Commissioners Court of Color

The lead front page story in today’s hard copy is about the Uvalde families and the DPS honcho they want to resign or get fired.

We know arsehole Gov. Greg Abbott is gutless and won’t fire DPS Director Steve McCraw.

The Latino police chief of Uvalde CISD was canned. A Latina DPS trooper stepped down.  A Latino DPS trooper was fired.

Most of the victims were Latino.

91 DPS troopers were outside of the classroom for over an hour.

The white DPS director is still pulling a taxpayer funded salary. Atrocious. Tragic. Sad.

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Texas Monthly has a piece on Alex Mealer taking on County Judge Lina Hidalgo. Here is a part:

She (Judge Hidalgo) offered a fresh approach in other ways as well. Pledging to put an end to the county’s pay-to-play system, Hidalgo refused to take campaign donations from county vendors. She promised to fight the real estate developers responsible for unchecked growth, the polluters fouling the air and water, and the entrenched power brokers that had long ignored the county’s vast economic and social inequities. 

During Hidalgo’s four-year tenure as county judge, Houston business leaders have found themselves in a situation almost without precedent in local history—starved of political access and frozen out of lucrative contracts and appointments. As Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg observes in his 2020 book, Prophetic City, Houston has long been governed by the philosophy that “the only legitimate role for public policy is to facilitate and support private-sector development, all in the firm belief that this was the surest way to promote the common good.” Petroleum Club grandees muttered darkly about a progressive (maybe even a socialist) neophyte with no business experience and no appreciation of free enterprise. 

Here is the entire read: Can Alexandra del Moral Mealer Save the Harris County GOP? – Texas Monthly.

I told someone the other day, when Harris County Commissioners Court was run by a white majority of commissioners, folks were cool with that. When folks of color became a majority of Commissioners Court and set a new tone, folks freaked out. The tone set by the white dudes was ok, but the tone set by the folks of color was not ok.

Some crimes are up. Some crimes are down. A lot are within the H-Town city limits patrolled by HPD. We have had crime up and down before over the last five decades.  Former County Judges Ed Emmett, Robert Eckels, and Jon Lindsay never were on the receiving end of the level of vitriol that is being heaped on Judge Hidalgo. I wonder why? Oh, heck, we all know why.

Mistakes have been made by this Commissioners Court. Harris County has been long overdue going to an Election Administrator. The rollout was not smooth, but was any election compromised? No.

The $11 million COVID outreach contract was botched. I don’t think it was criminal based on what has been reported.

The other obvious mistake the Commissioners of color have made is that they forgot that because they are folks of color, they are judged on a different, errr, higher standard.

Just saying.

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This is the Chron being lazy again.  They have a story on the accuracy of the Judge Lina Hidalgo and Alex Mealer campaign ads. On the one about Mealer wanting to purge the voters rolls, here is this:

The (Hidalgo) ad further claims Mealer has “pledged to purge our voter rolls,” pointing to language on Mealer’s campaign website that states: “I will do everything I can to safeguard our ballots and ensure free and fair elections for Harris County voters. This starts by cleaning the voter rolls,” along with other measures.

The county’s voter rolls historically have been overseen by the elected tax assessor-collector. Under Democratic control, Commissioners Court has shifted this role to the newly created election administrator, an appointed position. 

Asked to clarify what she means by “cleaning the voter rolls,” Mealer responded in an emailed statement, “I would return elections back to elected officials, in this case, I would return authority to maintain the voter rolls to the current Democrat office holder, Ann Harris Bennett, and would have periodic meetings with her to ensure the voter rolls were being updated for deaths and moves.”

Please clarify. Yes, the Election Administrator is appointed, but appointed by five, yes five elected officials. The Harris County Judge, County Clerk, Tax Assessor Collector, and Chairs of the Harris County Democratic and Republican Parties. Not making this clarification only adds to those putting out misinformation on election integrity.

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There is front page story on national LULAC.  Here is how the story starts:

LULAC leaders are divided in the wake of a dispute over who controls the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization.

And there is this:

It began when allegations of campaign malfeasance triggered a last-minute cancellation of the LULAC elections at the group’s annual convention in Puerto Rico this past summer. Court records show that the day before the election, a Dallas County judge ordered the organization’s election be halted.

The judge granted a temporary restraining order to a group of Texas-based LULAC council leaders who said a political party in Puerto Rico had financed the creation of hundreds of shell councils to sway the election toward Garcia’s opponent, who was from Puerto Rico.

Supporters of Garcia’s challenger saw the canceled election — the third in a row after in-person conventions were canceled due to the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 — as a power grab. The situation devolved further when, the next day, Garcia ordered the indefinite suspension of LULAC CEO Sindy Benavides and, later, several LULAC vice presidents, without getting authorization from the board of directors, according to the Dallas Morning News. 

Here is the entire read: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/article/lulac-dispute-houston-takeover-17538407.php.

Sound like a big mess.

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It is the here!

The Chron Sports Section front page says:

WORLD SERIES

MAIN EVENT

Astros and the Phillies.

Care to guess how many players from both teams of the 1980 NLCS between the Phillies and the Astros are now in the Hall of Fame?

Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt from the Phillies and Joe Morgan and Nolan Ryan from the Astros.

Here is a Chron front page story headline and sub-headline on a column by Sports Columnist Brian T. Smith:

Chance to dispel the haters

Houston deserves a championship that can’t be besmirched

Two things from Commentary on this.

The haters are not going away for now. If we got swept by the Phillies, some might go away.

The 2017 World Series Champions are the Astros. We won it. I got gear that says we won it.

Let’s go win another.

#LevelUp!