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The people of DISH, Texas are really giving the TCEQ hell. The Denton Record-Chronicle reports on a meeting between TCEQ and town leaders on Monday:

[Town Commissioner William] Sciscoe handed Susana Hildebrand, chief engineer for the air quality division, copies of letters where TCEQ inspectors had come out to investigate some of those complaints, calling them “a whitewash.”

“The field agent stood in my driveway and said he smelled gas at the time, but when the report was written, it said: ‘No odor was detected at this time,’” Sciscoe said. “The replies to our complaints are: ‘There’s nothing to worry about here.’”

I’ve heard this exact complaint a number of times from folks around the state. Whether it’s chickenshit or air pollution, TCEQ inspectors seem to have the same sense of smell as a rock.

Or, perhaps they’re trained to smell no evil, see no evil.

He repeated the town’s call to cease and desist operations on Strader Road, where five companies treat and compress millions of cubic feet of gas from 11 high-pressure pipelines, until it could be proven that no harm was coming to the community.

“I’ve asked for a safety stand-down and have had little reply from the industry,” Sciscoe said. “There is ample evidence that you all are in bed with the industries you are here to regulate, and all levels of the agencies are involved.”

He questioned why TCEQ hadn’t used its regulatory muscle and pulled permits.

“Here in the city, if they don’t follow the permit, we jerk the permit,” Sciscoe said.

TCEQ, which is undergoing sunset review and intense scrutiny by the EPA, is a tad sensitive to criticism these days.

While Hildebrand acknowledged she hadn’t seen the reports Sciscoe handed her, she told him she didn’t appreciate the characterization of ethical conflicts. She underscored the agency’s commitment to tackle the problem.

“We hear you,” Hildebrand said. “You’re our top priority now.”

Albeit belatedly, TCEQ seems to be seriously investigating the problem. Whether further study will actually lead to enforcement – something that might cost the gas producers money – is another question.

Regardless, TCEQ has a major public relations problem on their hands, one that’s not likely to go away. How does this image play in the local paper or TV station?

Near the end of the meeting, resident Robert Draper stood up, cowboy hat in hand, and asked whether, over the long term, the process meant the companies would stop polluting, or just get permission to keep polluting.

“Is there ever going to be a chance that this is a safe area and benzene-free?” Draper asked. “There’s no way anyone will buy my property now. We’re all stuck here until we die.”

TXsharon has more.

It’s painful enough to be injured on the job, but it adds insult to injury when your employer tries to keep it secret from safety authorities.

The failure of corporations to report work-related injuries is not a rare occurrence, says the Government Accountability Office—it is routine. In a review of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s policies, GAO investigators found that some two-thirds of job injuries are hidden from the agency, though the law requires full reporting on injuries that require more than first aid.

Why flout the law? Because corporate executives know a record of frequent injuries will increase the company’s worker compensation costs and will hurt its chances of winning government contracts.

Why do they get away with it? Several reasons. Get this—OSHA relies solely on employers to report worker injuries. Inspectors do not interview employees to determine if their bosses are being honest about job hazards and injury rates.

Second, managers pressure clinics, doctors, and others to limit treatment to first aid, thus requiring no report. This cold ploy includes taking the injured person to several medical providers to find one that will certify first aid is enough. More than half of medical providers surveyed by GAO said they’d been pressured by corporate officials to play down injuries. Finally, workers themselves are intimidated, fearing they’ll be punished or fired for getting a reportable injury.

As long as safety officials take a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach, corporate bosses have no incentive besides their own sense of decency to make America’s workplaces safe—and, as the GAO report makes clear, putting our trust in executive decency doesn’t seem to be working out.

For more information on Jim Hightower’s work—and to subscribe to his award-winning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown—visit www.jimhightower.com.

When Kinky Friedman decides to do Texas Democrats a favor, he sure has a funny way of doing it. I guess that’s what makes him a “humorist.”  In 2006, Kinky was blamed by many Dems for staying in the governor’s race as an independent, helping make it possible for Rick Perry to win re-election with just 39 percent of the vote. This year, his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor was threatening to throw the contest into a runoff that would suck money and energy from the eventual nominee (who would clearly be one of the other two candidates). So his withdrawal from the Democratic contest on Monday was cheering news for most partisans, making it likely that Houston Mayor Bill White can win the March primary outright and then turn his immediate focus to the Republican nominee (which looks more and more like Perry). But Kinky’s blessings come mixed. Instead of running for Land Commissioner, a key spot (with a seat on the redistricting committee) that Democrats so far have no candidate for, Friedman decided to simplify one primary race and turn another one into a bar brawl. He’ll be running for Agriculture Commissioner, which pits him against Hank Gilbert, the Democrats’ nominee and top statewide vote-getter four years ago.That might not sit well with harmony-seeking Democrats. But for the rest of us, it creates the potential for one hell of a show.  Gilbert, an East Texas rancher who’d previously dropped out of the governor’s race to run for Ag commissioner, was—shall we say—none too pleased about Friedman’s switcheroo. “Here we have a candidate who is running for office—any office—solely because he wants to promote his books and personal appearances,” Gilbert said, and went on: “Since exploring a race for governor, Kinky has had a cigar promotion tour, a book promotion tour and a documentary released about his last run all in an attempt to promote his publishing and business interests. He doesn’t care about running for office for the sake of helping people.” My, my! Ladies and gentlemen, we may just have ourselves a race worth watching.  While the stakes are obviously lower—and the spotlight far dimmer—Gilbert vs. Friedman should be a much more entertaining skirmish than Perry vs. Hutchison. While Gilbert has stronger credentials and more fully developed ideas for the job, Friedman has the edge in star power and name recognition and (almost surely) money. This will be a battle between two candidates trying to occupy similar turf as homespun, hat-wearing, populist Democrats who speak their minds and damn the consequences. I can’t wait to watch the hat-feathers fly. Kinky’s battle with the feisty Gilbert promises what no other political contest in 2010 can offer: sheer, mad fun, as long as Kinky stays engaged and doesn’t get distracted by all those activities Gilbert was so eager to mention. In a serious vein, the candidate who emerges might just benefit from the attention this free-for-all could stir up. If you asked 20 random Texas to name the incumbent Republican Friedman or Gilbert will face (hint: it’s Todd Staples), I doubt you’d get an answer from more than one. With White giving Democrats some heft at the top of the ticket in 2010, it’s conceivable that Gilbert or Friedman could join him in breaking the Democrats’ 16-year curse of losing statewide offices.  Meanwhile, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll put on a good show. And what is Texas politics, folks, if it’s not entertaining? Damn depressing, that’s what.

Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez launched the first volley in the fight for comprehensive immigration reform today. The Congressman said the bill would be filed in December before Christmas so that Congress had no excuse not to bring it up first thing in 2010.

 The bill called the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (whew!), let’s call it the (CIR ASAP) for short has 87 House cosponsors already. 

 The bill is being backed not only by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, of which Gutierrez is the chair, but also the Black Caucus, the Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Progressive Caucus.

 Texas’ very own Solomon Ortiz will file the bill since he is the most senior Latino congressional leader, according to Gutierrez.

 So what’s in this bill anyway? Gutierrez laid out some highlights back in October. Here’s the top 10 items on his list.

      1.   Pathway to legalization for the undocumented

      2.   Professional and effective border enforcement

      3.   Smart and humane interior enforcement

      4.   AgJobs

      5.  DreamAct

      6.  Employment-based visa system

      7.   Worker protection

      8.   Verification systems

      9.   Family unity the cornerstone of the immigration system

     10.  Promote immigration integration

Our immigration system is broken, broken, broken…we’ve got immigration courts drowning in cases, overflowing detention facilities, broken families, hate crimes, businesses going bankrupt because they can’t find labor, a multi-billion dollar border wall rusting on the southern border.

It makes you want to holler and throw up both your hands.

 Of course, that doesn’t mean Congress is going to do anything about it. Foes of immigration are already carping that it will never happen in our troubled economy. We have double the jobless rates of 2007 — the last time immigration reform was tanked in a wash of anti-immigrant vitriol.

People on both side of the issue are skeptical to say the least. I admit I don’t want to get my hopes up because I am afraid they will be dashed.  Nothing is simple in Congress – just look at healthcare reform. Senator Charles Schumer is also pledging to offer something up in the way of immigration reform. El diablo is in the details. Let’s hope Congress can get it done this time. Gutierrez said in his press conference today that Majority Leader Harry Reid had given him the green light to bring up comprehensive immigration reform in February or March.

 Let’s hope it happens in 2010.

The nuclear industry may be experiencing its own Alamo in San Antonio.

The city’s involvement in what could be the first new nuclear power plant in the U.S. in almost three decades is in question after months of scandal concerning cost overruns and allegations of secrecy at City Public Services, the city-owned utility. Anti-nuclear activists are urging San Antonio to walk away from the plan to build two 1,350-megawatt reactors at the South Texas Project, a nuclear power plant near Bay City co-owned by NRG Energy Inc., City Public Services, and Austin Energy.

“Everyone is watching,” said former Bush EPA head Christine Todd Whitman when she passed through the Alamo City in July, according to the San Antonio Business Journal. “What happens here will set the pace for nuclear energy elsewhere. It will be very important.”

In 2006, NRG, the company heading up the project, put the cost at $5.2 billion and offered equity stakes to San Antonio and Austin. The San Antonio utility, with backing from the political and business establishment, took a 40 percent share. Nuclear power, they reasoned, would be the cheapest and easiest way to fuel the growing city. Austin bowed out. Green-energy boosters pointed to delays and cost increases involved in the original South Texas Project in the 1970s and ’80s.

Those concerns turned out to be prophetic: The price tag for the proposed plant has more than tripled, to $17 billion.

The real meltdown in San Antonio came in November, two days before a key City Council vote to commit $400 million to the project, then predicted to cost $13 billion. Word leaked that CPS management knew the Toshiba Corp. subsidiary constructing the reactors wanted $4 billion more for the plant, a fact that hadn’t been mentioned to the City Council. CPS executives rushed off to Japan to negotiate the price. Mayor Julián Castro called on the two longest-running CPS board members to resign and suggested the deal would be scrapped if costs didn’t come down. (Five city council members are pushing for a no-confidence vote on the two board members.)

Opponents view San Antonio’s experience as a broader indictment of the so-called “nuclear renaissance.”

“The nuclear industry was born in secrecy and grew up in deceit, and nothing much has changed,” said Eric Lane, San Antonio businessman and chairman of the Consumer’s Energy Coaltion. “We just had another example of that here.”

In Lane’s view, one shared by some utility experts, NRG needs San Antonio more than the city needs NRG.

“They have us to fall back on when the cost overruns occur. That’s what makes San Antonio so attractive. NRG can declare bankruptcy and go home tomorrow. CPS can’t; it’s a public entity. We could be responsible for 100 percent” of the costs.