Ring Alert

I got the following Ring alert this morning:

Beware of ICE around Bad astronaut brewing!!! Spread the word to friends and family. Fulton area

That part of the Near Northside is just north of I-10 close to Downtown H-Town. I wonder what is up.

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From the Chron E-Board this morning:

“What type of city do you want to live in?” 

Houston Mayor John Whitmire posed this rhetorical question after a contentious June City Council meeting defending a $7 billion budget that several council members opposed. 

Two years into his term, Whitmire hasn’t given a satisfactory answer to his own question. Houston is no closer to solving the multi-decade fiscal mess he inherited and now owns. Despite facing a $227 million deficit next year, the mayor has consistently punted on making tough decisions that would generate sorely needed tax revenue for a city that can barely deliver adequate public services. 

He has made budget cuts and used creative accounting to plug holes, but those moves only delay the onset of a crisis.

Even raising the property tax rate is now apparently off the table despite the fact that his proposed budget initially assumed a rate increase. Whitmire told City Council last week that the administration wants to maintain a flat tax rate for at least another year. Houston has the lowest property tax rate of all major cities in Texas. 

“I made a commitment that we wouldn’t raise taxes or fees until we root out waste duplication and corruption,” Whitmire said. “We still have some work to do.”

Whitmire has asked us, repeatedly, to trust him. Trust that his 50 years of experience as a state legislator will pay dividends with lawmakers in Austin who otherwise seem to delight in kneecapping Houston at every opportunity. Trust that his chummy relationships with county commissioners can bridge at least some of the gaps in city services. Trust that the audit he commissioned from Ernst & Young can be the blueprint for a leaner, more efficient government. 

But as some council members are pointing out, trust alone doesn’t pay the bills. When the city is staring down a potential $463 million deficit by 2030, that math ain’t mathing. 

Here is the entire E-Board take: Mayor Whitmire’s budget math is unsustainable. Houston needs revenue.

Evan Mintz and his E-Board are absolutely convinced that Mayor Whitmire is just going to drive the car off the cliff. It works like this. The mayor works at his own pace on this, not Evan’s pace.

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This just in from the Chron:

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, a progressive Democrat and former Austin school board member, joined the race for governor on Wednesday, accusing Gov. Greg Abbott of being beholden to big money donors and vowing to fight corruption. 

“No te dejes — fight back,” she said in a video announcing her campaign. “Our fight right now is against the billionaires and the corporations, who are driving up prices, closing our neighborhood schools and cheating Texans out of basic health care. That’s who Greg Abbott works for.”

Hinojosa is the most established contender in a primary field that has struggled to draw big names to take on Abbott as he seeks a record fourth term in office. She has served in the House since 2017 and was a vocal opponent of Abbott’s $1 billion private school voucher plan that passed earlier this year, which she likened to “welfare for the well off.” 

Hinojosa sparred directly with Abbott over the voucher plan earlier this year, and is working to make the issue a key rallying cry on the campaign trail. In her launch video, she hit the Texas Republican for taking millions in campaign donations from Jeff Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire and voucher proponent. 

She was set to hold a launch rally on Wednesday in Brownsville, where she grew up. The choice is an early indication of the importance of South Texas, which has increasingly become a battleground after Republicans gained ground there in recent elections. 

I will say this. Texas Democrats have the issues on our side. Gov. Greg Abbott has gone off the deep end and is all MAGA and an all Trump toadie. Vouchers, skyrocketing home insurance rates, ICE raids, tariffs, you get the picture.

It comes down to campaign dough. Democrats are going to need a lot of campaign dough.

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“Today” mentioned this morning that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are teaming up for an ad campaign. See the featured photo and the following from Esquire:

The friendship between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Here we have a couple of guys who have famously played some of the most ruthless, bitter, terrifying—in a word, unfriendly—characters the silver screen has ever seen. If you were to assume you had some insight into their own personalities based on their work, you’d figure they’d be curmudgeonly at best. Of course, you’d be dead wrong. The pair have been close friends for decades. And one look at their faces in Moncler’s latest campaign shows that the openness and affection between them has not cooled with time.

The campaign, fittingly, is called “Warmer Together.” It’s a celebration of the label’s iconic puffer jackets and the literal warmth they provide, sure, but it goes further than that.

“For decades, Moncler has been associated with winter and puffer jackets, but I have always felt that Moncler is about something deeper: love and a sense of togetherness,” chairman and CEO Remo Ruffini said in a statement. “These values have shaped everything we’ve done for over 70 years. Across every product and every campaign, there runs a consistent thread of emotion and human connection. Through their story of friendship, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro embody everything Moncler truly stands for: affection, warmth, and the belief that we are all better and warmer together.”

De Niro, in a teaser for the campaign, echoed that sentiment. “Warmth was never about the outside,” he said. “It was always about what was happening on the inside.”

And Pacino, for his part, focused more explicitly on the value of friendship. “Friendship is the greatest thing you can have,” he said. “Friends, people whom you share the same world with. There is just an innate trust. And the understanding of life.”

Pacino has been nominated for 9 acting Oscars, winning once. De Niro has been nominated for eight, winning twice. They have also starred in four films together.

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Mauricio Dubón and Cam Smith have just been announced as Gold Glove Award finalists.