Bigotry Dominates the GOP and Fox News

Early in her career, Kay Cole James - now head of the Heritage Foundation - was involved in Virginia politics and we met back in my days of Republican activism.  For the most part she always came across as calm and level headed and nowhere near as strident as some in what was then considered the conservative wing of the GOP. Thus, it was interesting to see her statements after the death of George Floyd given that she has remained involved in a political party that is increasingly open in its racism, especially with an open white supremacist in the White House.  Of equal interest was the way in which her views and statements were basically trashed by Tucker Carlson - a vile individual in my view -  and many of the other talking heads on the network's propaganda channel not to mention across much of the GOP.  Michael Gerson (a former Republican) calls out Tucker and the GOP in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts: 

On the theory that decency and sanity are rare enough these days that they should be recognized, let us praise Kay Coles James, the president of the Heritage Foundation.

James — the first African American and the first woman to head the conservative think tank — reacted to the “horrific and needless death” of George Floyd in Minneapolis by recalling the reality of racism in her own story, in a Facebook post that appeared directly after the killing.

“When your family has had crosses burned on their front lawns,” she said, “when your own children have been stopped and harassed by police because they were driving through a white neighborhood . . . when you sit up at night with all the normal fears any parent would have when their kids are out, but have to add to that worry that they may not make it home just because they are Black males.”

James asked, “How many more black people must die, and how many more times will statements of sympathy have to be issued? . . . How many more committees will have to be formed until America admits that racism is still a problem in this country? . . . It’s time America takes responsibility and expands human flourishing to all of its citizens — not just the majority of them.”

Carlson attacked James’s article as a “long scream denouncing America as an irredeemably racist nation” and urged his listeners to stop sending funds to Heritage. This is what happens when the main media platform of American conservatism is dominated by bigotry.

James felt compelled to make her points because she is woman of faith and character. For a glimpse of what the total absence of faith and character looks like, see the Republican Party of Texas. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, a dozen elected leaders of the GOP wrote or retweeted racist memes and conspiracy theories. Comal County Republican Party Chair Sue Gafford Piner propagated the idea that philanthropist George Soros is funding a race war. Bexar County GOP Chair Cynthia Brehm suggested that Floyd’s death was staged to hurt President Trump’s reelection chances. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller wrote that the civil rights protesters are “domestic terrorists who were organized and paid for by George Soros.”

This is not the rejection of “political correctness”; it is the success of white supremacy in the Texas Republican Party. The GOP, in many places, has become an institution where leaders are elevated and groomed for cruelty and bigotry. This is what happens when the president of the United States normalizes racism and mainstreams ideological madness.

These habits of prejudice took root easily in the GOP, indicating a broad, preexisting disposition. If Republicans are ever to recover their moral balance, they will need to dispose of three pervasive assumptions.

[E]very abuser of rights is dismissed as one of a few bad apples — even when it is clear that some institutions (say, police forces or the Trump GOP) are engaged in the mass production of rotting fruit.

The second is the assumption of personal innocence — the belief that because an individual is not personally at fault for segregation, redlining and police abuses, he or she is not obligated to address their legacy. This amounts to a selfish rejection of the common good, as well as a denial of the Golden Rule.

The third is the assumption of historical irrelevance — the belief that if subjugation did not take place this morning, it is morally extraneous. This is a particularly absurd view for conservatives, given their traditional belief that the past has a powerful hold on the present. . . . this does not even start to cover the legacy of stolen labor, educational inequality and disenfranchisement.

There are many horrors in American racial history but also some powerful inspiration. It is extraordinary that a group of people who came to our country in chains came to understand the essence of Christianity and the essence of our country far better than their oppressors. You might even call it providential. And this should lead to an enduring lesson: America often sees itself more clearly through the eyes of the harassed and oppressed.

When one is black, Hispanic, gay or non-Christian, one must more more fully analyze and focus on what America should be given the reality that you cannot sit back and enjoy the level of societal privilege that goes with being white and heterosexual.  Your rights and safety are always at risk.

Will Texas be in Play in 2020

Texas state capitol.

One of the things that has pushed Virginia towards full "blue state" status has been the growth of its educated urban and suburban populations which seemingly have at last passed critical mass where they can out vote the reactionary, knuckle dragging rural regions of Virginia.  If the Democrats win control of the Virginia General Assembly n November, legislation long blocked by Republicans will win passage in the string of 2020 and the transformation from red to blue will be near complete. If this happens, expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth from rural areas and the Christofascist at The Family Foundation, Regent University and Liberty University where a 12th century world view still reigns.

Something similar is happening in Texas, although the process is not as far along as in Virginia. Both CNN and New Republic have pieces that look at the urban/suburban growth and the demographic change that have the potential to make 2020 a very bad year for Texas Republicans. Personally, I'd love to see the Texas GOP lose power.  While I have not lived in Texas in decades, I remain a member of the State Bar of Texas and cringe when I see the legislative poison and batshitery pushed by the Texas GOP.  First, these excerpts form the lengthy CNN piece:

The fast-growing metropolitan areas of Texas are moving to the front line of the battle between the two major political parties for control of the nation's direction.  Texas has been a linchpin of the Republican Party's national strength for a generation. But in 2018, Democrats recorded their most significant gains in decades in the state's largest urban centers.
 Now Texas Republicans face indications that the same recoil from President Donald Trump that has hurt the party in other diverse and well-educated metropolitan areas -- from suburban Philadelphia to Orange County, California -- could combine with growing racial diversity to move Texas from reliably red into a genuinely competitive state much more quickly than almost any analyst envisioned even a few years ago. "Trump has sped everything up by four to six years," says Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist. For the Republicans, he said, "it's a deadly combination of rapid demographic change and the immediate political dynamics." Texas remains a difficult, though not unreachable, target for Democrats in the 2020 presidential race -- in part because it's unclear whether any potential Democratic nominee other than Beto O'Rourke, who represented a House district in El Paso, would invest the massive sums required to truly compete in the state.
 But the party's improving position in Texas' thriving metropolitan areas is creating the opportunity for it to seriously contest as many as five or six more seats in the US House, possibly recapture enough seats to regain a majority in the state House of Representatives and mount highly competitive races both against Trump and Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who is seeking reelection next year. The battle for the allegiance of metropolitan Texas is likely to be one of the pivot points in American politics over the next decade. Republicans have carried Texas in every presidential race since 1976, and with the help of favorable district lines drawn by the GOP-controlled state Legislature, have been able to count on big margins from its state congressional delegation -- where Republicans now hold 23 of the 36 seats -- as well as its two Senate seats.
 It would fundamentally reshape the competition between the parties if Democrats can loosen the Republican grip on any of those prizes in Texas, especially its 38 Electoral College votes. And if Republicans can no longer count reliably on Texas -- or other Sun Belt states, including Arizona and Georgia, also being transformed by the same twin forces of urbanization and diversification -- it would represent a huge price for the Trump strategy of maximizing support among rural and working-class white voters that has strengthened the GOP in Rust Belt battlegrounds such as Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.
 The key to Texas' political future is whether it finally follows the geographic realignment that has transformed the politics of many other states over the past quarter century.  Across the country, Republicans since the 1980s have demonstrated increasing strength among voters who live in exurbs at the edge of the nation's metropolitan centers or beyond them entirely in small-town and rural communities. Democrats, in turn, have extended their historic dominance of the nation's urban cores into improved performance in inner suburbs, many of them well educated and racially diverse.
 Both sides of this dynamic have accelerated under Trump, whose open appeals to voters uneasy about racial, cultural and economic change have swelled GOP margins outside the metropolitan areas while alienating many traditionally center-right suburban voters. The key to the GOP's dominance of the state is that through most of this century it has also commanded majorities in the 27 counties that make up the state's four biggest metropolitan areas: Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Demographically similar places in states along the coasts and in the upper Midwest have moved consistently toward the Democrats since Bill Clinton's era. But in Texas, Republicans still carried 53% to 59% of the vote in those metropolitan counties in the four presidential races from 2000 through 2012, Murray and Cross found. In the Trump era, though, that metro strength has wavered for the GOP. In 2016, Hillary Clinton narrowly beat Trump across the 27 counties in Texas' four major metropolitan areas. Then in 2018, Democrat O'Rourke carried over 54% of the vote in them in his narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz, Murray and Cross found. O'Rourke won each of the largest metro areas, the first time any Democrat on the top of the ticket had carried all four since native son Lyndon B. Johnson routed Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, according to Murray and Cross.
 Looking just at the state's five largest urban counties -- Harris (Houston), Travis (Austin), Bexar (San Antonio), Tarrant (Fort Worth) and Dallas -- the change is even more stark. In 2012, Obama won them by a combined 131,000 votes. By 2016, Clinton expanded the Democratic margin across those five counties to 562,000 votes. In 2018, O'Rourke won those counties by a combined 790,000 votes, about six times more than Obama did in 2012. Along the way, Democrats ousted Republican US House incumbents in suburban Houston and Dallas seats and made substantial gains in municipal and state house elections across most of the major metro areas.
 Yet that, of course, still wasn't enough for O'Rourke to overcome Cruz's huge advantages in smaller nonmetro communities. That outcome underscores the equation facing Texas Democrats in 2020 and beyond: They must reduce the GOP's towering margins outside of the major metropolitan areas and/or expand their own advantage inside the metro centers. The stakes in the struggle for Texas' big metro areas are rising because they are growing so fast. While the four major metro areas cast about 60% of the statewide votes in the 1996 presidential election, that rose to about 69% in 2016 and 2018, Murray and Cross found. Murray expects the number to cross 70% in 2020.
 And the concentration of Texas' population into its biggest metropolitan areas shows no signs of slackening. The Texas Demographic Center, the official state demographer, projects that 70% of the state's population growth through 2050 will settle in just 10 large metropolitan counties.
 This urbanization is unfolding together with growing diversification. From 2010 through 2018, the US Census Bureau found, non-Hispanic whites accounted for only 14% of Texas' population growth; Asian-American growth roughly equaled whites', African Americans slightly exceeded both and Hispanics dwarfed all three -- they accounted for over 55% of Texas' population growth in that period. Democrats are cautiously hopeful that a backlash against Trump in minority communities will improve their turnout in 2020, particularly after a young white man echoed Trump's language of "invasion" before carrying out the recent mass shooting in El Paso. The sheer weight of the state's urbanization and diversification will eventually undermine a Trump-type strategy that focuses on maximizing the party's margins outside metro areas at the price of eroding its strength within them. But to close the gap in the next few elections, Democrats may need not only greater turnout but also slightly improved vote shares among their best groups: minorities and especially college-educated white voters. [T]he diverse young families now filling the suburbs of Texas' largest metropolitan areas are very different from the predominantly white families who powered their first wave of growth after the 1960s: While those earlier suburbanites were largely fleeing racially diverse cities, their successors today want to remain close to the cities while securing more affordable housing. "Fundamentally, that's a different kind of mindset," he says, "and that's a mindset that tends to align more with Democratic Party values." For 2020, both sides are preparing extensive voter-mobilization efforts targeted mostly at the major metropolitan areas. Dickey says the state GOP, which for years faced little effective challenge to its control, will launch a major organizational effort next year with both paid staff and volunteers to roll back the 2018 Democratic gains in the big population centers.
 [I]n Texas, as in other states, Trump's racially divisive messaging leaves the GOP facing a stiff headwind in metropolitan areas growing mostly with minority and well-educated white voters. "Trump is killing the urban Republican Party," Murray says flatly.  If that proves true even in Texas, whether in 2020 or soon after, it will fundamentally reshape the national electoral landscape.

The New Republic piece covers some of the same ground but puts more emphasis on how Trump and the Texas GOP's own growing extremism put the state more into possible play.  Here are excerpts:

When Beto O’Rourke proclaimed, during the second round of Democratic presidential debates, that “there’s a new battleground state, Texas, and it has 38 Electoral College votes,” eyes rolled in unison across America. We’ve all heard that nonsense before! Pundits and progressives have been predicting that minority-white Texas would go blue for so long, it’s practically become a running joke. 

But as people in Texas know, O’Rourke wasn’t blowing smoke. Although Republicans have continued to routinely swat away Democrats in statewide races (they haven’t lost one since 1990), while sending legions of unhinged conservatives to gum up the works in Washington, Democrats have taken control of every big city in the state over the past decade—a process that began in Dallas in 2006, when Democrats swept into power. More important, and more worrying for Republicans, that trend spilled over last year into the sprawling suburbs, long the bedrock of Texas Republicanism. Suddenly, Texas Republicans are on the defensive in their national fortress—and they’re both talking and acting like it. “The tectonic plates shifted in Texas in 2018,” Senator John Cornyn, the powerful Republican who’s facing reelection in 2020 (with just a 37 percent approval rating) said earlier this year. . . . “If Texas turns back to a Democratic state, which it used to be, then we’ll never elect another Republican [president] in my lifetime,” said Cornyn. A confluence of events over the past couple of weeks has reinforced Cornyn’s message. In what giddy Democrats are calling “the Texodus,” four Republican members of Congress announced, in short order, that they won’t be running for reelection in 2020; three of their seats, all in the suburbs, will likely go Democratic, adding to the two they took from Republicans in 2018. And then there was President Trump and the terrorism in El Paso. By 2022, Latino Texans are projected to outnumber whites, and the rising majority won’t soon forget the mass murder by a gunman, apparently inspired by Trump’s rhetoric, who took advantage of the state’s insanely lax gun laws. Nor will it forget the way the president put a target on the city’s back, falsely claiming in this year’s State of the Union that El Paso was “one of our nation’s most dangerous cities” before the border barriers went up, then amplifying the message in a rally there a few weeks later. “Murders, murders, murders!” Trump cried out as he talked about immigrants, while his fans chanted, “Build the wall!” Even before the El Paso massacre, Trump had been an albatross for Texas Republicans. While he carried the state in 2016, his single-digit margin of victory—in a state Hillary Clinton didn’t even try to contest—was the narrowest for Republicans in almost 20 years; even Mitt Romney had carried Texas by 16 points. In the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, which accounted for more than half of the state’s votes, Trump won only 48 percent, and early 2020 polls have shown him losing Texas to O’Rourke, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders.

Cal Jillson, a venerable political scientist at Southern Methodist University, is among those who think this president has accelerated the Democratic comeback in Texas. . . . .That’s not just because the president has trashed the image of Republicans for Texas Latinos, who’ve traditionally been more conservative than their peers in places like California; it’s also because the Texas GOP has wholeheartedly embraced Trumpism and Tea Partyism. Despite the state’s ultra-conservative reputation, this is a recent development: When the party rose to power in the 1990s, and then achieved dominance in the 2000s, its leading figures—Governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry—prevented right-wing lawmakers from passing Arizona-style anti-immigration laws.

Governor Greg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, right-wing ideologues who both won reelection last year, have unchained the pent-up lawmakers and activists who’d long chafed at the relative moderation of party leaders—and they’re steering the Texas GOP straight toward self-destruction. “You’ve got a very conservative group of Republicans in the legislature passing their preferred legislation,” Jillson noted, “while the wave builds on the other side and Democrats are making gains.”

[N]obody in Texas, aside from a few blinkered Republicans, believes that Democrats won’t continue to loosen the Republican stranglehold in 2020. At least half a dozen Republican seats in Congress will be ripe for the taking, and Democrats have a realistic chance of capturing the nine Republican seats in the state House they need to gain a majority—just in time for the next round of redistricting in 2021. If they regain a toehold of power in Austin, and can prevent Republicans from having total control over gerrymandering, Democrats could turn Texas blue in a hurry; if not, it’ll probably be a more gradual process over the next decade, with strict voter ID and other forms of suppression still intact, and districts artificially tilted in Republicans’ favor.

Whether Democrats regain power in Texas quickly or gradually, it still adds up to a doomsday scenario for Republicans—and a precious ray of light, through the fog and gloom of Trumpism, for Democrats. 

Grand Jury Indicts Anti-Gay GOP Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton

Anti-gay bigot indicted

I lived in Texas many years ago and, like Alabama where I also once lived, the state seems to have gone insane finds itself under the heel of anti-gay (and anti-minority) extremists in the Republican Party. And not only are these Republicans crazy anti-gay and virulently, they are also corrupt.  Take Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton who has been indicted on multiple counts of securities fraud.  One has to wonder when the modern cities in Texas will have the ability to out vote the lunatics in the rural areas as is now beginning to occur regularly in Virginia.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on Paxton's indictment:

Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas and a former state legislator, has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of securities fraud and of failing to register with the state securities board, officials said.

The grand jury in the northern Dallas suburb of McKinney handed up a three-count indictment against Mr. Paxton on Tuesday, the officials said. The indictment is to be unsealed on Monday, when Mr. Paxton is expected to turn himself in to the authorities at the Collin County Jail.

The charges — two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register — are tied to Mr. Paxton’s work soliciting clients and investors for two companies while he was a member of the Texas House of Representatives, before he was elected attorney general in November.

In the most serious charges, first-degree securities fraud, Mr. Paxton is accused of misleading investors in a technology company, Servergy Inc., which is based in McKinney, his hometown. He is accused of encouraging the investors in 2011 to put more than $600,000 into Servergy while failing to tell them he was making a commission on their investment, and misrepresenting himself as an investor in the company, said Kent A. Schaffer, one of the two special prosecutors handling the case.

Mr. Schaffer said politics had played no part in the indictment.  “I have nothing personal against Mr. Paxton based on his politics,” he said. “Even if you found fault with Brian Wice or myself, how do you find it with the Texas Rangers? These are the most honest, straightforward, incorruptible police officers you’re ever going to find. They don’t have political motivations, and they certainly wouldn’t have any against the sitting attorney general.”

A conviction for a first-degree felony in Texas can carry a punishment of life in prison or a sentence of five to 99 years. A third-degree felony is punishable with a sentence of two to 10 years. Mr. Paxton helped create the possibility of such severe punishment: As a freshman representative in the Texas House in May 2003, he voted to amend the state securities law to make it a felony to act as an investment adviser representative without being registered, the very crime the grand jury accuses him of committing.

As the state’s top lawyer and law enforcement officer, Mr. Paxton has made headlines for challenging the Obama administration on its immigration and environmental policies and for encouraging county clerks to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples on religious grounds after the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding same-sex marriage.

Servergy has also been the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The investigation centered on whether Servergy and its founder, Bill Mapp, who has since resigned as chief executive, made misleading statements about the company to induce investors to buy Servergy stock, according to court documents the S.E.C. filed. Mr. Paxton’s name and email address appeared in documents Servergy filed to comply with S.E.C. subpoenas.

More Anti-Gay Extremism in Texas

As bad as the Virginia GOP has become, its members look sane and rational compared to the batshit crazy insanity that is now the norm within the Texas GOP.  Leading the charge into La La Land is fat tub of lard state Rep. Cecil Bell (pictured above) who I suspect will sooner or latter be either caught soliciting gay sex or molesting minors.  As I have observed numerous times, NO ONE is so obsessed with gays and gay sex unless they have very serious sexual identity issues of their own that they are desperately trying to hide and/or suppress.  The Texas Observer looks at the bills which seeks to force Texas officials to ignore federal court rulings and basically violate the U.S. Constitution.  Here are excerpts:

The future of the battle over gay marriage in Texas—and possibly in other states—is likely to be determined by the House of Representatives in the next 72 hours, according to LGBT advocates.

House Bill 4105, by Rep. Cecil Bell (R-Magnolia), which is designed to undermine a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, is scheduled for a floor vote Tuesday.

Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, said if HB 4105 passes the House, it’s very likely to clear the more conservative Senate before being signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. There were 204 bills ahead of HB 4105 on the House calendar, and the deadline for it to pass the chamber is midnight Thursday.

HB 4105 is one of more than 20 anti-LGBT bills introduced in the 84th Legislature, believed to be the most in the history of any state. However, with time running out in the session, only four have cleared committee, and of those LGBT advocates view HB 4105 as the most significant threat to equality.

The bill would bar state and local employees from issuing, enforcing or recognizing same-sex marriage licenses—and prohibit public monies from being used to do so—regardless of any court order.

LGBT advocates say if the high court rules in favor of same-sex marriage, HB 4105 would set up a showdown between state and federal law, costing Texas millions of dollars in litigation and potentially delaying the effectiveness of the decision by years. They say the bill would unleash chaos similar to what’s been seen in Alabama over same-sex marriage, and generate the type of business backlash associated with passage of an anti-LGBT religious freedom law in Indiana.

Rebecca Robertson, legal and policy director at the ACLU of Texas, said HB 4105 is designed to give Texas another legal basis for challenging same-sex marriage in court: state sovereignty. And she said it could be used as a model by other states for resisting the Supreme Court ruling.

“The last time that we saw similar efforts to undermine court rulings about what the Constitution requires was when Southern states attempted to use the power of the purse to avoid having to comply with federal court orders ordering school desegregation,” Robertson said. “Those tactics were rejected, but obviously it took years of litigation to get to that point. HB 4105 is trying to do the same kind of end run around the Constitution.”

Note the parallels to racists' efforts to defy desegregation orders of the federal courts.  Candidly, I hope a federal judge will hold some of these GOP legislators in contempt of court at some point and lock their asses in jail.  Meanwhile, as frightening as these bills are, I can think of something even more frightening: the image of Cecil Bell naked! . . . Waiting, I 'm running for my barf bag!!

Texas: Hunkering Down for the Oil Bust

I left Houston and the oil industry just before the oil bust reached its lowest point in the 1980's.  The impact of the oil bust then was profound and wreaked havoc on employment and the housing market.  Now, Texas is facing a possible replay of those bad days given the plunge in oil and gas prices.  Locally, regular gas is below $2.00/gallon - something not seen in years.  And the glut of oil doesn't look to be ending any time soon given OPEC's apparent plan to make competing production uneconomical.  A piece at MSN News looks at the prospect faced by Texas which is ill equipped to face the crisis.  Here are article highlights:

MIDLAND, Tex. — With oil prices plummeting by more than 50 percent since June, the gleeful mood of recent years has turned glum here in West Texas as the frenzy of shale oil drilling has come to a screeching halt.

Every day, oil companies are decommissioning rigs and announcing layoffs. Small firms that lease equipment have fallen behind in their payments.

In response, businesses and workers are getting ready for the worst. A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And people are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners.

Dexter Allred, the general manager of a local oil field service company, began farming alfalfa hay on the side some years ago in the event that oil prices declined and work dried up. He was taking a cue from his grandfather, Homer Alf Swinson, an oil field mechanic, who opened a coin-operated carwash in 1968 — just in case.

It’s at times like these that Midland residents recall the wild swings of the 1980s, a decade that began with parties where people drank Dom Pérignon out of their cowboy boots. Rolls-Royce opened a dealership, and the local airport had trouble finding space to park all the private jets. By the end of the decade, the Rolls-Royce dealership was shut and replaced by a tortilla factory, and three banks had failed.

[S]ince the Permian Basin rig count peaked at around 570 last September, it has fallen to below 490 and local oil executives say the count will probably go down to as low as 300 by April unless prices rebound. The last time the rig count declined as rapidly was in late 2008 and early 2009, when the price of oil fell from over $140 to under $40 a barrel because of the financial crisis.

Unlike traditional oil wells, which cannot be turned on and off so easily, shale production can be cut back quickly, and so the field’s output should slow considerably by the end of the year.

The Dallas Federal Reserve recently estimated that the falling oil prices and other factors will reduce job growth in Texas overall from 3.6 percent in 2014 to as low as 2 percent this year, or a reduction of about 149,000 in jobs created.

Over a lavish buffet lunch recently at the Petroleum Club of Midland, the talk was woeful and full of conspiracy theories about how the Saudis were refusing to cut supplies to vanquish the surging American oil industry.

“At $45 a barrel, it shuts down nearly every project,” Steve J. McCoy, Latshaw Drilling’s director of business development, told Mr. Pruett and his guests. “The Saudis understand and they are killing us.”

Under Rick Perry and the Texas GOP's years of misrule low paying jobs were the main thing created.  As noted in posts before, Texas' far right agenda and anti-gay policies have worked to discouraged companies in less volatile industries to relocate to the state.   Now, many Texans may be about to pay the price for such misguided policies.

Will Cities Turn Texas Purple?

Houston Skyline

Here in Virginia, while horrific gerrymandering has protected the Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly, in statewide elections it is seemingly becoming impossible for the GOP to win (this trend hopefully will continue and see Ed Gillespie go down to much deserved defeat).  Why?  The cities and urban areas no longer accept the GOP Kool-Aid and voodoo economics.   Some think a similar trend may be about to show itself in Texas where the progressive, modern cities are less and less friendly territory for the Christofascist and greed driven policies of the Texas Republican Party.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon which I hope will continue to play out. Here are highlights:

[A]s summer has turned to fall, Ms. Wendy Davis has entered new territory: Last week a poll by the Texas Lyceum, a nonpartisan, nonprofit educational institution, showed that Ms. Davis has narrowed that gap to just nine points, and pundits around the state are talking about a new momentum behind her. What happened?

The short answer is tactics. Ms. Davis’s campaign hasn’t been perfect, but she is dogged on the stump, and has stood up well to Mr. Abbott’s attacks.

Of course, Ms. Davis is still nine points back, and she has just five weeks to catch up. Which is why the longer explanation for her turnaround is more important, not just for Texas, but the country.

Many hoping to see Texas go purple point to the growth of its Hispanic community. And that’s part of it, but not everything. Population growth, soaring diversity and dense urbanization are also transforming Texas, much as they have done in Virginia and North Carolina.

Texas’ economy has been booming almost nonstop since 2000, and the state added 4.3 million people between 2000 and 2010. Americans came from every point on the map. Once a minority, the Hispanic population swelled, too, and will be the largest ethnic group in Texas this year (some say they could be the majority by 2020).

Yet there is far more to political change in Texas than the emerging Hispanic majority. Take greater Houston. The suburbs that once determined its voting patterns have become just one part of a megalopolis. Covering nearly as much territory as Maryland, the Houston area is the most diverse in America — even more so than New York or Los Angeles.  

Houston is not merely more Hispanic; the fastest-growing ethnic group is Asian. . . . And 98 percent of the population growth in the first 10 years of this century has been nonwhite.

The same trends are found in the Texas Triangle, an increasingly dense region bounded by Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth. It includes less than 20 percent of the state’s land but all its biggest cities. Conservative politicians do poorly in these settings.

The political shift is unmistakable. In Houston, 83 percent of residents favor a legal path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Six in 10 say abortion is morally wrong but oppose making it harder for women to get one. In August, an effort to repeal Houston’s new equal protection ordinance for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people failed.

Republican strength is on the wane in some of those key suburbs, too. The Republican margin in Fort Bend County shrank in 2012 from double digits to just six points.

None of this is to say that Ms. Davis will win — but she might. And four years from now, she, or another candidate, will have an even easier time. No, that dusky sky up there is not blue. It is still burnt orange — but with quite a bit of purple.

63 Texas Republicans Sign Brief Saying Gay Marriage Will Lead To Incest and Pedophilia

Texas Conservative Coalition marriage brief

If the gathering in Ames, Iowa mentioned in the last post doesn't do enough to convince you that the Republican Party has become a sectarian party, then pay attention to Texas Republicans, 63 of whom just signed onto a brief filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that alleges that legal same sex marriage will lead to the legalization of incest and pedophilia.  Yes, you read that right.  A piece in the Huffington Post looks at the batshitery and shameless self-prostitution of these Republicans who, other than the dictates of the Christofascists they pander to, have nothing to back up their claims.  Here are article highlights:

In support of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s efforts to reinstate the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, more than 60 Texas lawmakers signed an amicus brief Monday arguing that recognition of gay marriage could lead to the legalization of incest, pedophilia and polygamy. 

Filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 63 members of the Texas Conservative Coalition, the state legislature’s conservative caucus, advanced the notion that legalizing same-sex marriage could provide legal justification for the recognition of various moral taboos, including incest and pedophilia.

“The district court broadened the definition of the ‘existing right to marry’ as one that includes the right of people to ‘select the partners of their choosing’ for marriage, without regard to sex,” the brief contends. “If the right to select ‘partners of their choosing’ is the criterion used to invoke marriage as a fundamental right, then marriage restrictions on age, polygamy, and consanguinity are also ripe for challenge.”

As first reported by Lone Star Q, signatories include the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Texas House Speaker Pro Tempore Dennis Bonnen (R) and state Sen. Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for attorney general. 

“Another ground cited by supporters of Texas’s marriage laws and subsequently dismissed by the district court is that recognition of same-sex marriage ‘could lead to the recognition of bigamy, incest, pedophilia, and group marriage,’” the brief continued. “As already discussed in this brief, restrictions on marriage relating to these moral considerations remain valid. Thus, the goal of actively trying to prevent those practices from becoming valid is entirely rational public policy."

While the Republican lawmakers concede that “recognition of pedophilia or other morally reprehensible actions” may not actually be the “logical next step” following marriage equality, they maintain that legislators enacted Texas’ marriage laws "with the intention of supporting marriage arrangements that they believe support valid goals related to those concerns.”

The friend-of-court brief comes one week after Abbott’s office filed an appellants brief urging the appeals court to reverse U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia’s February decision, which deemed the state's same-sex marriage ban in violation of the 14th Amendment’s due-process and equal-protection clauses.

Not surprisingly, the brief cites the discredited "research" of Mark Regnerus which has been disavowed by even his own department at the University of Texas.
 

Koch-friendly Texas GOP Loosens Chemical Safety Rules

I have said before that the Republican Party is seeking to restore the Gilded Age and make life as dangerous and harsh as it was for so many during that era while the wealthy lived the lives of near royalty.  Part of this agenda is to dismantle regulations that protect the public under the guise of freeing corporations from "needless regulations."  If one wants to see this batshitery taken to its loggical conclusion, look no farther than the Texas GOP which is dismantling chemical safety rules.  Now, a concerned parent cannot even verify if a toxic chemical storage facility might be located near a home they are seeking to purchase.  The Raw Story looks at this insanity.  Here are some excerpts:

In the wake of the devastating explosion in West, Texas, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said on Monday, state Republicans did nothing — except make it harder for the public to know what potentially dangerous chemicals are being stored by industry forces.

“The official advice from the Republican-controlled Texas state government to the citizens of that state is that Texas residents should go door-to-door in their communities trying to surmise whether or not there might be any dangerous chemicals stored in any facilities nearby.”

Specifically, she said, Attorney General and GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott issued that directive not long after holdings by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch began donating to his campaign. As The Dallas Morning News reported, Abbott’s campaign has received $50,000 in donations, as well as another $25,000 from Charles Koch’s son, David. Abbott was also flown on a Koch Industries jet to a Koch-sponsored event introducing candidates to more wealthy donors.

Abbott, who is running against state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), began getting the donations, Maddow said, in September 2013 — four months after the blast in West, which injured more than 200 people. Koch Industries dismissed the Morning News‘ report as “a vague and improbable quid-pro-quo ‘linkage.’”

Subsequently, she explained, Abbott scrapped the state’s public database of dangerous chemicals being housed at any given time in a May 2014 ruling. While businesses must still report that information to the state, Abbott decided, officials “must withhold” that information. 

When asked to explain his rationale, Abbott told reporters that residents were free to “drive around” and ask companies in person, or via email, for that type of information. Later, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that local fire departments can also withhold it, since they were considered a “governmental entity” under Abbott’s ruling.

Abbott’s decision, she said, effectively removed one more tier of regulation from a state that already does not require companies to have sprinklers or many storage provisions of any kind for chemicals that — as the “apocalypse” in West demonstrated — can actively endanger communities. That lack of oversight, she said, can be traced to outgoing Gov. Rick Perry (R).

“Rick Perry is going to run for president again on the basis of ‘the Texas miracle,’ where he says things like not having any zoning laws and not having any fire codes, those are the things that make Texas great, and we should elect him president because he will apply ‘the Texas miracle’ to the whole country” she said. “And Greg Abbott is the man who’s running to replace Rick Perry.”

And people ask why I am no longer a Republican!

Rick Perry's Homophobia Is a Choice

Time and time again we hear the Christofascists and their political whores in the Republican Party claim that sexual orientation is a "lifestyle choice."  If that's the case, then breathing is a lifestyle choice.  The reality is that in the realm of gay rights, the only choice is whether or not one will choose to be a homophobic bigot.  This is especially true since every legitimate medical and mental health association in America has concluded that sexual orientation is something innate and unchangeable despite all the false claims of the snake oil merchant "godly Christians."  Thus, it comes down to the question of whether or not one will choose to embrace ignorance and bigotry or not.  Rick Perry among others in the GOP have made it clear that they deliberately choose homophobia which equals the celebration of ignorance and bigotry.  Something in my view that proves them incompetent to hold elected office.  A piece in U.S. News & World Reports takes Perry and by extension his GOP cohorts to task.  The column rightly notes that (i) when one is a white homophobe, it is a safe bet that one is also usually  a racist, and (ii) that if anything is a choice, it is religious belief.  Here are highlights:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry should seek treatment for his addiction to homophobia. Earlier this week, at a public event in San Francisco, he said that being gay is the same as alcoholism – something to be cured. 

No surprise. Perry’s brethren in the Texas GOP released a draft of their platform last week that included language supporting reparative therapy, a scientifically debunked treatment program designed to re-orient a gay person’s sexual identity with Ludovico aversion techniques, such as electrocuting a person’s genitalia or injecting them with nausea-inducing drugs while showing them homoerotic films and pictures. 

Perry’s homophobia has informed much of his politics. During his 2012 presidential election campaign, he ran an ad comparing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell with keeping prayer out of school. In 2005, he said if gays like another states’ laws, they should move to that state. In 2003, he signed the Texas Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited any political entity in the state from recognizing same-sex unions. Perry used this law last year to defy the Pentagon by ordering Texas Military Forces offices to not process marriage benefit applications from gay and lesbian servicemen, . . . 

Perry’s dislike for those not like him also extends to African-Americans. Last March he said that he didn’t think Ted Nugent calling President Obama a subhuman mongrel was racist. The following month, during a CBS "This Morning" interview, he refused to denounce Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy's racist tirade, even though other prominent Republicans had. Perry hailed Bundy as a states' rights hero.

Perry’s comments touch on a question that has shaped the discussion of gay rights for some time: Is being gay a choice or genetic? . . . .  The answer to this question is moot. We have numerous laws on the books that protect people from discrimination for both their choices (e.g. religion) and genetics (e.g. race and gender). Moreover, a majority of the public supports gay rights. Sixty-six percent believe gay or lesbian relations between consenting adults should be legal, while nearly 60 percent find that it’s morally acceptable. 

There is no debate here. Regardless of what Rick Perry and some of the other inmates now running the asylum formerly known as the GOP say, gay people will get all of the same rights and protections any other citizen enjoys. 

Texas GOP Backs Ex-Gay Therapy

If one wants to see the damage being done to the Republican brand look no farther than the Texas GOP which just endorsed the totally discredited "ex-gay" conversion therapy as part of its platform.  Republican elected officials in Texas now need to have "I'm a whore" tattooed across their foreheads.  Either that or perhaps "I'm an ignorance embracing moron."  This move confirms that the GOP has become largely a religious party that is more concerned with pushing extreme right Christian ideology that anything else other than perhaps slashing more taxes for the wealthy and further increasing inequality in America.  A piece in the Houston Chronicle looks at this breath taking embrace of ignorance.  Here are highlights:

Delegates have stripped language from the party’s plank on homosexuality that says: “we affirm that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society and contributes to the breakdown of the family unit. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God.” However, delegates have inserted language that supports therapy or treatment to “escape from the homosexual lifestyle.”

“We recognize the legitimacy and value of counseling which offers reparative therapy and treatment to patients who are seeking escape from the homosexual lifestyle. No laws or executive orders shall be imposed to limit or restrict access to this type of therapy.”

Note: This change drew some ire during testimony Thursday morning, with at least one delegate imploring the committee to return to the platform language about homosexuality tearing at the fabric of society.

Texas GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Calls South Texas "Third-World Country"

GOP's Greg Abbott

If one wants to see what passes as outreach to minorities look no farther than Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott who has called the Rio Grande Valley a "third world country."  Why?  Because of its high Hispanic population, of course.  That someone like Abbott can even be running for governor makes one long for the future when Texas's urban areas can completely out vote the rural regions as is happening slowly but steadily in Virginia.  The Raw Story looks at Abbott's batshitery. Here are highlights:

When Texas Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott compared the Rio Grande Valley to a “third-world country” earlier this week, progressives and the Latino community in south Texas hit the roof.

Democratic opponent State Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) called on Abbott “to apologize for his offensive and erroneous comment that problems facing South Texas resemble ‘third-world country practices that erode the social fabric of our communities and destroys Texans’ trust in government’” in a letter published in the south Texas publication The Monitor.

“While I agree we should ensure that law enforcement has the necessary resources throughout our state, it’s unfortunate that oftentimes the conversation around our border communities focuses solely on enforcement,” she wrote, taking issue with Abbott’s “divisive rhetoric” and calling for “leadership that is grounded in facts and is ready to open up new opportunities with trade and commerce which currently support hundreds of thousands of jobs in Texas.”

Texas, Creationism and Growing GOP Insanity

Reports continue to find that American students as a whole are lagging behind those of other nations.  Yes, there are bright spots in American education, but severe problems exist that must be addressed to keep America competitive.  But what do Texas Republicans want to do?  They want to dump public education down to an even lower level by requiring that creationism be taught in public schools.  Why not just have students subjected to lobotomies?  We'd end up with the same level of dysfunction.  The Dallas Morning News looks at the insanity that is now mainstream in the Texas GOP.  It is nothing less than frightening.  Here are story excerpts:

WACO — All four Republican lieutenant governor hopefuls have embraced the teaching of creationism in public schools.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Sen. Dan Patrick, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said in the first televised debate of the campaign Thursday night that they favor teaching that there are flaws in the theory that humans evolved from lower life forms.

Late last month, state Board of Education members adopted new high school science books that include full coverage of evolution without the disclaimers sought by social conservatives and other critics of Charles Darwin’s theory.

While none of the lieutenant governor candidates mentioned the board’s decision, three — Patrick, Patterson and Staples — blasted teaching only evolution as a form of “political correctness.” They linked it to what they described as a broader moral decline.

“The breakup of the family in this country has started when we took God out of the classroom,” said Patrick, a radio talk show host.   “As a Christian, certainly creationism should be taught,” said Staples, a former state legislator.  Dewhurst, who is seeking a fourth term, agreed.

Mindful that the state GOP’s staunchest conservatives dominate primaries, the four men continued to steer to the right. Each hailed the rise of the tea party, blasted President Barack Obama’s health care law and opposed giving immigrants living in the country illegally a pathway to citizenship.  “We are not at the level of conservatism we need to be,” Patrick said.

With this kind of "leadership" it is no wonder that Texas is having difficulty attracting high paying jobs and that it has one of the highest levels of uninsured citizens.  Meanwhile, I have to wonder whether these four men are truly cretins or merely shameless political whores willing to say whatever they believe the Christofascists and knuckle draggers (is there a difference?) want to hear.  Given the Texas GOP's hatred of non-whites, I look forward to the day when whites are a minority in Texas.  Perhaps then intelligence will return to that state.