Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Interview with Joe Danna for Sherriff

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Joe Danna was kind enough to agree to be interviewed regarding his race for Sherriff.  Running against an incumbent Democrat in this election cycle is a difficult proposition, and he is to be commended for taking the time, effort, and expense of this uphill battle.  This interview focused on what his vision for the Sherriff’s office looks like, and how will he differ from the current incumbent.

He indicated that his priorities are taking politics out of the office, filling budgeted but unfilled positions within the office, and making sure the bad officers are identified and removed from the office.  He believes these steps will lead to better community relations and better service to the public.  To understand how all of this impacts law enforcement and the Sherriff’s office it’s best to start with an overview of the overall political climate.

It’s been discussed ad nauseam, but we live in a time where we have a soft on crime District Attorney, and criminal court judges are criminal friendly.  Criminals don’t fear committing crime, and he pointed out how this has the effect of having criminals from outside the county coming into Harris County to commit crime since the criminal justice system has become so criminal friendly.  It’s a deliberate calculation – crime is a safer proposition in Harris County than in the surrounding counties so they come here to commit crime.  Not only does this create a greater danger to the citizens of the county, but it also demoralizes law enforcement especially in the overall context of the Democratic party’s hostility towards law enforcement in general.  This, in turn, has lead to negative public safety and public service impacts.  He noted that the average response time for a hit and run, which if injuries are involved is at least a state jail felony, is four hours.

To address these concerns he has a plan to take politics out of the office and to fundamentally change the organizational structure to improve functioning of the office.  The organizational structure would change to where five individuals in the office would answer to him directly; they would have five individuals answer to them, and so on.  This decentralizes the power at the top of the organizational chart, and improves communication by eliminating bottlenecks with communication.  This also leaves a clearer picture of where responsibilities lie and how to address issues that arise.  From a decision making standpoint he wants to make decisions from a good of the Sherriff’s office prism with the belief that a happy functioning department will be better able to serve the public.

He was concerned about the various efforts to centralize power and staffing of the Sherriff’s office.  Adrian Garcia has proposed a plan that would have eliminated the Constable contract program and assumed it under the Sherriff’s office.  He believes this is a bad idea.  Although the idea was withdrawn by Commissioner Garcia the intent was clear – centralize the program under the Sherriff’s office.  This plan is especially concerning since the office is understaffed.  He noted that right now 101 budgeted and approved positions are vacant.  The failure to fill these positions seems like an under the table way to defund the office, and with Commissioner Garcia’s attempt to divert the Constable contract program to the Sherriff’s office this seems like a coordinated effort to decrease law enforcement effectiveness and weaken law enforcement’s capabilities to address crime.

The last area we covered is how his office could better enhance public safety if he is elected. In addition to filling the 101 positions noted above, he felt it was important to build better to build community relationships. He said this starts by making sure HCSO treats everyone equally regardless of race, gender, ideology, or the number of contacts they have had with law enforcement.  Each contact is a new contact and everyone in the county is on equal footing when they reach out to the Sherriff’s office for assistance.  Building community relationships is important because he noted that people tend to not get involved unless they are a victim, and cited Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Texas Equasearch as examples.  Building community relationships takes time, especially in this current political climate, and in the meantime he felt that immediate actions he could take are reallocating resources to areas of need – human trafficking only has three people assigned to the division – and to accept calls and investigate crimes that Houston Police Department is unable to investigate since the Sherriff’s office has jurisdiction county wide.  He also noted a willingness to actively identify and remove bad officers whether it’s 0.001% or 10% of the force.

The overall impression he left was that he would change the focus of the office.  Rather than politically oriented he would be office and public safety oriented.  Reallocation of resources to meet the current needs of public safety and filling the 101 available and funded positions alone would help to increase public safety.  The willingness to remove bad officers, and desire to treat each call and every individual on a clean slate every call should give comfort to the entire community.  The willingness to investigate crimes the Houston Police Department is unable to allocate resources to investigate will help to make sure everyone can receive assistance if they reach out for help.  All of this is especially important in our current political climate where criminals feel that it is safer to come to Harris County to engage in criminal behavior than to conduct crime in their own areas.

He is endorsed by: Mike Knox, The “C” Club of Houston, Texas Homeschool Coalition, J.L. Trahan (BIZPAC.US Executive Chariman), Representative Briscoe Cain, Michael Berry

Interview with Ted Heap

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Ted Heap was kind enough to agree to be interviewed regarding his race for reelection as Constable for Precinct Five.  He was initially elected in 2016, and is one of the rare Republicans up for reelection. The success he has had in his first term supports his reelection.  While the interview cannot cover all aspects of his term in office he presented as exceptionally intelligent and well versed in policy and how his office can best serve the public.  He also came across as humble and having a servant’s heart noting at one point that the position is one of service and that a good law enforcement officer is a true public servant.  This interview focused on what the role of the Constable’s office is, and how the office has been able to successfully serve the public.

Precinct 5 is an unusual precinct in that it is extremely populated, and is a near even mix of city and county areas.  Although the county is broken up into 8 different Constable areas precinct five has a whopping 1.2 million people in the precinct.  This is in a county where the population estimated at 4.7 million by the Census Bureau, meaning this office handles approximately 25% of the county population.  Despite this, the average response time for a non-emergency call to the Constable’s office is 3 minutes 30 seconds, and the average response time for an emergency call is 2 minutes 50 seconds.

The constables are the primary agency to serve process in litigation, and to execute writs.  He noted the Constable’s office was originally legislatively enacted in the 1800s to, “keep the peace and squelch riots.” In modern times the city is the primary law enforcement responsibility within their jurisdiction, and the Sherriff’s office is the primary responsibility in unincorporated areas leaving the Constable’s office as a supporting law enforcement agency, and they respond to approximately a quarter million service calls in the City of Houston and an additional quarter million service calls in unincorporated Harris County each year.

The Constable’s office is a legislative creation, but as with all county agency’s is at the whims of Commissioner’s Court for their budget.  When the Commissioner’s Court allocates the budgeted amount, the Constable is free to use it at their discretion.  This obviously is an area of concern with Commissioner Adrian Garcia proposing to eliminate the Constable contract program.  Heap noted that the contract for the Constable program is the exact same, to the penny, as the Harris County Sherriff’s Office contract program, and the same contracts are entered into with the County Attorney office.  Eliminating the program would only serve to decrease the law enforcement services available since the Sherriff’s office has primary law enforcement responsibility in the unincorporated areas of the county and the Constable’s office serves in a secondary roll and therefore has a greater ability and neighborhood connection already established.

Cooperation with other law enforcement agencies is important to Constable Heap.  His office reports statistics to both the city and the county, and he noted cooperation is high and they can access city information and exchange intelligence with Houston Police Department.  He also indicated this level of cooperation and technology sharing is new, having only started 3-4 years ago, and that more progress needs to be made in this area.

Constable Heap has made community relations a priority with his office. He stated, “We don’t answer a call and say show me your voter registration card.  We help everyone without consideration of their background and status.”  To further this goal, he has created a community outreach division, citizens police academy, teen police academy in Spring Branch and Katy ISD, and created a Hispanic, African American, Muslim, and Asian community liaison.  He also expressed support for Councilman Edward Pollard’s creation of the District J patrol noting that it fills in a gap in enforcement of city ordinances since his office does not have authority to enforce the ordinances.  

He believes that crime deterrence takes many things, but education, relationships, visibility, and quick response times are important.  The quick response times noted above allow the officer to secure a scene and preserve evidence and catch more suspects.  To increase visibility, he has all his investigators conduct investigations in uniform and in marked patrol cars.  His office will investigate property crime the city and county agencies do not or cannot investigate, and he has instructed his investigators to follow up with the victim on every case to see if they have more evidence or information than what was originally discovered.  Access and cooperation are important also.  He added a victim’s assistance office to the west side of Houston to make the office more accessible to other areas of the precinct.  He is working with the Mexican Consulate regarding their plans to move into Precinct Five.

All his efforts are having success.  His office just busted a three-year long theft ring where individuals were walking into Home Depot stores filling shopping carts, and walking out without payment.  In the bust they were able to recover $140,000 worth of merchandise and an additional $40,000 in cash.  This isn’t just a single example, when I told him of stores in Sharpstown where similar activity was occurring, he gave me the name of a specific person in his office to contact and asked me to pass on the information to the stores.

Although it doesn’t precisely fit in anywhere else in the article it’s noteworthy that his precinct has no fleet debt. 

Constable Heap has very quietly made remarkable strides for Precinct 5.  Whether it’s community relationship efforts, involvement with high risk students, breaking down technology sharing barriers with other law enforcement agencies, or the quick response times leading to criminal apprehension he has made remarkable strides for the precinct in his first term in office.  We are all better off for his dedication, and based on the merits of his performance he deserves another term in office.  He has the following endorsements that are important for law enforcement related races:

  • Houston Police Officers Union (HPOU)
  • Harris County Deputies Organization
  • Harris County Deputy Constables Association
  • National Constables and Marshals Association
  • Organization of Spanish Speaking Officers (OSSO)
  • Mexican American Sheriff’s Organization (MASO)
  • Houston Police Retired Officers Association
  • Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas (CLEAT)
  • Mexican American Bar Association of Houston (MABAH)
  • The Blues Police Magazine
  • Texas Humane Legislation Network
  • HRBC

Save Democracy. Vote in Person!

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leo vasquez
Leo Vasquez

By Leo Vasquez (@LV_HTX)

As the former official Voter Registrar for our county, I was asked by my elder colleagues at a monthly luncheon I recently attended whether they should vote in person or request absentee ballots to vote by mail. After the lunch, I regretted that I did not more emphatically urge them to vote in person.  The risks of voting by mail far outweigh the perceived protections it affords.  A vote cast by personal appearance not only supports the democratic election process and guarantees your vote will be counted, it also makes it easier for elections administrators to efficiently count your vote. By opting to mail in your ballot, especially in this 2020 election, not only do you risk your vote being rejected for any number of reasons (as highlighted, below), but you unnecessarily add fuel to a potential vote counting crisis.

This mania scaring our citizens into an unnecessary need to vote-by-mail is completely unreasoned. It is perplexing as to why political leaders and so many elections administrators are urging people to vote-by-mail. If not for seeing video clips of these officials actually making the statements, I would think it likely this must-vote-by-mail concept is being spread by foreign bots and trolls. And, putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment, my conspiracy theory is that the foreign influencers are, indeed, fueling the must-vote-by-mail nonsense via social media, essentially giving U.S. citizens the misimpression that they might lose their opportunity to vote if they do not vote by mail and that voting in person is a suicide-by-Coronavirus death sentence. Not since they dreamed up the buy-all-the-toilet-paper scheme have the Russian trolls seen such success. [Now removing my tinfoil hat.]

Even if you have the option of voting absentee by mailing in your ballot, if you care about a smooth election and results being accurately tabulated and quickly announced –meaning you care about maintaining the Democratic Process in the United States–  you should make every effort to cast your vote in person. If you are physically able to get yourself to a polling location either during your jurisdiction’s Early Voting period or on Election Day, please make that effort.

Safe & Easy In-Person Voting

Back when the Coronavirus was seemingly running rampant and unchecked early in the year, there may have been some basis for extra caution. Today, by contrast, the virus is very much in check across the country. We know how to treat it.  Most new cases are asymptomatic. We know the simple personal measures to take in order to virtually eliminate the chances of possibly catching the virus (i.e., wear a mask, wash your hands, socially distance). And elections administrators will take extra precautionary measures to protect the health of voters at the polls.

In the home of Houston, Texas, the Harris County Clerk (who currently serves as the county’s elections administrator) has taken extraordinary measures to ensure the health safety of voters in our nation’s third-most populous county: Those waiting in lines will be socially distanced. At check-in, there is a big plastic screen between voters and the masked-up poll workers. They give you a little, rubber fingertip cover to use when touching the electronic voting machines. The voting machines are spaced apart from each other. And, they give you a little wet wipe disinfectant packet to wipe down the voting machine. … The voting process is safer than going to a grocery store, the pharmacy, a restaurant, your place of worship, your place of work, or your local peaceful protest!

Leaders across the nation are taking steps to make voting in person easier. In Texas, for example, Governor Abbott has even expanded the Early Voting period to a full eighteen (18) days, October 13ththrough October 30th. Most days in Harris County the polls will be open 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and there will be at least one day during Early Voting where several polling locations will be open 24-hours! The old-school traditionalists among you can, of course, wait until the actual Election Day to cast your vote. All this is to say that a voter will have ample opportunity to vote in person and avoid long lines.

Counting (or Rejecting) the Ballots

Elections administrators and county clerks are not geared up to efficiently and effectively receive, process, and tabulate hundreds of thousands of ballots received by mail. It is a tedious, time-consuming, manual, and often highly-subjective process. If elections administrators strictly follow the letter of the law(s) for accepting mail-in ballots, significant percentages of these mailed-in ballots are sure to be rejected.

Mailed-in and absentee ballots need to be cross-checked against the original, signed voter registration application. A notable number of the signatures on the ballots will be obviously fraudulent and glaring mismatches, so those ballots will slow the review process and should be rejected.  Then there is the screening for the dotting of the I’s, the crossing of the T’s, and the checking of the boxes needing checking.  Again, per the letter of the law(s), ballots filled-out incorrectly should be rejected.  Further complications are compounded by late delivery with timely postmarks, late delivery with no postmark, spoiled/damaged ballots, tampered ballots, etc. Most of these mailed-in ballots will also be rejected. The accumulation of all these rejected ballots will inevitably cause calls for lawsuits across the country.

Bipartisan Alignment

America’s voting systems are not geared toward receiving vast quantities of ballots submitted by mail. Remember George Bailey calming his account holders and saving his Bailey Building & Loan bank in Frank Capra’s Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life? If all of his account holders (read: registered voters) had all at once demanded their cash (aka, ballot-by-mail), his bank would have collapsed. That is not the way banking works. Sure, there is always cash on hand available for those who need it, as is the case for absentee voting for those special circumstances who need it. But the standard is that U.S. citizens vote by personal appearance either during the ample early voting period or on Election Day.

Albeit for differing reasons, both sides of the aisle should agree on this principle of “Please vote in person if you are physically able.” Republicans sincerely want to minimize the possibilities of fraudulent votes slipping through the system, which is significantly less likely to occur when people are voting in person, but is easier to attempt via the anonymity of mailed-in ballots. Democrats want to avoid giving Republicans a chance to claim malfeasance, which becomes a stronger argument if mail-in percentage results differ substantially from the in-person results. No one should want to increase the chance that their vote will be rejected. Everyone should want to guarantee their vote is counted. And both sides should recognize that the longer the time needed to count sacks of mailed in ballots, the more screaming –and suing– there will be from both sides.

Don’t contribute to the chaos. Help the democratic process. Vote in person.

Leo Vasquez lives in Houston, Texas, is a business strategy advisor and is an advocate for evidence-based practices and good government. You can find him on Twitter at @LV_HTX or visit his website, leovasquez.com for more information.

The Reality of Voter Registration Records

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leo vasquez
Leo Vasquez

By Leo Vasquez (@LV_HTX)

To safeguard our electoral process, Americans need to understand the realities of maintaining voter registration records and the potential chaos which is sure to result from states mailing out ballots to all “voters” recorded in their databases.  Plans to have all voting occur by mail suffer not from the malintent of their proponents, but rather from a naively Pollyanna-esque hope that such a plan will not trigger significant, unintended, negative consequences. An unacceptable percentage of every official voter registration database is inherently out-of-date.

I served for roughly two years as the Voter Registrar for Harris County, Texas. Harris County, the home of Houston, Texas, is the third-most populous county in the United States, with a population ranking greater than half of the states in the country. At the time, there were just about two million voter registration records in our database. Today there are almost 2.4 million.

It is important to understand the distinct difference between voting absentee versus mailing ballots to the entire voter registration database. The former – absentee voting – involves those qualified to cast their ballots on an absentee basis specifically requesting a ballot from their voting administrator. In this request process, the absentee voter has specified their current, up-to-date mailing address. This process increases the probability that these absentee ballots are highly likely to arrive at the correct place as delivered by the U.S. Postal Service and improves the accuracy of current voter roll data. In contrast, all-vote-by-mail plans will send physical ballots to the large number of inaccurate, out-of-date addresses present in every voter registration database.

While many Americans live in the same home for virtually their entire adult lives, a notable percentage change residences frequently, especially in urban areas where there exist many options for where one lives. People move. People die. Prompt notification to voter registrars of these common occurrences is rarely high on people’s lists of things to do surrounding these events. Have you received mail for a former resident that is not directed to you? You are not alone. Per the U.S. Census Bureau figures, in any given two-year voting cycle, upwards of twenty (20%) percent of residents in a given jurisdiction may move.

Do the math on Harris County, Texas: that’s almost 500,000 out-of-date addresses.

My real world experience as voter registrar also contradicts the utopian view of voter registration that denies the reality of fake voter registrations and the legal-but-improbable registrations. During my tenure as Voter Registrar, we exposed a fraudulent voter registration program submitting thousands of fake voter registrations. While we caught a great number of these, it is inevitable that many others dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s sufficiently to cause them to be input to the voter rolls. In other instances, homeless people are registered using their “current address” at shelters or other random-but-valid addresses. By law, voter registrars are mandated to enter these records to the official voter rolls even though there is little chance these individuals will actually receive correspondence at that address months or years later.

Good solution. Bad moniker.

There exists a procedure for cleaning up and maintaining the accuracy of the voter rolls. Unfortunately, this is referred to as “purging” the database. Is there any context where the verb purge has a positive connotation? No. It sounds like you are going through a painful process of getting rid of something bad. We need to rename it something like “confirming” the voter roll and it should be positively characterized as prudently maintaining an up-to-date and accurate database.  A voter registrar cannot unilaterally purge or confirm the voter database for no reason. There must be a trigger such as receiving notice of a person’s death, a voter registration card being returned by the USPS as undeliverable, or a voter not voting in multiple election cycles. Under all of the above scenarios, the voter record is not immediately deleted, but rather placed in “suspense” pending the voter returning a letter confirming they [are still alive and] want to remain registered or simply showing up in the next general election cycle and confirming they still wish to remain registered. Thus, it is a long process to remove, i.e., purge, someone from the voter roll, consequently, maintaining an inherent level of inaccuracy in the voter registration database.

Ironically, the same people always fighting cleaning up the voter roll per the law – and per common sense – are the same ones advocating for implementing all-mail-in-voting. If they had allowed for, and encouraged, proper maintenance of voter registration records there would be less argument against the all-vote-by-mail idea. However, as it stands, there exists an unacceptable percentage of bad addresses in every local voter registration database.

Let’s not make things worse…

Even under normal circumstances, the process for reviewing and accepting mailed-in absentee and provisionally-cast ballots is a less-than-scientific process. Everyone who argues for all-mail-in-voting should first be required to have participated in or observed a ballot review board process.  Remember the hanging chads? Well, this process is often worse than that. Mailed-in absentee ballots need to be cross-checked against the original, signed voter registration application. A significant number of the signatures on the ballots are obvious and glaring mismatches. Further complications are compounded by late delivery with timely postmarks, late delivery no postmark, damaged ballots, tampered ballots, etc. This review is a manual, time-consuming process and is often very subjective.  With absentee and provisional ballots only being a relatively tiny percentage of the overall votes cast, their review is a doable task. However, quickly doing it for hundreds of thousands of ballots would be a nearly herculean task. Mailing ballots to all registered voters simply exacerbates a process already rife with the opportunity for error.

At a very optimistic minimum there are inherently at least five (5%) percent bad addresses in any given voter registration database. Hopeful optimism places that figure over at least ten (10%) percent. And, pessimistically but most realistically, the bad addresses are over twenty (20%) in major urban areas. How often are elections decided by a smaller margin than these percentages? Mailing ballots to all of those on the voter roll will result in these same percentages floating about as tempting fodder for unscrupulous actors willing to do anything to ensure their preferred candidate wins the election.

For those who qualify for absentee voting, they still have that option available. In person voting does not suppress anyone’s ability to vote and states are taking steps to ensure there is plenty of opportunity for in-person voting. Texas has extended the Early Voting period to three (3) weeks and voting administrators have implemented every recommended health safety precaution possible. In-person voting is safer than going to a grocery store.

2020 has given us enough problems. It does not make sense to create more problems by implementing all-mail-in voting.

Leo Vasquez lives in Houston, Texas, is a business strategy advisor and is an advocate for evidence-based practices and good government. You can find him on Twitter at @LV_HTX or visit his website, leovasquez.com for more information.

Texas 14th Court of Appeals denies assault as protected speech

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From the InBox:

Orlando Sanchez applauds the Texas 14th Court of Appeals Decision in Assault Case

On December 28, 2018, Orlando Sanchez stood as the lone conservative advocating on behalf of all Houston’s school children.  In a widely publicized press conference, Orlando stood silent as union and Antifa-inspired protesters threatened him and others in attendance.  Finally, after multiple calls to the police for protection, Orlando was assaulted from behind by having a bottle of water poured on his head.  The assault was captured by every camera in attendance.

Sanchez sued the assailant, who won dismissal in a District Court under the Texas Citizens Participation Act (TCPA).  The trial court opined that the assault was protected under free speech and under the TCPA and dismissed Sanchez’s case because Sanchez sought to silence the assailant.  Sanchez appealed the ruling to the 14th Court of Appeals.  Even the Houston Chronicle’s Editorial Board decided to pile on Sanchez, giving his lawsuit against his assailant a “Thumbs Down”, describing the suit as, “frivolous”.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Thumbs-up-down-Orlando-Sanchez-Dr-Evil-and-13602884.php

This morning, in a landmark case, the COA ruled that the TCPA does not provide a shield to those who commit assaultive acts in the name of political protest.  “We hold that the TCPA cannot reasonably be construed to protect assault as an exercise of the right of free speech.  Assuming that (the assailant) intended to communicate a message on a matter of public concern by his act of pouring water on Sanchez, we do not construe the TCPA to apply to such conduct because doing so contravenes the act’s express purpose and would lead to absurd results the legislature could not have intended”, the Opinion stated.

 

In reaction to the COA’s ruling, Sanchez stated, “It’s a great day in Texas when the Court of Appeals recognizes a citizen’s right to speak in the public square, without fear of assault.”

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Good. A lot of people laughed at Orlando for doing this but not me. You might think that a bottle of water being poured over your head for speaking out is cool but maybe someone is not quite as peaceful as Orlando and would beat the crap out of that idiot. Which would be perfectly fine by me but they would probably get arrested.

Keep going O.

It’s Time To Revisit Ike Dike!

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Hurricane Laura devastated southwest Louisiana, causing billions of dollars in damage and destruction.

We lucked out with Laura … but what if we hadn’t?

If Galveston and Houston had taken a direct hit from Laura, many thousands of homes and business would have been damaged or destroyed and hundreds of lives would have been lost.

Sooner or later, a catastrophic hurricane on a scale of Laura is bound to make a direct hit on Houston and Galveston.

It’s time to revisit Ike Dike!

The Ike Dike was proposed by Professor Bill Merrell of Texas A&M University at Galveston in the aftermath of  2008’s Hurricane Ike.

Merrell’s proposal was designed to protect Galveston beyond its seawall and to protect the Bolivar Peninsula, the Galveston Bay area and Houston from hurricane storm surges by extending the Galveston Seawall and constructing flood gates similar to those used in the Netherlands.  The cost of the Ike Dike was, at the time, estimated to be $4 billion.

Eco-nuts immediately objected to the Ike Dike.  They squealed like stuck pigs over the thought that the flood gates would interfere with the migration of marine life despite the fact that the gates would be shut  only during a storm.  The Eco-nuts made the ridiculous assertion that a natural barrier of sand dunes would work better than Dr. Merrell’s Ike Dike.

Next, Rice University threw a monkey wrench into Merrell’s proposal by recommending the construction of a flood gate across the Houston ship channel in place of the Ike Dike so as to protect Houston’s enormous petrochemical industry.  I am not a hydraulic engineer, but it would seem like a flood gate across the ship channel would push a strong storm surge backwards to the sides of the channel, thereby destroying countless homes.

Of course, the biggest objection to the Ike Dike was its estimated cost of $4 billion.  Never mind that the Army Corps of Engineers spent $14 billion after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to upgrade New Orleans’ flood control system.

In 2020, Texas Governor Rick Perry came out in favor of the Ike Dike and created the Governor’s Commission on Disaster Recovery and Renewal to examine regional approaches to storm surge suppression and to secure the same degree of funding from the federal government that was awarded to Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.  A public corporation for Harris, Galveston, Chambers, Brazoria, Orange and Jefferson counties was established for that purpose.  But nothing other than some jawing has come from that corporation.

Some of you may recall that in 2017 I wrote an article for Big Jolly Times in which I pushed for the construction of the Ike Dike (Will the Houston-Galveston Area Ever Get the Protection of the Ike Dike? June 29, 2017).

Greg Degeyter made several outstanding comments, including one questioning my notion that a flood gate across the ship channel would cause more flooding of homes.

Almost all the other comments were in opposition to the Ike Dike, either because people should not have built homes in flood prone areas, so fuck ’em,, or the government should not be spending money it does not have.

As for homes in flood prone areas, I don’t have any sympathy for people who have built beach-front houses.  But without any protection, a strong storm surge would damage or destroy thousands of homes in Houston which are not in flood prone areas and which are not near any beaches.

As for the government spending money it doesn’t have, it’s been doing that for as long as I can remember.  The government has been funding the military, congress, the executive branch, the justice system, the health and education departments, etc., etc. with money it doesn’t have.

We dodged a bullet this time.  We might not be as lucky with the next Gulf hurricane.  It’s not too late to build the Ike Dike.  If the government can spend $14 billion to protect New Orleans with fewer than 400,000 people, it ought to spend even twice as much to protect the Houston-Galveston area which has  a population of several million people.

The Ike Dike is a great idea.  It has the potential of saving property worth far more than the cost to build it.  And it will save many lives.  We should demand that the Ike Dike be constructed without anymore never-ending studies.

 

Texas and Harris County Republicans, Let the Dust Settle and Move Forward

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The primary season is over, and Republicans in Harris County and in Texas have new party leadership teams.  I wish both well.  Now, as we enter the final week of the convention process and the final general election campaign season, I want to share some thoughts for Republicans to consider about the future.

First, to our new leadership of the Harris County Republican Party, I pledge to you both my support, and (as always) my continued candor.  Although I standby the concerns and recommendations I made in response to social media posts made by the incoming Chair, and continue to be concerned that such posts will have consequences for our party’s candidates this fall, what’s done is done.  I simply hope that lessons were learned about how to use, and how not to use, social media in the future.  This hope has been kindled by initial reports of how the recent organizational meeting was run, and by the inspired choice of Kevin Fulton to serve as our new Vice Chair.

As we move forward, I want to share the following general observations with this new team:

  • The fundamental responsibilities of any political party are to present a coherent set of principles for public policy that unite a diverse membership of voters, to provide for a primary process to select candidates for office who will promote those principles in public office, and to provide a functioning organization that will identify and mobilize voters to turn-out and vote for those candidates.  All other functions of the party should focus on meeting these responsibilities.
  • Political party organizations are private associations—heavily regulated, especially as to their function in holding primary elections, but still private associations.  Compliance with the law, especially as to the public transparency in conducting primaries, is mandatory.  But, while transparency as to the internal affairs of the association also is important, that transparency applies to communications within the governing body; the Chair, officers and EC members have a duty to the association to maintain the privacy of the organization’s non-public business and records.
  • New administrations must be allowed to implement changes they deem important to fulfill their vision for the party, but prudent change should build on the foundation of positive accomplishments of the past, not tear down the edifice and start over.
  • Although I agree that the HCRP should not be wedded to any one consultant, very little that happened to Republicans in Harris County over the last 6 years can be blamed on the use of a single consultant.  In fact, during the mayoral election of 2015 and the general election of 2016, conservative/Republican turnout actually reached its zenith in Houston and Harris County (in 2015, we came within 6,000 votes of electing the more conservative candidate for mayor, and in 2016 virtually every countywide Republican candidate surpassed the historic 565,000 vote threshold of for winning countywide elections).  Unfortunately, the interplay of demographic changes accelerating since 2006, Democratic turnout increasing since 2008, and the separate Trump and Beto phenomena, swamped the local party by 2016 and 2018.

With these observations in mind, I want to share some recommendations with the new leadership team:

  • Build upon the organizational and fundraising advances made since 2014, don’t throw them away and start over.  And don’t return to the party’s dysfunctional organization and fundraising, and “pay for play” culture, that preceded it.  To rebuild the party, identify and persuade neighbors to support Republican candidates, mobilize them to vote Republican candidates in a county this large and diverse, and protect the security of their votes, we need functional organization, management and fundraising.  Make changes that you believe will improve this system, review what happened to incorporate lessons learned into your changes, but don’t spend your precious time conducting an inquisition of the past and don’t abandon the foundation that has been transferred to you.
  • Harris County is not the same as it was in 2004.  We cannot rely just on more turnout from our historically Republican precincts west of 610 and north of I-10, and on our churches, to elect our candidates (our new Chair should be aware of this situation, as he has worked for years to grow the party on the east side of the county).  We need to engage voters in every precinct to build lasting relationships and a party infrastructure in order to persuade new people to vote Republican, and then to mobilize them to vote for Republican candidates.
  • We need to help our candidates and elected officials develop policy ideas that address local issues in a manner consistent with our principles, in order to show persuadable voters that we have realistic ideas for addressing the issues they care about and that government is competent to address.  And then, we need to provide communication support to help their messages get through all of the 24/7 media and social media noise to reach and persuade the voters.
  • Finally, we need to realize that there is only so much that can be accomplished between now and when absentee and early voting start this fall.  While doing what can be done for the fall campaign, start organizing and planning for the day after the election and the coming 2022 election cycle.

Again, these are my personal recommendations—but they are based on years of observation of, and participation in, the party.

As for Republican Party of Texas’ new Chair and team, I have only a couple of thoughts:

  • Make changing the platform, and related party rules, a priority for 2022.  The current platform exceeds 330 planks and 30 pages.  It is an incoherent and conflicting monstrosity; it arguably is no longer a platform, but rather an amalgam of pet ideas and priorities (many of which are simply ridiculous).  It definitely is not a platform of principles that unite a political party.  Look at the Republican Party’s 1860 platform for guidance:  written for a relatively new party at the cusp of a civil war, it said all it needed to say in a Preamble followed by 16 paragraphs (heck, there are only ten Commandments, for goodness sake, which Christ distilled to two).  The 1860 platform united former members of disparate political factions and parties behind a set of ideas that carried the party through war and most of the rest of the 19th Century.  We need that type of clarity going forward.
  • Our candidates and elected officials need that clarity, too.  Recent rule changes now make declarations of fidelity to the platform crucial for candidates, and penalize elected officials for not following it, when no competent human being could consistently follow such a document.  Instead of promoting action, such a platform can only promote paralysis in office, because no ambitious elected official would dare do anything that could be interpreted as violating one of the 330+ planks.  If we are to earn and retain political control of the state, we need bold and principled men and women, not men and women who will be scared of their platform’s shadow.  Not only should the platform be reformed, the rules that create such a shadow should be scrapped.

I know that these simple recommendations will not be popular with those well-intentioned activists who have vested so much in the current platform and rules, and it will be hard to implement.  But, over the course of several conventions, we now have a mockery of a platform exacerbated by draconian rules.  We need to acknowledge this situation and change it.

Finally, to all my fellow Republicans, we need to come to grips with what type of conservatives we will be moving forward.  Remember, that an American Conservative, paradoxically, is committed to conserving one of the most radical political experiments in human history:  preserving and protecting a self-governing society of free men and women.  To continue to conserve this radical experiment, we must decide what type of conservatives we will be:  primarily a movement that says “stop” to everything with which we disagree; or primarily, a movement that tries to guide an ever changing future while preserving the essential ideals that form the foundation of a free society.  I for one want to be a conservative guide to the future—saying “stop” only when necessary to properly guide others to preserve the experiment.

The world of our parents is over, and my fellow Baby Boomers who lived our adult lives in Reagan’s America are passing the country to two generations who see many of our traditions as immaterial, wrong, or even evil, which, in turn, colors their view of the entire experiment we hold so dear.  I know how disconcerting all of this is, and we may believe they are wrong, but the future is theirs.  We need to guide them to preserve the essential ideals needed to preserve the experiment for them and their children, while recognizing their right, as Reagan once said, “to make the world over again.”  This won’t be easy for us or for them, but if we want this experiment to survive, we need to listen more than we talk, and persuade rather than preach.

Again, I wish our new leadership well.  It’s time to let the dust of the past settle, and move forward.

Will Harris County Republicans take advantage of this opportunity?

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A couple of emails arrived back to back this morning in the ol’ InBox:

kim ogg

Dear Friends,

When I first decided to run for District Attorney, I knew that difficult decisions would be part of the job.  Pursuing evidence-based prosecution to ensure equal application of the law to everyone necessarily shut the “back door” at the DA’s Office to special interest groups like the police unions. It was this “back door” that allowed police to avoid accountability for officer-involved shootings for decades.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Houston Police Officer’s Union is my opponent’s employer and that the organization is defending the Houston Police officers currently charged with murder and corruption.  Their attacks on me, my office, and our work are all directed at unseating the only District Attorney in the history of Harris County who has successfully sought indictments and prosecuted 33 police officers for misconduct.

Corruption corrodes the system and endangers the lives of honest, hard-working law enforcement officers.  It destroys community trust and ultimately, democracy. When I chose the campaign slogan:  EQUAL JUSTICE FOR ALL, I knew what I was getting into–now I need your help to see this through into a second term as District Attorney.

For those of you who have contributed before, please accept my humble and heartfelt thanks for your continued support. For those of you who have not, please contribute any amount you can right now, and let’s finish the job.

 

Kim Ogg,

Harris County District Attorney

And right behind it was this one:

THE REVOLVING DOOR OF ROBBERY IN HARRIS COUNTY

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s office let hundreds of dangerous armed robbers get back on the streets and the results should not be shocking to crime victims. More robberies – even murder.

A Dolcefino Consulting investigation shows that since January 1, 2017, Ogg’s office allowed more than 330 criminals convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon to get a plea deal that gave them deferred adjudication – a get out of jail free card.

“What’s wrong with the system?” asks Ken Webster of LaPorte. “People that have committed violent crimes there are not even getting prosecuted. And those that do – half the time they get let out. And yeah, my case was a classic example.”

Webster is one of thousands of Harris County residents that are victims of a violent crime. In 2017, using a cell phone selling scam, an armed robber held a gun to Webster’s wife’s head  and demanded money. Webster shot and killed that robber, but his accomplice and getaway driver, Frederick Gibson, was given deferred adjudication in a plea deal the District Attorney could have stopped.

Frederick Gibson was arrested as part of a multi-state jewelry robbery ring in Louisiana this year, but that is not the only consequence of this soft on crime justice. In April of 2020, Gibson was charged with the murder of a customer at a Houston pawn shop. Houston musician Austin Thomerson had gone to the pawn shop to search for musical instruments but had a permit to carry a weapon. Thomerson paid the price when he tried to stop Gibson and the other robber.

Vincent Canady is another one of the aggravated robbers given a second chance to commit crime.  He stole a car with a 16- month old baby in it. Luckily, the baby was rescued and unharmed.

Our review of thousands of deferred adjudication sentences make it clear our get out of jail free card court system is a failure. Thirty five percent of those convicted robbers have already gotten back in trouble. We traced at least 16 of the convicted armed robbers to 21 new robberies. Those are just the robberies that they have been caught committing.

Dolcefino Consulting has already traced dozens of murders to criminals released on deferred adjudication. Ogg has also allowed the release of some of violent family criminals.

“The numbers do not lie. Houstonians are being robbed and murdered and the District Attorney has blood on her hands,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of Dolcefino Consulting. “Sure we have elected some judges who are endangering law abiding folks, but NO violent criminal should get a deal. Period. Let juries deal with them.”

Questions about this press release?

Contact Dolcefino Consulting

[email protected]

713-360-6911

That is an issue tailor made for Harris County Republicans. We have a great candidate running against DA Ogg, Mary Nan Huffman, who is running on a law and order platform. Obviously the odds are against her in what has quickly become a Democratic dominated county but what if the HCRP were to take advantage of this issue and pull in the same direction?

I doubt we’ll ever know. The party itself will not be a help to Ms. Huffman, given Chairman Keith Nielsen’s silence while his surrogates attack his candidate. They are also attacking the major donors of the party, calling them Democrats and crooks, so don’t expect the party to have the type of funding it will take to mount a real challenge. And I received an unsolicited email from one of the new yelpers advising those that do not agree with him 100% to leave the party and join the Democrats. Yep, that’s the way to win elections.

It’s a shame but that’s the reality of where we are today in Harris County.

Local Law Firms Are Using “Paycheck Protection” Funds to Bankroll Democratic Campaign Efforts

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mark mccaig
Mark McCaig

Over the last several election cycles, the “First Tuesday” PAC has been one of the best funded vehicles to support Democratic campaign activities in Harris County. Backed largely by the local Plaintiffs’ bar, First Tuesday spent approximately $1.5 million during the 2018 general election cycle to support the Democratic ticket. First Tuesday’s fundraising efforts for the 2020 general election are well underway to undertake a similar, if not larger, effort to support Democrats this November.

The most recent campaign finance report for First Tuesday, filed with the Texas Ethics Commission last week, reflects that the PAC raised $595,000 during the first half of 2020. More than half of this money came from local law firms that have recently received forgivable loans from the federal government under the Paycheck Protection Program. Four of these firms made contributions to First Tuesday PAC after receiving taxpayer funds.

On April 8, 2020, the Ammons Law Firm received a forgivable “Paycheck Protection” loan in an amount between $350,000 and $1 million. On May 22, 2020, the Ammons Law Firm contributed $100,000 to First Tuesday.

On April 14, 2020, Raizner Slania, LLP received a forgivable “Paycheck Protection” loan in an amount between $150,000 and $350,000. On June 19, 2020, Raizner Slania, LLP contributed $25,000 to First Tuesday.

On April 7, 2020, Perdue & Kidd received a forgivable “Paycheck Protection” loan in an amount between $150,000 and $350,000. On June 23, 2020, Perdue & Kidd contributed $50,000 to First Tuesday.

On April 29, 2020, Laminack, Pirtle & Martines received a forgivable “Paycheck Protection” loan in an amount between $150,000 and $350,000. On June 26, 2020, Laminack, Pirtle & Martines contributed $50,000 to First Tuesday.

Entities that applied for “Paycheck Protection” loans were required, as part of the application, to certify that “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.” The fact that these law firms had ample financial resources on hand to make generous political contributions just weeks after receiving “Paycheck Protection” loans warrants investigation by the Small Business Administration into whether these law firms made truthful certifications about the necessity of the loans to support their operations.

In addition to the law firms that made significant political contributions to First Tuesday after receiving their “Paycheck Protection” loans, two other law firms were in a healthy enough financial position to make major donations to First Tuesday shortly before applying for their own “Paycheck Protection” loans for millions of dollars.

On February 7, 2020, Arnold & Itkin contributed $100,000 to First Tuesday. This firm obtained a forgivable “Paycheck Protection loan” in an amount between $1 million and $2 million on April 10, 2020.

On February 10, 2020, Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Aziz contributed $50,000 to First Tuesday. This firm obtained a forgivable “Paycheck Protection loan” in an amount between $1 million and $2 million on April 9, 2020.

As these law firms were financially healthy enough to make large political contributions before receiving their “Paycheck Protection” funds, their certifications that they applied for the loans out of necessity due to economic uncertainty are highly questionable. This warrants investigation by the Small Business Administration as well.

I will continue to monitor campaign finance reports for further evidence that “Paycheck Protection” funds are being used to fund Democratic campaign activity and will provide updates on this blog as more information becomes available.

Mark McCaig is an attorney and Republican Precinct Chairman in Harris County.

Texas GOP just keeps getting stupider and stupider

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How self-important do you have to be to insist upon meeting in a large gathering in the middle of a pandemic in a city that is blowing up with cases of coronavirus? Texas GOP executive committee and delegate self-important. But state Republican elected officials have figured this one out. From Cassandra Pollock at the Texas Tribune:

The Republican Party of Texas is moving forward with its controversial in-person convention during the coronavirus pandemic — but elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be giving their scheduled speeches virtually.

“All the elected officials are switching from a live, in-person speech to videos,” Kyle Whatley, the party’s executive director, said during a town hall livestreamed Tuesday night. “They’re doing that for us in order to focus all the attention on the business of the meeting and to get everybody in and out of here as quickly and as safely as possible.”

(click here to read the entire article on TexasTribune.org)

LOL, sure, to focus on business and the safety of others. Wait. You are still going to have the speeches. How does that help anything? Dumbasses. The elected officials just aren’t as stupid, although certainly as self-important.

Where to start? I keep hearing from delegates that the upcoming election is too important to not have an in-person convention. Huh? Exactly how is the convention going to help in the upcoming election? By adding more idiotic planks to the already bloated party platform? You know, the platform that elected officials ignore.

The thing is, if you’ve been around Republican politics for any length of time, you know the reason for insisting upon an in-person convention. The SREC members and many delegates have come to the conclusion that it is more important for them to control the party than it is to win elections. Gay folk want a booth? No way, get the hell out of here, we have important cocktails to drink while we scheme against other Republicans.

The RPT continues to talk about all of the safety measures that they will have in place. First off, many wild-eyed delegates aren’t going to follow any safety measures. Because, “it’s muh right”, dontcha know? Second, what about the service workers at the hotels and restaurants? How many restaurants have reported cases of staff Covid again? So let’s get infected and take it back to podunk Texas and have our own outbreak dammit!

I’ve also heard the tired rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter protests being “allowed” and what about that? Well, what about that? It turns out that the data refute that notion.

In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, health officials expressed great concern that protesters, potentially yelling and shouting in very close proximity, would quickly spread the virus, which might lead to devastating outbreaks.

However, researchers found “no evidence that urban protests reignited Covid-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset.”

In fact, they determined that, based on cellphone data, “cities which had protests saw an increase in social distancing behavior for the overall population relative to cities that did not,” leading to “modest evidence of a small longer-run case growth decline.”

The study’s lead author, Dhaval Dave of Bentley University, said, “In many cities, the protests actually seemed to lead to a net increase in social distancing, as more people who did not protest decided to stay off the streets.”

(click here to read the article on Forbes.com or here to read the study by the National Bureau of Economic Research)

It was fairly easy to guess that this was the case, given the fact that cities other than Houston had massive protests with no increase in coronavirus cases and the whole indoors/outdoors thing but hey, who cares about data when you are a populist Republican and mad/scared about black folk protesting?

Hopefully someone, somewhere will put a stop to this nonsense and tell the self-important Republicans to stay away and let Harris County recover somehow. Trust me when I say this, your platform isn’t important to the electoral process.

For those of us that do live here, stay away from people outside of your family, wash your hands, and wear a damn mask.

(see here for more)