The Texas Observer

Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, this morning released the 2007 version of his profoundly depressing booklet “Texas on the Brink: How Texas ranks among the 50 states.” It’s a handy quick-reference to exactly how bad things are in Texas. Shapleigh’s office has compiled the rankings, complete with footnotes and all, for three straight sessions. Perusing the numbers, you realize Texas is actually worse off than you thought. A few of the highlights (and we’re using that term loosely):

49th in per capita tax revenue raised;

50th in per capita state spending;

47th in average SAT scores;

50th in percentage of population over 25 with high school diploma;

1st in percentage of uninsured children;

1st in percentage of population without health insurance;

49th in percentage of women who vote;

1st in air pollution emissions;

1st in toxic chemicals released into water;

1st in cancer-causing carcinogens released into air;

44th in home ownership rate;

50th in electric bill affordability;

1st in number of executions;

1st in number of gun shows.

There — now didn’t that brighten your day? Shapleigh’s point wasn’t to depress the Hell out of us, but to say that the state has pressing needs more urgent than another property tax cut. Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) and Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) joined Shapleigh to stress that increased support for the Texas Grant Program, which provides tuition for college, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program could help alleviate some of these rankings.

At the end of the press conference, a reporter asked Shapleigh if anything had gotten better in Texas?

He paused. “Tax cuts.,” he said.

We may now understand why ignorance is so blissful. Recently, as you may recall, Rep. Phil King stated that global warming is “bad science” based on “highly speculative arguments.”

That explains why the chairman of the House Regulated Industries Committee — which purportedly rides herd on utilities and the like — sees no reason for legislation limiting Texas’s enormous output of carbon dioxide.

But, according to a press release from King’s office, the state does need to get cracking down on emissions of nitrous oxide. “I would like to clarify that I strongly support the state regulating the emission of nitrous oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SOx) from power generation facilities in Texas,” King’s statement said.

Nitrous oxide, of course, is laughing gas. The stuff dentists use. A few huffs and not only doesn’t that drill hurt, but the whole world looks pretty damn rosy. Melting ice caps take on a whimsical charm.

We assume King meant “nitrogen oxides,” which are bad stuff. If there is a particular problem with wayward clouds of laughing gas in King’s district, however, that might explain his fuzzy grasp of science.

A few days ago we wrote about state Rep. Phil King’s sunny belief that global warming just ain’t happening. It’s now our duty to report a certain inconvenient truth: The King of Denial is awash in campaign contributions from fossil fuel-related industries. We know it’s hard to believe, but, alas, the Weatherford Republican has accepted at least $163,400 since 2004 from climate-changing oil, gas, and coal interests, according to figures provided by Texans for Public Justice. TPJ identified 49 energy-related corporations, PACs, individuals, and associations that made contributions to King in the past two years.

Top contributions emanate from TXU ($21,000), the Dallas-based utility that wants to build 11 coal-fired power plants; American Electric Power ($10,000), the largest utility in the nation; Devon Energy ($1,500), a major natural gas well driller in the Fort Worth area; Reliant Energy ($11,500), a Houston-based power generator and electric retailer; and Occidental Petroleum Corp. ($3,000), the largest oil producer in Texas. In other words, Phil King may have reasons other than his general vacuity to deny that the burning of fossil fuels is driving the earth’s temperature tantrum.

Not coincidently, King chairs the House Regulated Industries Committee where he oversees laws that affect the utility industry, a major consumer of natural gas and coal. Any legislation that would reel in electricity deregulation or mess with TXU’s plans to build 11 coal plants will come through King’s fiefdom.
We know where King gets his money, but where does he get his information? While we were mulling this over we remembered something: In November, we had the privilege of hearing Mr. King address a roomful of corporate functionaries from the energy sector who were assembled to discuss electricity matters. King’s speech followed a hurried PowerPoint presentation by one Myron Ebell, a professional climate change skeptic employed by the corporate-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. (In 2005 Greenpeace labeled Ebell one of its “Climate Criminals” for being a member of a “pack of paid anti-environmentalists, naysayers and skeptics.”)

Ebell cheered the “huge revival of coal around the world” and assured the crowd that “the current rate of warming is modest” if happening at all. After that enlightening discussion, King began by saying that as a legislator one is “constantly invited to speak on subjects you know nothing about.” That got a few knowing chuckles. Then, channeling Ebell, King told everyone that “the global warming issues are at best highly speculative.” In any case, he said, “We’re gonna build coal plants. It’s readily available and it’s much cheaper than natural gas.” King said he wanted to see the retail price of electricity come down, but was opposed to any legislative tampering with the market. “Coal seems to me the only short- and mid-term solution” to high prices and energy demand.

We are reminded of a quotation usually attributed to Upton Sinclair:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

There’s a big vote going down today in the House on whether to suspend the constitution in order to consider legislation before the traditional 60-day waiting period expires. The bar is high, though, requiring four-fifths of all members to suspend the constitution. That’s 120 votes.

Getting rid of the waiting period would open the door, possibly, to legislators hustling through controversial bills or pet proposals early in the session. If today’s resolution doesn’t pass, each bill that legislative leaders want a vote on will need that four-fifths majority in order to pass until March 9, although Perry’s emergency legislation won’t be affected.

Judging by one exchange on the House floor Monday, today’s vote could be tense. Twice Speaker Tom Craddick seemed to cut off Democratic leader Rep. Jim Dunna from Waco, during a parliamentary inquiry about suspending the constitution (you can see it here at the 40:10 mark). After the inquiry, Dunnam made a point of announcing an informal meeting of the Democratic caucus to discuss today’s vote.

UPDATE:Â The House voted against the resolution, 108-34.

Harvey Wasserman, a longtime friend of Molly’s, asked us to post this message. We are happy to do so. All readers are welcome to use the comment section of this blog to send in messages.

We Love You Molly

Our beloved sister Molly Ivins is fighting for her life against cancer, and all we can do is try to send her even a fraction of the brillliance, joy and love she has given us for so many incomparable years.
This genuis daughter of Texas turmoil has stood alone for so long as a voice of clarity, wit, common sense and plain-spoken conscience that it’s hard to know even where to start.
Perhaps most important to remember is that she has not been just a writer. From her modest but gracious home in the heart of Austin, she has done anything but sit back and snipe with that unique penetrating wit of hers. She could have done it. She could have just gone to that keyboard every day, blown them all away, and built her national reputation from the sheer genius of an insulated ivory tower.
But Molly has always been a firm believer in hands-on non-violent combat, which in hands like hers is the ultimate weapon. She puts her heart and soul where her convictions are. She’s fought tooth and nail for The Texas Observer and whatever other worthwhile publications there are that can muster an audience in the Lone Star State. She’s worked with the great Jim Hightower in his climb to elected office. She supports candidates. She goes out of her way. She works hard. She makes her presence felt wherever she thinks it’ll do some good, no matter what the personal cost.
All the while being our very premier writer/humorist. If Mark Twain has a female counterpart on today’s political and journalistic scene, it is Molly Ivins. She has that miraculous ability to slice and dice an entire raft of political horse-dung with a single simple sentence, laced with wry, seeded with sweetness, and so often utterly cleansing and clarifying.
We can all be thankful that our lucky stars have placed her—where else but—in Austin. Throughout the entire horrific nightmare of George W. Bush, whom she has somehow known personally for decades, it has been Molly and only Molly who’s been on the spot to say exactly what needs to be said in exactly the right Texas tone with precisely the right down home balance of horror, outrage and utterly human wit. Nobody else could be doing it as she does, from the inside out, from the high ground lifting up the low. Could we ever INVENT anyone better suited, with a sharper wit and better sense of the jugular?
Except with Molly, it’s the spiritual center that’s the bullseye. With that wry, beautiful smile of hers and that insanely musical Texas twang, she never fails to aim for higher ground. When her eyes roll at the latest unbelievable insanity from this ghastly crew, she still manages to twinkle with that huge, heavenly light that’s only Molly’s.
In her personal life Molly has always been every bit as gracious as you can tell she is from her writing. Last time she carted me around Austin, it was in her obligatory pickup. The thing seemed a bit naked without a gun rack. But Molly behind the wheel was armed aplenty, always willing to drive the few extra blocks, even if you are willing to walk. Her southern grace just won’t think of it, no matter how many better things she has to do. And we know there are plenty.
To hear her speak is to be dazzled by the music of a true national treasure. To see her heart is to be warmed by a truly magnificent woman who embodies all this country can and should be. That she has been on the job for so long, with such persistence and valor, is something for which we can all be joyously thankful.
Molly, we are with you, and we need you, and we love you, as we have needed you and loved you now for so many years now. Get well soon!

In Molly’s honor, some of us are sending contributions to the Molly Ivins Fund for Investigative Reporting at the Texas Observer; 307 West Seventh Street; Austin, TX 78701

As our latest issue takes a look at Lege fledglings, there is another first-time office holder to watch, the district attorney for Dallas County, Craig Watkins. Dallas County, which was well known for its good-ol’-boy brand of justice, was once one of the least likely places to elect the state’s first African-American county D.A. but a countywide Democratic sweep changed all that.

More important, though, is Watkins’s vocal desire to reform an office tainted by a soaring crime rate, a fake-drug scandal, and the exoneration of 12 convicted men (and counting) after DNA testing proved their innocence. “At the risk of sounding overdone,” said Will Harrell, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, “to me, personally, his election was the most hopeful development on the criminal justice scene in the seven years I’ve been working on this stuff in Texas. He symbolizes a complete rejection of the way things have existed in Dallas, Texas, for generations.”

Watkins is the first district attorney in 20 years to win the job without working his way up through the office. For reformers, this was the great feature of his candidacy, even as his detractors (including the Dallas Morning-News) repeatedly called him too inexperienced. Now, since taking office in January, Watkins speaks often about changing the philosophy toward crime fighting in Dallas, going so far as to fire eight top prosecutors from the old guard.

In particular, Watkins wants a system that focuses on preventing crime instead of one obsessed with conviction rates. While holding the Texas line on major crimes, including support of the death penalty, Watkins has said he wants to do more to keep small-time criminals from reentering the system. He also feels the need to restore the reputation of the district attorney’s office to win back the trust and cooperation of the community.

To that end, he’s already made bold symbolic gestures. At two exoneration hearings, he appeared in person to apologize to the freed prisoners, an unprecedented move for the head of the county’s crime-fighting division.

Obviously, though, Watkins still has a long way to get beyond handshakes, no matter how meaningful, to actual institutional reforms. Still, watching him try to bring real justice to Dallas should be arresting.

We’ve received a number of concerned calls and e-mails from fans of Molly Ivins. Molly is presently in the hospital but hoping to return home soon. In the meantime, thanks to all who have expressed their good wishes. Our thoughts and prayers are with Molly and her family and friends.