TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalBig Surprise: Texas GOP won't let Log Cabin come to the party
As Gomer Pyle would have said: Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!
I guess I should have already posted a blog pointing out that the Texas Republican Party has — once again — voted NOT to allow the Log Cabin Republicans to have a booth at the state convention.
But since it’s happened the same way every time for the last 20 years, I guess I am just surprised that anybody might have expected a different outcome.
Michael Baker, chair of LCR’s Texas state chapter, told the Austin American- Statesman: “Nothing happens overnight. I’d hoped by 2018 we could have been a lot further than we are, but here we are.”
Read more: https://www.dallasvoice.com/252180-10252180.html
State's Teen Pregnancy Booklet Riddled With Anti-Choice Propaganda
If pregnant teenagers in Texas are hoping to get the facts about their abortion rights from the state, they’re out of luck. A new version of the little-known pamphlet “So, You’re Pregnant, Now What?” is rife with factual errors, inflammatory language, and anti-abortion bias.
Per statute, the Texas Department of State Health Services booklet is meant to educate teens on judicial bypass – the process by which minors can forgo parental consent and obtain permission for abortion through a judge. The material is also required to provide information relating to alternatives to abortion and health risks associated with the procedure. While an earlier version was mildly problematic, a revised edition – to be finalized in the coming weeks – is blatantly designed to mislead pregnant minors and shame those seeking abortion care.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ state chapter, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, Jane’s Due Process, and the Texas House Women’s Health Caucus are among the organizations that have sent concerned letters to the health department pointing out the slew of ideologically motivated errors.
The booklet (read it here) overstates the hazards of abortion, citing death as the first risk, despite the fact that pregnancy is statistically up to 14 times more dangerous than abortion care. (Death is merely the final bullet point in the risks associated with giving birth, and it even includes a caveat allaying readers with its rarity.) It also misleads on the mental health complications post-abortion, overemphasizing thoughts of suicide and depression, a theory wholly debunked by scientific research, and links abortion to lack of fertility and breast cancer, again discredited by leading medical organizations including the National Cancer Institute. If those glaring inaccuracies weren’t enough: Instead of using actual medical terminology, the revised booklet opts to manipulate pregnant teens’ vulnerable emotions by referring to the fetus or embryo as “your baby,” uses “mother” instead of “woman,” and visually depicts the stages of gestation. And according to ACOG, the overall description for medical abortion is inaccurate and reflects outdated FDA guidelines.
Read more: https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2018-04-19/states-teen-pregnancy-booklet-riddled-with-anti-choice-propaganda/
Is Alex Jones's Empire In Trouble?
In 2009, Alex Jones was doing pretty well. He was earning something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million a year peddling conspiracy theories about 9/11, vaccines, and the New World Order. Nine years later, his entire business model is transformed: These days, according to estimates from New York magazine (and based on some rough math), he could be pulling in as much as $25 million. Infowars, the website Jones founded to promote his media empire, doesn’t focus on selling subscriptions to his videos or DVD copies of the documentary films he used to make anymore. Rather, its business is marketing dubiously useful dietary supplements to an audience that has ballooned in size as Jones’s profile has increased.
Jones’s stature grew during the Obama years, as the number of “patriot” groups spiked and a certain subset of Americans, looking to make sense of the world, turned to theories like “Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery,” which Jones was keen to spout. In Obama’s second term, Jones began marketing products like “Super Male Vitality” (a combination of roots, bark, and fruit extract) and “Survival Shield X-2” (just simple iodine) to his listeners and viewers. It seems a fairly logical jump for the host and his audience: If there’s a super-secret “them” out there waging war on your mind and turning the frogs gay, then you’ll need products like “Brain Force Plus” and “Secret 12” to protect you. Selling those products is insanely profitable—as anyone in media can tell you, monetizing subscribers to a website at $5.95 a month is a challenge, while selling iodine as Survival Shield X-2 for $29.95 an ounce (a 500 percent markup over the same product, without the dramatic name, which is available on Amazon) seems to be like printing money.
And so Jones has been flying high—indeed, to unprecedented heights—over the past few years. He’s making big money, reaching more people than he would have ever dreamed in his Austin public access days, and has had the ear of the president of the United States (even if, this week, he seems to feel betrayed by him). Last year, he even managed to escape the most severe consequences of a high-profile custody trial, with the judge effectively overruling a jury’s decision to grant Jones’s ex-wife their children’s primary residence.
But lately, there’ve been rumblings that Jones’s run of success may be encountering some real trouble.
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/is-alex-jones-empire-in-trouble/
Democrat leads the pack in fundraising for retiring GOP Rep. Joe Barton's seat
WASHINGTON -- National Democrats aren’t targeting retiring GOP Rep. Joe Barton’s Arlington-area congressional district — but a Democrat is raising more money than both of the Republicans in the race.
Public relations specialist Jana Lynne Sanchez says she’s brought in more than $250,000 for the race, including $104,000 in the first three months of 2018. Sanchez reported $56,000 on hand as of March 31 as she heads into a May primary runoff against Ruby Woolridge.
The leading Republican fundraiser, Jake Ellzey, brought in about $96,000 in the first quarter of 2018. He’s raised a total of $196,000 for the race, and reported just under $25,000 on hand as of March 31.
-snip-
Democrats haven’t held the seat in more than three decades, since Republican Phil Gramm changed parties in 1983. President Donald Trump carried the district by 12 percentage points in 2016, while Barton won by 25.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article209252924.html
Hawley raises far less than McCaskill despite Trump's help
WASHINGTON -- Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is the only Senate candidate President Donald Trump has helped with fundraising, but Hawley still only managed to raise less than half the amount collected by the Democrat he hopes to unseat, Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Hawley reported raising $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2018, according to paperwork his campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission. That total includes $1.29 million in contributions plus $206,220 transferred from the Trump fundraiser and other authorized committees in March.
McCaskill raised $3.9 million during the same time period.
Hawley has $2.12 million in the bank, compared to McCaskill’s $11.5 million.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article209320044.html
America's nuclear headache: old plutonium with nowhere to go
AMARILLO, Texas (Reuters) - In a sprawling plant near Amarillo, Texas, rows of workers perform by hand one of the most dangerous jobs in American industry. Contract workers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pantex facility gingerly remove the plutonium cores from retired nuclear warheads.
Although many safety rules are in place, a slip of the hand could mean disaster.
In Energy Department facilities around the country, there are 54 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Pantex, the plant near Amarillo, holds so much plutonium that it has exceeded the 20,000 cores, called “pits,” regulations allow it to hold in its temporary storage facility. There are enough cores there to cause thousands of megatons of nuclear explosions. More are added each day.
The delicate, potentially deadly dismantling of nuclear warheads at Pantex, while little noticed, has grown increasingly urgent to keep the United States from exceeding a limit of 1,550 warheads permitted under a 2010 treaty with Russia. The United States wants to dismantle older warheads so that it can substitute some of them with newer, more lethal weapons. Russia, too, is building new, dangerous weapons.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nukes-plutonium-specialreport/americas-nuclear-headache-old-plutonium-with-nowhere-to-go-idUSKBN1HR1KC
Ex-Liberian warlord living in Pennsylvania sentenced to 30 years for immigration fraud
April 22 (UPI) -- A former Liberian warlord who had been living in Pennsylvania for two decades was sentenced to 30 years in prison for lying to immigration officials about his brutal past.
Mohammed Jabbateh, 51, had been running a international shipping business while living in a Philadelphia suburb since the 1990s. But before he claimed refugee asylum in the United States in December 1998, Jabbateh was known in Liberia as "Jungle Jabbah," a commander of armed groups during that country's first civil war between 1989 and 1996.
During that tine, Jabbateh ordered civilians to be murdered, raped, tortured and enslaved. During his trial last year, victims told their stories, including a woman who was forced into sex slavery at 13. Another woman said Jabbateh and his men murdered her husband and then forced her to cook her dead spouse's heart and serve it to them.
"This defendant committed acts of such violence and depravity that they are almost beyond belief," said U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain in a statement. "This man is responsible for atrocities that will ripple for generations in Liberia. He thought he could hide here but thanks to the determination and creativity of our prosecutors and investigators, he couldn't. This prosecution was our only option under the law and his sentence achieves at least some measure of justice for his victims."
Read more: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/04/22/Ex-Liberian-warlord-living-in-Pa-sentenced-to-30-years-for-immigration-fraud/5791524442285/
Legislators Push To Send $100 Million To Kauai For Flood Damage
Hawaii legislators are rushing to send $100 million to rain-soaked Kauai and make $25 million available statewide for damage caused by last weekend’s deluge.
The Kauai money would be used to reopen roads that landslides closed, rebuild demolished park facilities and help families and businesses reeling from a storm that dropped 27 inches of rain in 24 hours.
Senate Ways and Means Chair Donovan Dela Cruz, House Finance Chair Sylvia Luke and other leading lawmakers came up with a plan to provide $125 million to address the flood damage through an amended version of Senate Bill 192 that a joint conference committee passed Wednesday.
“We’re making an unusual effort in extraordinary circumstances,” Luke said before the unanimous vote in support.
Read more: http://www.civilbeat.org/2018/04/legislators-push-to-send-100-million-to-kauai-for-flood-damage/
How Will Honolulu Pay To Run Rail Once It's Built? The City Still Doesn't Know
Honolulu’s City Council leaders are struggling with how to cover millions of dollars in new rail construction costs so they can appease the Federal Transit Administration. They’ve proposed squeezing that money into next year’s city operations budget, which is already stretched thin.
But that challenge raises a bigger question — one that locals have asked for years. How does the city intend to pay for rail once the trains start running?
The city’s leaders still don’t know the answer.
“We have to face the fact that these costs are going to be there,” Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi said Wednesday at a Budget Committee meeting. “We’ve got to be realistic. We’ve got to face what’s out there, and we have to take the responsibility and prepare for it.”
Read more: http://www.civilbeat.org/2018/04/how-will-honolulu-pay-for-rail-once-its-built-the-city-still-doesnt-know/
Lawmakers finalize negotiations on state budget bill
House and Senate conferees on Friday approved a final version of the state budget bill, which includes operating and capital improvement monies to run the state government.
HB1900 HD1 SD1 puts a priority on appropriating funds for critical health and human service needs that will benefit residents statewide, a press release issued Friday afternoon by the Legislature said. The bill goes before the Legislature this week for a vote. If approved, it will then be sent to the governor for his signature.
House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke said the budget provides $15 million to fund homeless services, $3 million more than requested by Gov. David Ige, to allow the state the flexibility needed to take decisive action and systematically address long-standing problems in the community.
“Instead of dividing various amounts for separate programs, the state Homeless Programs Office needs the flexibility to decide where best to use the money. The state cannot be rigid, especially with our homeless population. It must be able to move funds around to take care of circumstances as they come up,” said Luke (D-Oahu).
Read more: http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/2018/04/22/hawaii-news/lawmakers-finalize-negotiations-on-state-budget-bill/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
Number of posts: 112,565
