).

The problems arise when many of these rules and regulations are perceived to not be based on sound reasoning but something entirely arbitrary.  Consider speed limits in the Houston region. Inside Harris County, and the counties immediately surrounding it, speed limits on Interstate Highways are typically set at 65 MPH (There are stretches of road where they are set lower, at 60 or even 55 MPH). The reason for this is not because of road conditions or driver safety or anything like that, it is because of the EPA. Because Houston has failed to meet pollution control targets a depressed local speed limit is part of the plan to remediate air pollutants. Therefore, when you drive through the area you are required to slow down by 10 MPH until you reach the county border after the county border at which point the speed limits raise to 75 MPH as they are in much the rest of the State.

When this plan was first devised the idea was that, in order to REALLY cut down on pollution (the unelected bureaucrats said) the limits would be reduced to 55 MPH, despite the fact that there was a.) little evidence this would help and b.) no additional justification for doing so.

The result?  Drivers roundly ignored the speed limits and sped about even faster, at times, then they would have under normal conditions. It was a little bit of civil disobedience on a city-wide scale. Local police officers, realizing the bowl of crap they've been handed, just punted on speeding tickets except in the most egregious of cases. Eventually, realizing it just wasn't working, the city relented and agreed to raise limits by 5 MPH within the city, and 10 MPH outside. The politicians then patted each other on the back, and went back to trying to game the system declaring the problem "solved".

Except it wasn't. And if you think it was then you haven't driven on Houston's Interstate system all that often.  Speed limits are treated as suggestions, or base-lines, certainly not limits. I challenge you to head out on a Saturday morning and try to drive the speed limit in the left lane of Houston's Interstates.  The honks and angry looks that you receive from motorists will be withering.  You will feel like you're the proverbial tortoise being passed up by so many hares.

The problem is that, as a society, we're losing our connection with both the societal contract and the rule of law. It's death by a 1000 cuts for civility.  Speeding, running red lights, cutting into lanes of traffic illegally, turning from no-turn lanes because you didn't want to wait in the turning lane line, all of these things are people violating both the law, and the unwritten social contract that we make with each other on a daily basis.

You see it pretty much everywhere, in almost every aspect of daily life now.  The common rules of law and civility are pretty much going away.  People cut in line, shoplifting is on the increase, people have no qualms about parking in handicap parking spaces when they don't have a handicap.

In part this is happening because people are increasingly selfish, in part it's because we're not only polarized in our politics, but in our private lives as well. Part of it is probably also that we're just really, REALLY bad drivers. But, most of all it's due to the fact that many people just don't respect the integrity of the system any longer.

Texas currently has an Attorney General under indictment for securities fraud, there's a member of the State Legislature in Houston who has been convicted of barratry but who is still expected to win reelection.  There is, not surprisingly, no pressure from his party to step down.  As a matter of fact, this convicted criminal is getting support.  The Houston Independent School District is in the process of rolling-back ethics reform which would allow them to, once again, receive campaign donations from companies actively bidding for contracts.  When questioned they say to trust them, that they only have the best of intentions.

The problem is, people see through junk like that and, at a subconscious level, start to lose faith in the system.  Because if the people making the rules are corrupt then the rules themselves are corrupt and so is pretty much everything that we've been asked to do.  This is why, no matter how many exemptions or tweaks are made to the ACA, there are still going to always be a percentage of people who choose to pay the fine and opt out.

Unfortunately, for the system, the answer to all of this is usually the problem itself.

"We're the Government, and we're here to help"

Texas Lock-Step Political Media: Can you imagine.....

Quorum Report (of whom I'm not a subscriber) did another hit-piece on Conservative donors and the TLSPM is dutifully playing along.

Tea Party Billionaires Pushing to Make Over Legislature. David Saleh Rauf, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

I realize that there are still many who don't believe that legacy media has anti-conservative bias. You know the type, those people who lock-on to every story that is even slightly negative toward a Democrat, or positive toward a Republican and says "HA! SEE!"  You know them as low-functional idiots mostly.

Because the bias in the media doesn't lie along party lines, it never did. It's ideological bias.  Think about this.  The Chron has done several stories about Liberal donor Steve Mostyn. In all of those stories he's seen as the scrappy underdog fighting the good fight.  The Wilks?  Or, even worse, the Evil Koch brothers?  Ripping at the very heart of our democracy.

And Texas House Speaker Straus is ALWAYS portrayed as the "Adult in the room" despite the fact that, oft times, his responses to critics are extremely juvenile.

Unlike many I'm not overly concerned by this bias. But I understand that it's there, it's a real thing, and it slants the media's political coverage greatly. My only wish is that they would admit to, and disclose it openly.

It's OK that the Houston Chronicle is a left-leaning publication. That they are not in support of most conservative ideals. We all know that the Chron is pro-higher taxes, anti-2nd Amendment and even anti-1st Amendment when it comes to the free speech rights of private citizens (The Chron clearly believes that free speech protections should only be extended to members of State-approved media). We also know that the Chronicle prefers to see huge government intervention in the private economy, are against Christian groups engaging the the political process, are for abortion on demand with no restrictions, taxpayer subsidized birth control and forced equality through the jailing of the non-compliant if necessary.

This has been established, but still they fall behind the "neither right nor left" fallacy.

How much better they would be if they just owned up to it.  They would go from a place with hackneyed political opinion to a journal of leftist thought almost overnight. We would then understand the viewpoint from which their opinion sprang and could take that into consideration. Some would accept it without question, some would reject it by rote, and some might even use it as a point in their consideration.

Instead we're given the lie of the neutrality of the media.  Can you imagine if we dropped the charade?