Dem Dam: Candidates we won’t hear in primary debate tonight

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

When North Texas television news anchor Karen Borta earnestly shoots her first question to the Democratic candidates for Texas Governor at tonight’s debate, there is no risk viewers will find themselves assaulted with any rants about “foreign”-owned motels proliferating across the state or schooled on the secret plan to scrap the American dollar for a multi-national currency called the Amero.

Thanks to KERA’s decision to whittle down a seven-way race to a mere two candidates, we’re going to sidestep a dollop of race baiting and conspiracy theory, evident in the campaigns of Bill Dear and Star Locke.

Locke (left) is the only (I hope) candidate boasting multiple images of mushroom clouds on his campaign site.

But with nearly three quarters of the candidates excluded from what will likely be the only Democratic primary debate we get, we’ll also be missing the chance to hear San Antonio doctor Alma Aguado decry the injustices of NAFTA at home and abroad or consider Dallas teacher Felix Alvarado’s pitch to slash our school drop-out rates.

Instead, there will only be two flavors of thought to choose from: three-term Houston Mayor Bill White and Houston-based hair care magnate Farouk Shami.

KERA states on its website that the other five candidates failed to meet the station’s three-part criteria for inclusion.

Those qualifications include:

It’s a limited-attention-span chicken-and-the-egg dilemma. A newborn candidate can’t gain the needed cash to run a competitive race without first gaining exposure; and exposure comes easiest with the donations gained from it. The formula penalizes candidates who, like White, are not established politicians with an established pool of donors to tap, or millionaires willing to flush their own funds into the campaign hole as has Shami.

Dr. Aguado wasn’t taking her exclusion quietly, taking it all the way up to KERA’s … director of multi-media services?

In a February 1 letter to star techie Rick Thompson, Aguado comes a hair away from decrying her exclusion as racist.

Complaining about the policy allowing a candidate to be excluded for not fielding 6 percent support in a statewide poll, Aguado wrote:



She goes on to school Thompson in a ream of digital-inclusion issues; issues that play to the advantage of strong online campaigns like Mayor White’s. Unfortunately, the schooling she offers is cut straight off a University of Texas webpage.

Plagiarism aside, her spirit is in the right place.

DeAnne Cuellar, executive director of the San Antonio-based non-profit Media Justice League, agrees with Aguado’s message on exclusion.

Poverty rates in San Antonio and South Texas are reflected in low levels of online access, Cuellar said. “It is a race issue for us … and the communities we work with because it’s impossible for us to ignore that the majority of people who are feeling the disparities are overwhelmingly people of color. It makes it a racial issue.”

“If the government is going to move on the Internet, then the community needs to move on the Internet, as well,” Cuellar said. “If we’re voting and we’re putting agendas online and yet your community doesn’t have access to the Internet, what sort of community is that. What does that say?”

And if we’re talking telephone surveys, the last poll (pdf) we’re aware of was taken back when Tom Schieffer, Ronnie Earle, and Kinky Friedman were making gormandizing growls after Perry’s perch and 55 percent of Dems were undecided. Heck, by this standard, neither White nor Shami have kickstand-legs to lean on for their own inclusion.

Dallas teacher and former San Antonian Felix Alvarado (left) bagged two-percent of that November poll, but was still excluded from the shuffle. The rejection came by Fed Ex last week, he said.

In an effort to achieve some clarity, we called KERA and were transferred to the director of viewer services who said the only person who would be able to comment was busy prepping for the debate. “But you’re welcome to leave a message.”

Alvarado has experienced similar troubles.

“We called them several times and we have been emailing them, calling them, but they always let us talk to a secretary, and the secretary says, ‘Go to our website and the website will tell you the criteria and you don’t meet the criteria,’” Alvarado said.

The only failed criteria he can pinpoint is his lack of money.

“I have been out there, throughout almost all the state … We were going on the premise that we had a good message and that people would respond,” he said. “You know the DNC and the Democratic Party are involved in this. And White is the anointed one.”

For our part, we’d like to hear from the full range of candidates — even if Lockheed Martin, which underwrote one of the Republican debates, has to pay for an additional hour of commercial-free television.

While Aguado’s website is littered with the sort of grammatical errors that make it hard to take her campaign seriously, I’d bear a thousand errors of capitalization for the chance to hear the only candidate I know of proposing cutting trade agreements that fail to provide adequate environmental protections for workers in Central America.

Plus, the elusive Facebook candidate for Governor, Clement Glenn, said to be a “coordinator of a family and community violence prevention after-school program in Houston’s fifth ward,” could have supplied a deeply needed urban voice to the mix.

Hell, throw ‘em all together with the guy and his mushroom clouds. Democracy is made to be messy.

Drone Wars: Obama and Texas cops agree on dehumanizing sky

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

Not counting those “supplemental” billions sought from Congress to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan humming in time, Obama’s 2011 proposed defense budget bumps Defense Department bones up by 3.4 percent.

It’s a healthy meal in a time of famine. While social programs across the country are getting frozen in place, the only major existing military hardware lines to get the ax are the C-17 cargo planes and secondary engines for Joint Strike Fighters, programs Defense Secretary Robert Gates wanted cut last year anyway.

But in this era of terror-related cost creep, one program in the new warfare arsenal is about to double. Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are slated to receive $2 billion for increased production. It appears that drones, offering stealth surveillance packed with hellfire missiles underwing, are finally coming into their own.

According to the Los Angeles Times:



Texas Air Guard fighter jocks at Houston’s Ellington Field traded in their F-16s for fulltime drone combat more than a year ago when the last of the F-16s flew out in the summer of 2008. The 147th Fighter Wing became the 147th Reconnaissance Wing with a dozen Predators in the shed.

But Texas’ drone fever dates back at least to 2005, when Governor Rick Perry swooned over the potential of UAVs to safeguard Texas’ oil refineries and track border crossers along the Rio Grande. The Houston Police Department sought to jump into the game in 2007 with a not-so-secret launch of a pint-sized predator. However, the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority still won’t let the Inspector Gadgets of innumerable cop shops or even the Ellington crews put up their unmanned drones.

Lynn Lunsford, press officer out of the FAA’s Fort Worth office said the “mechanics of the thing” have his agency studying the issue intently. “Right now the technology is still not quite there, where you can have a drone that can detect and then avoid other aircraft,” he said.

D.C.-based FAA staff, digging in for a possible blizzard, weren’t able to get me the stats I was looking for. A spokesperson said while they are still taking applications for unmanned flying machines, but he didn’t know offhand if any had been approved in Texas.

And then there is the whole government secrecy thing: “I’m not even aware if that’s releasable at this point,” said spokesperson Les Dorr. “The only one I’m aware of is Houston.”

In fact, the first FAA waivers to launch UAV’s domestically was granted way back in 2003 to the U.S. Air Force. In the years since, the agency has approved a minimum of 440 applications for UAVs nationwide, according to an FAA fact sheet released in October, 2009.

Still the FAA and military have been butting heads on the issue. It may take the development of “sense-and-avoid” tech to smooth the deal that would completely militarize our civilian skies, one military journal wrote recently.

If prosecution ever starts to include drone surveillance footage, things could interesting.  

HPD’s Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo told the TV crew that busted the “secret” test flight years back that “the unmanned aircraft would be used for ‘mobility’ or traffic issues, evacuations during storms, homeland security, search and rescue, and also ‘tactical.’” And HPD officials said they “would address privacy and unlawful search questions later.”

Keep watching this space to find out who has applied (and who may be flying) spy drones above us, because, at least according to Defense Secretary Gates, these things aren’t going away.

Back to the Times again:



I tried to follow up with Public Affairs at the 147th, but they must have been strapped into something somewhere. After punching my way through the departmental gauntlet multiple times, I found they hadn’t managed to set up their voicemail. A robot’s voice told me so.

"Factory farms not so bad after all" says TFB

Cavalier blog post of the week:

"Factory farms not so bad after all"

Written by Texas Farm Bureau spokesman Gene Hall, it argues that if you just look at the plain meaning of the words, not only are "factory farms" not "vile" or "evil," but "efficient," "productive," and "beneficial." I've read it three times and can't find any mention of "pesticides," "Monsanto," or "water subsidies."

Some other maligned phrases that might happily accept his PR assistance:
"Concentration camps"
"Pork Barrel Spending"
"Ethnic Cleansing"
"First Degree Murder"

Also, says Hall, no one really wanted to farm anymore, which is why we need factory farms (nonetheless, he writes, factory farms supply some 20% of American jobs -- so, the jokes on us, I guess?).

Hall does point out that we consumers have come to rely on cheap groceries and ready availability of everything in every season -- but again he skirts the underlying mechanisms of the industrial farm economy (and its multifarious lobbyists) to summarily conclude that you can have affordable food or organic, sustainable food -- not both.

"There would be consequences for outlawing this kind of agriculture," Hall writes. "We can send everyone back to the farm. We can all keep some chickens, a milk cow and grow a garden."

I can't wait till he parses Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

UHS fought with Bexar County Jail about over-crowding, suicide risk

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

University Health System staff worried about the impact of jail over-crowding at Bexar County Jail and fought to change jail practices like housing suicidal inmates in parts of the jail not intended for suicidal observation, recently released emails show.

“There is a lot of confusion regarding housing for suicidal inmates,” Lydia Mesquiti wrote to staff members on March 13, 2009. “The jail administrator is allowing suicidal inmates to be housed in PODs that are not designated as a Suicide Prevention Unit. Our Department (UHS-DHCS) policy has NOT changed. When we find someone with a suicide potential and place him on suicide precautions he is to got the SPU or OB (if female) or MT-O1.”

Mesquiti, the director of mental health services over UHS’ jail contract with Bexar County, instructed her staff to continue correctly classify every suicidal inmate even if they weren’t being housed in under the right conditions.

“We are not authorizing any suicidal inmates to any other units,” she wrote. “If a suicidal inmate is taken to another unit not designated for suicide prevention then you are to call the UHS Vice President Theresa Scepanski.”

Jail Administrator Roger Dovalina told the Current last month that overcrowding likely contributed to the high number of suicides at the jail that ended up tripling the national average. A review of jail records showed cases where the inability to house inmates in the suicide unit because of overcrowding appeared to contribute to hanging deaths.

Later, UHS staff began lobbying hard for changes in housing these at-risk detainees that Chief Dovalina apparently was not willing to make. (Calls to Dovalina were not immediately returned Thursday.)

On March 14, UHS VP Teresa Scepanski wrote staff after hearing that jail personnel were placing suicidal inmates in the required smocks but not in the suicide prevention unit. “I spoke to Shift Commander [Capt. David Salinas] and explained this “new” policy cannot go into effect until we can meet and discuss a process that does not conflict with the regulations. … I requested this inmate be placed in MT01. Shift Commander did not cooperate with my request,” Scepanski wrote.

UHS mental-health employees had been lobbying to turn an open area of the jail (MT01) into a makeshift suicide watch area, a suggestion that was ultimately rebuffed.

However, a month later, a little progress was made when Dovalina instructed jail staff to up their observation rounds from every 30 minutes to every 15 minutes wherever suicidal inmates were being housed.

After 412 suicide attempts (see chart, right) and three hanging deaths, a sheriff’s deputy wrote in August of a “circle of frustration” existing in the booking area over continued failures to get  suicidal inmates properly housed and treated.

“The mental health staff blame the medical staff, who in turn blame classification, then the blame is back on mental health staff. It is a circle of frustration and during this time the inmate creates problems for the booking staff," the Bexar County deputy wrote. "I am under the impression that an inmate evaluated and found to be suicidal, should at least be monitored or at least check on occasion by mental health unit, that hardly happens.” 

Instead, suicidal detainees were being forced to sit on a stool in front of the sergeant’s desk until a cell was located for them. This process could take up to 48 hours, the deputy wrote.

On December 4, Chief Dovalina issued Administrative Directive 09-30 ordering staff to conduct 30-minute surveillance of inmates housed in Intake (including detox where at least one suicide occurred last year) or the jail annex. They had been making the rounds every hour.

According to the department’s Suicide Prevention Log, 769 inmates attempted to take their lives at the jail in 2009. As reported in Hang Time, Bexar County Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz invited a national expert in suicide prevention to come examine the jail and its operations after the 6 suicides of ’09. More than 50 pages of UHS emails released to the Current show a health department grappling with a problem far beyond their power to control.

Hearing Tonight: Rate-hike testimony suggests green reforms to slow

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

With San Antonio’s nuclear-play creeping toward dissolution, blasts of cold weather and artificially inflated gas prices have started edging up local power bills. Come March, that edge will almost certainly be sharper for already-struggling families. That's when a proposed CPS rate increase is expected to be folded into the batter.

At a Council hearing Monday night, the first of three scheduled on examining the rationale behind CPS Energy’s expected 7.5-percent electric and 8.5-percent gas rate-increase request, the tag-teaming Electron Queens, Acting GM Jelynne LeBlanc-Burley and CFO Paul Gold-Williams, ran down the numbers. The utility needs to finish the Spruce 2 coal plant this year, unwrap new gas peaking units, and shovel more than $200 million into new sub stations and keep pace with new development, they said.

This “capital cycle” will mean going deeper into debt, a proposition that didn’t sit well with Councilman John Clamp: “If we get too confident on the debt side, that will eat our lunch one day.”

Several Council members expressed squeamishness about sticking ratepayers with higher bills at a time when so many are in need — and as CPS talks about slowing environmental projects like putting scrubbers on existing coal plants and rolling out a smart grid to pave the way for solar’s arrival in SA.

The scrubbers, for instance, won't "need" to be installed until 2015 to comply with expected new federal requirements, Gold-Williams said.

While the rate increase does not include the most aggressive march forward on the green-energy front, it also doesn’t include any funds for the expansion of the STP nuclear complex at Bay City, Burley said.

A final nuclear decision, which could go down as San Antonio’s most visible stillbirth since Main Plaza, is expected at a CPS Board of Trustees meeting next week. If they choose, after all, to try to revive that beast, expect the rate-hike request to rise even higher.

However, with recent positive reception in district court, CPS should be able to separate from its nuke partner NRG Energy with a good share of its investment covered. We’ll be watching to see if the utility and City will be satisfied salvaging all those already-misspent monies or if they’ll press forward dumping millions more in the hopes of one day turning a profit for their troubles. This is where things get sticky — and not in a good way.

The second hearing on the proposed increase is being held at 5:30 pm tonight at the City Hall Complex, 114 W. Commerce. Emphasis at tonight’s meeting to be on energy conservation and green initiatives: how far? how fast?

Operation Homefront “restructured”

By Enrique Lopetegui
elopetegui@sacurrent.com

(Update on 2/1/10: Jim Knotts clarifies status of communication department, newly created position, and reveals his salary)

On January 20, the national office of the San Antonio-based military charity Operation Homefront eliminated nine positions, four of them locally, even as donations have greatly increased since at least 2006.

“We actually didn’t do any layoffs, we did a restructuring,” Amy Palmer, Operation Homefront’s chief operational officer, told the QueQue. “We’re trying to reduce our ongoing operational expenses, and we restructured the national staff.”

Operation Homefront, founded in 2003, provides “emergency and morale assistance for our troops, the families they leave behind and for wounded warriors when they return home,” according to its website. It has more than two dozen independent chapters around the country which operate under the national charter. One third of the national staff of 27 is based in San Antonio, one-third in Washington, D.C., and the rest are virtual employees scattered around the country. Ashley Matta, administrative assistant for the Texas chapter, also based in San Antonio, confirmed that the job losses didn’t affect the chapter’s staff.

Two of the eliminated positions were already vacant, so the decision affected seven positions in human resources, marketing, administration, and Operation Homefront Village, the OH apartment complex that since March 2008 serves as short-term transitional housing for wounded vets. But there is also a new San Antonio office assistant position created that is currently open.

"We are in the process of developing the job description and advertisement," said Jim Knotts, who took over as CEO in November 2009.  "We eliminated a marketing specialist and an administrative assistant positions.  We are taking the most important responsibilities of those two positions to create the new office assistant position. So, in effect, the position was created when we announced the restructuring on January 20. With one new position created, we have 28 positions on the national staff after the restructuring: Twelve are in San Antonio, six are in D.C., and the other 10 are virtual across the country."

Any more "restructuring" in the near future?

“We hope not,” said Palmer. “We have to monitor our fundraising progress and continue to reassess our financial position. But we do not intend at this time to make additional restructuring decisions. A lot of organizations have gone through changes in the last couple of years, with the economy the way it is. We’re no exception, but we’re looking at ways to get more money to the families that we’re trying to serve. Our services weren’t cut. This is not unique to military charities, and it’s not unique to operation homefront.”

Knotts told the QueQue that those whose positions were eliminated should be able to receive unemployment benefits.

“We pay into the state for unemployment insurance, like every employer,” said Knotts from Ecuador, where he has just adopted a son. “It was explained to us that, yes, they’ll be able to apply for unemployment insurance.”

Palmer said that for the last year several employees have been reassigned to different areas within the charity. But, for the outsider, the loss of positions came as a surprise: According to the organization’s last three 990s, OH received donations of $3.5 million in 2006, $12.7 million in 2007, and $16.4 million in 2008. And as late as December 1, 2009, Operation Homefront earned its third consecutive four-star rating from Charity Navigator “for its ability to efficiently manage and grow its finances.”

“Only 13 percent of the charities we rate have received at least three consecutive four-star evaluations,” wrote Charity Navigator’s president and CEO Ken Berge, in the December letter addressed to Palmer, “indicating that Operation Homefront executes its mission in a fiscally responsible way, and outperforms most other charities in America.”

But some comments written on Operation Homefront’s Charity Navigator’s page accuse OH of “dismantling” its communications department, and of having “internal issues,” illustrated by the fact that here have been three presidents in the last few years.

"Operation Homefront has had three CEO's in three years," Knotts wrote the QueQue. "However, the organization has also grown each of those years in terms of needs met for our military families and total revenue, which is a testament to the depth and professionalism of the staff."

On the issue of the communications department, Knotts sent us two emails.

"Earlier in 2009, we rearranged some reporting structures within the national office, changes that had nothing to do with this restructuring,” said Knotts in the first email. “As a result, our online communications team moved from communications to operations. So before the restructuring we had two positions in communications. Both are currently vacant, and we plan to fill both."

An hour after this posting, Knotts sent another email for clarification:

"We did have a VP of Online Communications take a job outside of Operation Homefront in November," Knotts wrote. "At that time, we chose not to refill that position. That was the same time we changed the reporting structure so that the online communications group began reporting to Operations instead of Communications. Since it was unrelated to the restructuring, I had overlooked the change, but your specific questions about eliminated positions in Communications reminded me."

Although the personell info in the Operation Homefront Charity Navigator page is outdated, Knotts said he makes $175,000 a year, "which will be public record when we file our 2009 taxes." His predecessor, Mark Smith, made $125,648 a year.

No matter what changes Operation Homefront goes through, Palmer says the four-star status is not in jeopardy.

“We didn’t make any changes to our program,” Palmer said. “The support and emergency assistance we provide to the families hasn’t changed and will continue exactly as it is.

“Our donations have been pretty strong for 2010. Of course, it all comes down to cash. Our employees get paid with cash, and of course we have a lot of non-cash services donated, but it all comes down to cash. So we have a very aggressive fundraising plan and we expect to do very well this year financially. The pace will slow, because we’re a young organization growing very quickly. The leaps won’t be as aggressive, but we do expect to continue having a trend of positive earnings.”

DOD cutting ‘non-combat’ greenhouse gases, leans on Valero for the dirty stuff

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

The sophisticated hacking of a major UK climate research center two weeks before the would-a-been-historic international gathering on climate change in Copenhagen last December “bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation,” according to Sir David King, former science advisor to past British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

King told the Guardian, “it was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies and it seems to me that it was the work of such a group of people.”

Such a group, he added, could be marshaled only by a foreign government or, perhaps, the well-funded “anti-climate change lobbyists” in the U.S.

The hacking preceded the United Nation’s global conference on climate change, where representatives from around the world were hoping to cobble together a successor to the Kyoto Protocol with a binding reductions agreement intent on stabilizing the planet’s climate.

The hacking — and subsequent mass misinterpretation and mischaracterization by U.S. media outlets like FOX — played a central role in squirreling the deal.

Obama, widely criticized for turning Copenhagen into a photo-op to announce agreements that hadn’t actually been reached, came back to Washington with an edict for the federal government: reduce global-warming gases by 28 percent by 2020. In response, the U.S. Department of Defense committed to doing one better, or four better, with plans to cut by 34 percent by 2020.

However, these are “non-combat” emissions we’re cutting. The ill-defined War on Terror continues to rack up monster carbon costs.

One of the top beneficiaries of the DOD’s fossil fuel purchases is San Antonio-based Valero — ranked fourth among the agency’s fuel contractors with Fiscal ’08 earnings of $1.04 billion. The hometown crew  just edged out The Bahrain Petroleum Company ($1.02 bil) and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company ($918 mil) for the honor, according to the Defense Energy Support Center.

Seems a plausible alternative explanation for the company’s pump-based anti-climate legislation ad campaign … but is it enough to motivate top officers to fund a band of federally trained cyber-warfare renegades to remotely storm the East Anglia Climate Research Unit? Utter conspiratorial nonsense, I’m sure.

However, the profits do make American Apparel’s $14-million arrangement for battle uniforms, coats, and trousers for the U.S. Air Force (being stitched together in Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas) sound like small (American-grown, organic) potatoes.

Still, there are plenty of other San Anto outfits earning less than a bil per-annum. Recently announced new or renewed contracts fueling the all-points conflict with ground stations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen, include:

* LaBatt Food Service and Sterling Foods are keeping those Meals Ready To Eat as real as possible with continued $9-mil and $38-mil contracts, respectfully, for “full line food distribution” and bakery goods.

* Valero Marketing & Supply Co. earned another bump of federal largesse with $118 million for “aviation turbine fuel” out of the Corpus refinery.

* Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney Military Engines bagged another $6-million contract for continued “maintenance, logistics and engineering supplies and services” performed in San Antonio for F-16A and F-16B engine parts.

* Decypher Technologies, Ltd, P3S Corp., and SpecPro Technical Services, each took a $93-mil contract for hyper-technical gobbledygook, ie. “administrative and functional support, medical and biomedical research assistance, clinical and clinical hyperbaric medicine services, environmental bio-terrorism support, technology evaluation and research studies support services to Brooks City-Base and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base units.”

* Three percent of an $8-mil Lockheed Martin project expected to showcase the possibilities that dedicated space for conducting “cyber security experiments” is also coming to San Antonio.


Remember, war is today’s growth industry. It’s the one front Obama’s new fiscal conservatism won’t touch — unless its something-less-than-surgical drone strikes we're talking about.

Court watch: Supremes (lite) to decide if children can prostitute

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

Sixteen-year-old Angela was said to be a “case study” in the difficulty domestic human trafficking victims represent to law enforcement.

Though first forced into prostitution at age 11, it would be several years before local police would discover her. But instead of being rescued as a child victim, she was placed into the juvenile system in 2008 on a theft charge after a man accused her of stealing his wallet and pants. Only after first prosecuting her as a criminal — due in part, they said, to her uncooperativeness — did law enforcement recognize her as a child victim. Some months later her full story came out.

County officials said last summer that ‘Angela,’ diagnosed with hepatitis and HIV, was finally in a “safe place” getting counseling and medical attention.

Some would like to see child victims jump straight to the help line, and a decision pending with the Texas Supreme Court could move things strongly in that direction, according to Dottie Laster, a New Braunfels-based advocate fighting against human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children.

The case involves a girl identified as B.W., taken from her mother at age 11 and placed with Child Protective Services. After running away from CPS, she was picked up by Houston Police Department officers two years later after they observed her trying to sell herself on the street. She was booked on charges of prostitution. Later, after her age of 13 became known, she was placed in the juvenile system and charged with delinquency for committing prostitution instead of returning her to CPS.

Attorney Ann Johnson (left) argued that the child should have never been put on the “prosecutorial train.” That state law holds that children under the age of 14 cannot consent to sex. Period.

“Despite their discovery that one of the passengers on that train was a 13-year-old, mentally deficient child with undeniable evidence of sexual exploitation no one to this day has pulled the emergency stop cord to say, ‘Wait. We’re supposed to be handling this issue differently’” Johnson said.

When Harris County Assistant DA Dan McCrory (right, below) stumbled in his defense of the prosecution of B.W., Justice Harriet O’Neill asked, “Why in the world would a prosecutor want to put her through the criminal, sort-of quasi-criminal system?”

“We already know what happened to this juvenile when she was in the custody of CPS,  she was on the street being a prostitute,” McCrory responded.

You can tune watch the point-counterpoint yourself.

Interestingly, Johnson further alleged the police didn’t make any attempt to track down and interview the 32-year-old man B.W. identified as her “boyfriend” — a violation of B.W.'s due process under the U.S. Constitution, she said.

Laster disputes Harris County’s assertion that it is necessary to place children like B.W. in the juvenile justice system was for their own protection.

“You can protect a child when they’re in danger without charging them with a crime,” Laster said, adding that the outcome in the case could transform how state law enforcement responds to child victims.

“I believe if they rule to protect the victim that it could greatly change the way juveniles are protected in Texas; if they rule to punish the victim, it could set us back years and cause harm to many more juveniles, or minors, children. However you want to say it, I still look at them as children.”

And if Texas judges find their way to the federal mindset, they will discover that “any child in commercial sex is considered a victim of trafficking,” Laster said.

Of course, this is Texas. Worse. This is Houston, Texas, we're talking about.

The city was pegged last year as the national hub in child trafficking. Judging from the position of the DA's office, reform there — despite the training that Laster, now working with MillionKids.org and running her own consulting group, has given many of its law-enforcement officers — may come most grudgingly.

Prepondering the evidence: Judge rules in CPS-NRG nuke nonsense

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

The conference call held this morning could by no stretch of the most twisted Manga creator’s imagination be considered alt-weekly friendly. Some of us were deep beneath a pile of second-hand blankets and renegade felines — not hip for hangovers, but weird enough to imagine we were in chrysalis —when NRG Energy’s 8:00 am (Eastern) phoner came and went.

Fortunately, the various newes and muses were harder to contain than a barrel of nuclear monkeys.

As I suspected, NRG CEO David Crane’s “forward-looking” statements made by dawn’s early light were quickly eclipsed by San Anto’s master of the 408th District Court, the merrily rhyming Judge Larry Noll.

In Solomoniacal wisdom, Noll ruled that SA-owned CPS Energy can split with partner NRG without losing those millions of freshly scrubbed Benjamins. Or not all of them, anyway. (If you need the backstory on CPS and all its hurt feelings, eject now!)

To date, CPS has spent about $350 million on the planned expansion of the South Texas Project nuclear project. Noll said that while the contract between the two does not define what should happen if the parties split, CPS should be compensated if it drops out. “The Supplemental Contract does not equate cessation of participation in the project as an event of default,” he wrote.

However, channeling his inner Johnnie Cochran, Noll added a “Word of Caution” to the City — that CPS would have to keep paying into the project if it wanted to remain a 50-percent partner. “If you want to be in the Play, you have to pay or you can’t stay,” he wrote. “You will eventually lose your equity share.”

So negotiations must resume as to what CPS should receive for backing out at the last minute (in this case, the “last minute” being defined as the minute after City Hall and area ratepayers first learned that CPS promises all last summer related to the ultimate cost of the project may have been “rounded down” by $4 billion.)

Still, Crane’s call-in was useful. We received multiple emails from those whose yogic powers and/or sedatives were more powerful and/or less obliterating than our own.

One interesting slide being tentatively titled by some, “Fuck All This”...



So, like (paraphrasing here):

Scenario A: Fuck with us and we’re out;

Scenario B: See Scenario A.

[Of course, President Obama, eager to reboot his relationship with a non-majority Senate by reining in spending wants to loose gazillions of dollars in new nuke loan guarantees. As a fiscal conservative move, that's for doctoral-candidate news analysts to make sense of, knowing  the GAO estimates that about half of those loans will never be paid back.]

Meanwhile, back at the headquarters of Karen Seal, attorney for the tossed together Ratepayers Sumthin-Sumthin for Destroying All Vestiges of Corruption That Remain Coalition, the mood was moderate to light.

“I think we all felt that a lot of information wasn’t getting out,” said Seal. “Every time NRG would try to bring something in, CPS would object and the judge would dismiss it.”

By being joined to the suit, Seal sits on a wealth of information about CPS’s practices pre-Reformation. “It shows that CPS was very, very deceitful to the people of San Antonio. They need, from the bottom up, to get rid of these people. To me, they’re criminal and under normal circumstances they would have been gone.”

Wading out of her secret dirty document stream, Seal advocates the creation of an oversight committee that would be able to sit in on all CPS and CPS Board of Trustee meetings and report back to the City Council. “This is nonsense,” Seal said.

We’re not calling CPS’s huffy interim GM Jelynne LeBlanc Burley, because, you know, she denied us an interview last round anyway, and, you know, it is 5 pm on a Friday. And, besides, nonsense is something we at the Current are intimately acquainted with.

What do you think the alt-weekly writing life is all about? Hounding power suits? I don’t think so.

TCEQ, ‘lapdog of industry,’ says ‘no need for alarm’ over toxics

Greg Harman
gharman@sacurrent.com

I’m not sure why the protesting rockers up in Cowtown honed in on trees like they did. I mean, I like to hug a tree as much as the next brainwashed lover of all things verdant and life-sustaining (you rascals!), but in the miasma of potential problems that natural gas drilling in North Texas could create — drinking water spoilage, toxic air emissions, earthquakes, and the possibility of increased cancer rates — I would have chosen a different tune to spoof than Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”

Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — currently defending themselves against charges of operating under regulatory cover as a “lapdog for polluters” — “rushed” to Fort Worth this summer to investigate growing public fears of toxic air emissions from an explosion of gas-well drilling that began several years back.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram writer Mike Lee reported that one in five sites explored by the TCEQ were found to be emitting high levels of cancer-causing benzene.



No fines are expected to be issued related to the pollution. In fact, TCEQ employees went into damage control on behalf of industry. The head of toxicology, told the Los Angeles Times, “there is no cause for [watch the qualifier!] widespread alarm.”

It was suggested that bad publicity was punishment enough.



So, as San Antonio considers the natural-gas-plus-alternatives energy path forward, and I catch up on developments up north, I’m not getting where “Tree Fellin’” comes into the picture. Oh, make no mistake, I celebrate rabble-rousers in all their denimy shapes, but maybe “Don’t Come Around Here No More” would of sent a stronger message.

Or, in the interests of keeping things local to the Fort, throw some Toadies up in that motherfracker (h/t mr. maas) with a reworked “I Come From the Water.”


It could go something like …

I come for the water / 
I woke with the earthquake zones
 / I left my TV home / I got my friends to save / 
I sucked that benzene in
 / And rolled upon the sand / 
And burned beneath the flares / 
Is this human?
 / I come for the water



You know, if’n you should rock some new protest vids in the future.

Go Charlie go

By Enrique Lopetegui
elopetegui@sacurrent.com

Congressman Charlie González wasn’t there, but 38 local MoveOn supporters were. On January 26, the activists gathered outside of the Federal Building downtown (where González keeps an office), to thank the Congressman for supporting the public health-care option and to pressure him into not giving an inch, especially after the Democrats’ embarrassing loss in Massachusetts.

The House could vote for the Senate Bill as it stands, with no changes, but (according to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi) there are not enough votes yet. The Senate is going to have to change its bill to make it more palatable to the House, and then the House would vote on it and, proponents hope, the bill would pass.

“The Senate bill does not include a public option, and we would like to see one,” said MoveOn’s Angie Drake. “Republicans say that [Democrats] lost the Massachusetts election because we’re going ‘too fast too soon,’ but it is precisely the opposite: People who supported Obama with $5 and $10 donations are the ones who didn’t go to the polls because they’re so frustrated we’re not doing it fast enough. Democrats need to start passing a progressive agenda, so that we’re willing to show up at the polls again in November.”

Activist Vivian Weinstein urged González to ratify his early support for the public option, and praised him for his performance at a town hall meeting at the Edgewood Independent School District’s Theatre of Performing Arts in August 2009.

“Nobody shouted him down,” Weinstein said about that town hall meeting, alluding to the dozens of conservative opponents to health-care reform that were skillfully handled by González. “Charlie has stood up all the way through this fight, and we need him to go and talk to other Congressmen who are unsure or backing away.”

But Jennifer Noyes stole the show.
 


According to the statement she read, she was diagnosed with type-one diabetes at age 10; developed severe allergies, asthma, and anemia at 11; at 16, thyroid disease (undiagnosed until age 25) and Crohn’s Disease; and osteoporosis at 22. She managed to earn a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Trinity, but says she can’t find work because no one will insure her.

“In 2007, for example, I grossed about $25,000,” she read, but she “spent $11,670 out of my own pocket [her emphasis] on medical care, and that was with a quote ‘good’ major medical plan.” She says she didn’t become homeless because she lived with her grandmother.

“I was recently offered a job that paid $16 an hour, but I had to turn it down because the health insurance was so bad that even had I spent every dime of that $16 on health care, I still would have been on the hole at the end of the year,” she read. “So now I am looking for minimum-wage jobs that offer good health insurance, just to keep myself alive. I’m sick and tired of hearing that only lazy, uneducated people get screwed by the current system. I have a master’s degree, and have worked hard my whole life. I don’t want a free handout, but I do want some fairness and some justice. I’m OK with being screwed by fate and having these illnesses. I’m not OK with the fact that I cannot go back to school because student insurance plans are so bad. I’m not OK with the fact that in a country where people say you can do anything, I cannot own my own business because there is not a single health insurance company in this country that will insure me …”

Stephanie S. Smith, special projects manager for González, came down to greet the crowd and invited small groups of them upstairs to sign the guest book and do a mini-tour of the Congressman’s office. There is a pair of boxing gloves on his desk, perhaps symbolizing his commitment to fight for real health-care reform.



“San Antonians know that health-care reform is too important to throw away,” the Congressman said in the statement sent to the QueBlog after the demonstration. “I have heard their concerns loud and clear, which is why I have worked tirelessly with many of my colleagues on possible solutions while others have simply opposed those efforts without offering any viable alternatives. San Antonians said [yesterday] that enough is enough, and I stand with them.  American families deserve better."