TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalI don't know whether to laugh or cry...
...it looks like Perry was at the thrift store.
Corpus Christi cancels firefighters' contract
CORPUS CHRISTI - City officials are tired of stalled negotiations with the firefighters' union continuing indefinitely with no signs of progress, so they've take a drastic step to move the process forward.
City Council approved a resolution Tuesday to cancel the collective bargaining agreement between the city and its 414 employees covered by the contract.
"I'm hopeful that the fire union and their negotiation team will want to come forward and have a conversation and get back to the negotiation table," Mayor Nelda Martinez said. "We're not at the negotiation table now — we're in the courts."
Carlos Torres, president of the Corpus Christi Professional Firefighters Association, told the Caller-Times on Tuesday night he had yet to be told by a city official the contract had been canceled.
Read more: http://www.caller.com/news/local-news/corpus-christi-cancels-firefighters-contract_31774473
Cross-posted in the Texas Group.
Corpus Christi cancels firefighters' contract
CORPUS CHRISTI - City officials are tired of stalled negotiations with the firefighters' union continuing indefinitely with no signs of progress, so they've take a drastic step to move the process forward.
City Council approved a resolution Tuesday to cancel the collective bargaining agreement between the city and its 414 employees covered by the contract.
"I'm hopeful that the fire union and their negotiation team will want to come forward and have a conversation and get back to the negotiation table," Mayor Nelda Martinez said. "We're not at the negotiation table now — we're in the courts."
Carlos Torres, president of the Corpus Christi Professional Firefighters Association, told the Caller-Times on Tuesday night he had yet to be told by a city official the contract had been canceled.
Read more: http://www.caller.com/news/local-news/corpus-christi-cancels-firefighters-contract_31774473
Cross-posted in the Labor Movement Group.
Brantly: Ebola battle far from over
FORT WORTH — The nation’s attention has shifted away from the lethal Ebola virus because there are no active cases in the U.S., survivor Dr. Kent Brantly said Tuesday, but he urged the American public to remember that the fight still rages in West Africa.
“We need to be careful that our sense of compassion is not replaced by indifference,” Brantly said in response to questions after he was awarded a proclamation at a packed Tarrant County Comissioners Court meeting, where he received two standing ovations.
Brantly, 33, who did his residency at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, became the first U.S. face of Ebola after he contracted the disease in July while serving as a missionary physician in West Africa. He was airlifted to Emory University Hospital and survived, but he said it was a close call.
“Thursday, the 31st of July, I almost died,” he said Tuesday. “And my doctors thought I was about to die, my caretakers in the room thought I was about to die, and they sent out the word asking everyone to pray for me. And that was the night I received ZMapp, the experimental drug, and I had a very dramatic response to that drug and to that course of prayer that was being lifted up for me around the world.”
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/12/09/6352947/brantly-ebola-battle-far-from.html
RW Strategy: "Making Themselves Look Good To The Heritage Action/Purity-For-Profit Crowd" (NSFW)
Will Boehner & McConnell allow Cruz & King to set the GOP immigration agenda-- no matter what the cost?
Ted Cruz has a vision: President Ted Cruz, the first U.S. President born in another country. From a family of Cuban fascists who found Texas compatible with their authoritarian ideology, Cruz is eager to implement a plan to force Obama to rescind his executive action delaying the deportation of Hispanic and Asian immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens. Right wing propaganda writer Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, a Republican weekly owned by fascist Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, explained Cruz's seemly demented strategy in his column Friday.
York delves into the question of why Republicans want to fight Obama now while Democrats still control the Senate instead of waiting a few weeks when the GOP has a 54-seat majority and can start passing all the deranged legislation that comes out of the House. "When Republicans, or conservatives, or anyone else," he wrote, "announce what they think Mitch McConnell and John Boehner should do in the next few weeks, they should remember that right now Republicans have the same strength and numbers they had in October 2013, when they lost the government shutdown fight." He notes that the extremists, led by Cruz, have nearly as little trust in McConnell and Boehner to force Obama's hand as they do in Reid and Pelosi.
Cruz advocates action now, he says, because GOP leaders can't be trusted to fight on immigration next year. "Even with a Republican House and Senate, the same folks who are saying 'Gosh, we can't do anything now' in January are going to say 'Gosh, we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate,' " Cruz continued. "It's like Charlie Brown and Lucy."
See more at: http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2014/12/right-wing-strategy-making-themselves.html
100s Of Conservative Fans Call For Nugent/Palin 2016 Ticket On Facebook
Controversial rocker and conservative hero Ted Nugent posted a picture of he and his wife, Shemane, standing with Sarah and Todd Palin on his Facebook page. The caption read: “Had a wonderful day with Sarah & Todd Palin at our home on SpiritWild Ranch in TX today. Great Americans, great people, great patriots & great warriors on the side of good in this vile culture war against the America haters & subfleebs on the mongrel left.”
Within 1/2 an hour of posting, at least 300 people commented and many were pleading for a Nugent/Palin 2016 ticket. There were all kinds of comments from fans and here is a sampling from some who weren’t asking them to run:
Jeff: She {Palin} has nice boobs.
John: shoulda invited the obamas too, as targets !
Read more: http://samuel-warde.com/2014/12/conservatives-nugent-palin-ticket-fb/
South Texas Project nuclear plant tests response time to terrorist attack
Suppose heavily armed gunmen break into the main office at the largest nuclear power plant in the state.
A second wave of gunmen attempt to breach the protected area of the plant with explosives while a gunman on an all-terrain vehicle launches a third attack on the 12,200-acre nuclear facility.
Federal, state and local officials were tested on their ability to react to this fictitious scenario last month at the South Texas Project nuclear facility near Bay City. Officials met last week to discuss initial feedback on the drill.
This is the first time the South Texas facility has been evaluated on a Hostile Action Based Emergency Preparedness Drill, a scenario involving violent force to destroy equipment, take hostages or take control of a nuclear power plant, STP spokesman Buddy Eller said. Regulations out of the 9/11 terrorist attack require nuclear facilities to be evaluated on a terroristic scenario every eight years.
Read more: https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2014/dec/07/nuclear-plant-tests-response-to-terrorist-attack/
Karnes County Considers its Future in the Family Detention Business
On Thursday afternoon, the Karnes County Commissioners Court, which normally meets before a handful of citizens, moved its meeting to an overflow room. The meeting was unusually well-attended because the county’s residents need to decide—and decide fast—whether their county will be home to one of the nation’s largest family detention centers.
Karnes City, an hour southeast of San Antonio, already hosts the Karnes County Residential Center, an immigrant detention facility run by the private prison corporation GEO Group, Inc., with a capacity of 532 beds. Until July, the detention center was an all-male facility, but after this summer’s influx of asylum-seeking Central American women and children at the border, it’s been converted into a detention center for families. In the next year, GEO wants to expand the facility to more than 1,100 beds.
Karnes County has a population of just 15,081 people. For decades, its residents have eked out a living with dry-land farming or work at the county’s two prisons. GEO Group acquired the Karnes facility in the late 90s. At the time, county leaders were desperate for the jobs. But now Karnes is at the center of the Eagle Ford Shale play, and a booming fracking economy that’s made millionaires of local landowners. These days, a resident can make $100,000 a year working in the oil fields. Suddenly Karnes County isn’t so desperate for jobs; that makes the Karnes facility expansion, from 532 to more than 1,100 beds, a harder sell for GEO Group.
But this isn’t GEO’s first rodeo. GEO Group is a multi-billion dollar global corporation publicly traded on the stock market. In the glossy prospectus it provides shareholders, the company refers to the inmates it houses as “clients.” At the community forum Thursday, dozens of local residents in white GEO polo shirts with GEO badges hanging from their necks filed into the overflow room. County Judge William Long, who repeatedly reminded the room he’d only been judge for two weeks, seemed flustered as the room filled to capacity. Outside the courthouse annex, Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva had stationed extra deputies. The previous meeting on the expansion had been heated, with people outside protesting against family detention.
Read more: http://www.texasobserver.org/karnes-county-considers-future-in-family-detention/
Pat Buchanan: Body Cameras ‘Libel And Slander’ America
Speaking to J.D. Hayworth on Newsmax TV, Pat Buchanan said forcing use of body cameras is like blaming white cops for being instigators, when it’s the people they confront who are.
And so for him, body cameras are the government’s way of saying cops are to blame for “lethal violence.” Buchanan said, “That is a libel and a slander on America, and a libel and a slander on police.”
http://www.alan.com/2014/12/08/pat-buchanan-body-cameras-libel-and-slander-america/
Louisiana Governor Jindal To Hold Prayer Revival
And that can mean only one thing: Bobby Jindal is running for president.
In a “heartfelt message” announcing the rally, Jindal calls on the nation to “turn back to God” and “light the spark that starts a spiritual revival that will put these United States of America back in the right path.”
http://www.alan.com/2014/12/08/louisiana-governor-jindal-to-hold-prayer-revival/
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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: 112,140
