the disingenuity of the gene locke campaign and others…

honestly, i’ve not been real excited by the mayoral election this year.  i believe either annise parker or gene locke are equally qualified.  either would be fine.  i don’t suspect that either of them will be as good as bill white has been, but that’s okay.  i think bill white was just ~exceptionally good~.  hard to top that.

but now… the houston chronicle has recently reported on anti-gay attacks forthcoming in the houston mayoral election:

A cluster of socially conservative Houstonians is planning a campaign to discourage voters from choosing City Controller Annise Parker in the December mayoral runoff because she is a lesbian, according to multiple ministers and conservatives involved in the effort.

The group is motivated by concerns about a “gay takeover” of City Hall, given that two other candidates in the five remaining City Council races are also openly gay, as well as national interest driven by the possibility that Houston could become the first major U.S. city to elect an openly gay woman.

Another primary concern is that Parker or other elected officials would seek to overturn a 2001 city charter amendment that prohibits the city from providing benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees.

i was hoping we’d not see much of this, but that was just wishful thinking on my part, i guess.  what’s troubling is…

Parker’s opponent, former City Attorney Gene Locke, strongly distanced himself from a previous anti-gay attack against her that ultimately proved to have been a hoax. But he has made recent efforts to court some of the staunch social conservatives who are either actively planning on attacking Parker’s sexuality or strongly considering it.

He appeared at the Pastor Council’s annual gala last Friday and was encouraged several times by State Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, a featured speaker, to stand for conservative values.

Locke has also met with and sought the endorsement of Dr. Steven Hotze, a longtime local kingmaker in conservative politics and author of the Straight Slate in 1985, a coterie of eight City Council candidates he recruited who ran on an anti-gay platform.

Continue Reading...

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Tagged as: texas,politics,houston,elections2009,mayor November 15, 2009 @ 11:59 am

hurricane ike, gone but not forgotten

...it’s only a year since Ike plowed into the upper Texas coast, and the bay is still a mess — one that might take a generation to fix. The damage includes:

• • Tons of debris on land and underwater, including nearly 70 boats pulled out of the bay by contractors for the Texas General Land Office.

• • Swaths of pastures and protective marshland as far as 20 miles inland poisoned by the storm’s surge of salty Gulf water. The readings for some freshwater marshes ran as high as 30 parts of salt for every 1,000 parts of water, almost as salty as natural seawater.

• • Sharp declines in the population of alligators and turtles, among other species, because of the saltier-than-usual waters.

• • Thousands of acres of oyster beds buried by storm-driven sediment that will need 20 to 25 years to recover.

• • Dozens of commercial and recreation facilities that remain unusable, including fishing areas and boat launches on the Texas City dike.

• • As much as 300 feet of beach vanishing in places along the Gulf. Some natural recovery has occurred along the Bolivar Peninsula and the west end of Galveston Island, but not much, said James Gibeaut, a coastal geologist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

from The state of the bay: Nearly one year after Hurricane Ike wreaked havoc across Galveston Bay, the ecosystem is slowly recovering. But will it ever be the same?

see also:
ONE YEAR LATER: Thousands along Gulf still wait to go home
Images of Ike: Before and After

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Tagged as: texas,hurricanes,houston September 20, 2009 @ 12:10 am

trial for judge sharon “killer” keller can’t be soon enough…

texas monthly has an article on judge sharon keller who goes on trial august 17th for her mishandling of a death penalty case.

As she goes on trial this month, nearly everyone—journalists, lawyers, and even some of her colleagues—is calling for her head, but is the presiding judge of the Court of Criminal Appeals the monster she’s been made out to be?

why, yes.  yes, she really is:

in 1996, judge keller ruled that a defendent had received a fair trial, even after it was shown that his confession had been tortured out of him.  her reasoning?  even though the man’s rights were violated, the outcome of the trial would not have changed.

in 1998, judge keller rejected calls for a new trial after dna showed that the man who had been convicted was innocent.  her reasoning?  dna evidence was immaterial.  the defendant had no proof he was innocent.

and that’s just two instances.  there’s plenty more.

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Tagged as: texas,politics,news August 02, 2009 @ 06:11 am

update: centerpoint energy executives, vampires or bastards? or vampire bastards?

in what has to be one of the most asinine things i’ve ever heard, centerpoint energy is asking the houston residents to reimburse it for $677 million in hurricane ike repair costs... INCLUDING $22 million in executive salary pay. 

hurricane ike left over 2 million (estimates range from 2.8 million to 4.5 million) without power for weeks / months and 100,000 without homes.  at the time, the city of houston agreed to support whatever rate hike would be necessary in order to restore the electric grid.  that seems fair.  they brought in people from all over the united states to help get the grid back online.  i don’t mind shouldering that cost.  (well, not all by myself.  i’ll need everyone else to chip in, kthx.)

however, um.  HELLO?  the city was hit by a natural disaster.  we are LUCKY that it was only a category 2 hurricane by the time it got to us.  the sheer number of trees felled by the storm was staggering.  and.  *ahem*  many of those trees had been allowed to grow along the powerlines, because centerpoint never cut them back.  surprise!  those trees took out the powerlines.  *gasp*  *shock*  but that’s okay.  the city was hurt as a whole and, as a whole, we’ve to do what we can to get back on our feet and that includes paying for the restoration done by centerpoint.  (btw, much love and kudos to all the contractors and centerpoint employees who worked their tail ends off to get power back to the city.  it was NOT an easy job.)

the centerpoint fuckwit spokesman, floyd leblanc, says that the $22 million is a necessary addition, because it was money that would have normally been earned through regular billing, but like, see, there was this hurricane, y’know? and like, they weren’t “recovering hardly any revenue for nearly a month”.  like, dude.  the hurricane hit in september.  consider those funds recovered during the january to august and november to december billing periods.

and let me reiterate…

IT WAS A HURRICANE.

businesses all over houston were closed for weeks, either due to damage to the businesses themselves or due to damage to their owners’ / employees’ homes.  the first week, the majority of the city was shutdown.  people had to tighten their belts and try to make do without salaries, without electricity, without running water, without homes!

yet centerpoint, somehow, is above all that.  they shouldn’t have to take a hit when a NATURAL DISASTER lands in their own backyard and due to their LACK OF PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE does them serious damage.  after all, they’re centerpoint ~executives~.  it’s not like they’re peons.  hurricane hits them, they go stay in a nice hotel.  y’know.  really roughin’ it. 

they’re executives, they can pass on the burden of the costs to someone else.  if you’re a worker bee, you’re just screwed.  you’ve no one to help you share that burden and everyone above you on the ladder, including centerpoint energy, is going to try to bleed you just a bit more.

but wait.  mayor bill white to the rescue.  he says he’s not going to let them get away with it.

“There is right, and there’s wrong,” White said. “I don’t see how CenterPoint can explain this with a straight face.”

White made the comments at the start of a public City Council meeting Wednesday, in a clear attempt to pressure CenterPoint to back off its request.

“If we’re going to have to fight CenterPoint about paying the salaries of people who would be going to work anyway, then we can fight that in public,” he said.

go bill :D

update 07/31/09: somewhat good news, the city and centerpoint have reached a tentative agreement…

CenterPoint Energy and the city of Houston have reached a tentative agreement to reduce the proposed monthly fee the local power distribution company hopes to add to customer bills to pay for repairs following Hurricane Ike.

CenterPoint will reduce its $677 million request by $15 million and fund a new position to monitor its implementation of recommendations from the Mayor’s Electric Reliability Task Force, which were released this year. The recommendations include deploying “smart grid” technology throughout the city, creating a centralized database of customers and facilities that should receive priority in power restoration and changing tree trimming practices.

(one does wonder why a business that “owns and operates the wires, poles and other equipment that distribute electricity sold by unregulated retail providers” didn’t already have these recommendations implemented.)

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Tagged as: texas,hurricanes,houston July 31, 2009 @ 03:04 pm

further insanity regarding the houston fire dept

in “what the fuck is happening to the houston fire dept”, i criticized bill white’s plan to skip federal involvement and go with a local “independent investigation”.  9 times out of 10, i trust bill white to do what is right for the city; however, i think he’s making a big mistake here…. and i’m not alone.  as it turns out, he had planned to appoint 2 law firms to do the investigation…. (law firms?!)...

from Law firms for HFD probe criticized:

The two law firms selected by Mayor Bill White’s administration to determine whether systemic problems of racism and sexism exist in the Houston Fire Department have drawn criticism for having ties too close to the city and senior city officials.

The choice of Thompson and Horton LLP and Lemond and Lemond LLC for a contract worth up to $190,000— which was made without input from City Council and did not go through a formal proposal process — has raised questions about transparency for a process that was meant to bring about an outside examination of the culture in the fire department.

seriously… law firms?  to investigate “systemic problems of racism and sexism”?

Michel said he intends to monitor the probe closely and that the law firms may not necessarily produce a report from their examination. Senior fire department officials would need to be involved in order for the firms’ work to be a success.

“Ultimately, this is a management tool,” he said. “People come in to assist management to help them operate better and you have to work with management in order for it to be effective. ... They have to assess what’s occurred, and you just can’t do that in a vacuum.”

it appears *to me* that bill white’s administration thinks that the problem is a minor one that can be taken care of with nothing more than a seminar or three on “how to not be a racist, sexist pig”, which while possibly helpful isn’t going to go far enough in dealing with the problem.  PLUS it gives the appearance of a “cover up”.  while i don’t believe that is the *intent*, perception is important.

Joe Ahmad, an attorney representing two female firefighters who found racist and misogynistic graffiti near their quarters at a department fire station this month, an event that prompted the calls for an outside investigation, said that if the two firms were shown to have close ties to the city, that would be “just another disappointing step.”

“When we heard that there was going to be an outside, independent investigation, we were encouraged because we thought that was precisely what was needed,” said Ahman. “I would hope that whoever is ultimately hired are truly independent.”

i completely agree.  there needs to be a *true* independent *investigation* that deals with the issues that people have faced, including but not limited to criminal prosecution.  sweeping it under the rug, or giving the appearance that this is what you’re doing, will only make people think you are covering up the problem and protecting the deranged individuals in the dept.

rick casey hit the nail on the head, once again, why consult attorneys?:

It has been only a month since I had to explain to this city’s politicians that they could not defend unethical behavior by announcing that they had received clearance from an attorney.

Attorneys are trained to determine what is illegal, which covers far less ground than what is wrong.

A restaurateur might as well respond to criticism of her hollandaise sauce by saying, “I had my lawyer taste it and he pronounced it savory.”

Now here comes Mayor Bill White to announce he wants to hire two law firms to examine the “equal employment opportunity and practices” at the Houston Fire Department in the wake of accusations of racist and sexual harassment.

That’s right: not one law firm, but two. For $190,000, the two firms, who are already tinged by controversy, are expected to “review, assess and recommend policies and practices on issues that include diversity, conflict resolution, preventive practices, compliance, communication and management practices.”

Am I missing something here? Are there law school classes on identifying the cultural dynamics of a strongly traditionalist organization and altering those that are, even innocently, corrosive?

Instead let’s hire someone who does have such training, such as a cultural anthropologist. We would get more for less money, and could hire lawyers if legal issues arose.

Laws don’t change cultures, leadership does. But leaders need information, and the crucial information here is cultural, not legal.

as of right now, the plan has been delayed:

City Council this morning delayed consideration of a contentious contract to hire two law firms to examine how the city handles allegations of workplace racism and sexism in the wake of several highly charged incidents in the Houston Fire Department in recent months.

Council members held up the contract for two weeks amid questions about the scope of the $190,000 contract, how law firms Thompson and Horton LLP and Lemond and Lemond LLC were chosen and whether their ties to the city and senior officials were too close.

hopefully, in the interim, someone will realize that a REAL INVESTIGATION needs to be done.

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Tagged as: texas,wtf,racism,news,bigotry,houston July 24, 2009 @ 01:52 pm