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After Hurricane Ike battered Galveston in September 2008, city leaders promised that the island’s poor would be welcomed home. Public housing, they pledged, would be rebuilt within a year or so. But a number of bureaucratic setbacks, as well as a spasm of anti-public housing activism—some of it racially charged—has hindered the rebuilding effort.

More than a year after the storm, local officials confess that residences for displaced families may not be ready for another two to three years, and that’s if everything goes as planned.

The Galveston Housing Authority had planned to not only replace the public housing units lost to the storm, but build additional homes to meet increased need.

Earlier this year, a group of self-described “middle-class taxpayers,” with roots in anti-government and Tea Party activism, rose up to oppose any new government-subsidized apartments. The strident opposition and pesky bureaucratic delays led the housing authority to repeatedly redraft its plans. The latest, and more modest, plan would simply replace the 569 units lost in the storm.

David Stanowski, leader of the anti-housing forces and a libertarian activist, calls government-housing policies a “complete failure” and insists that his side is only trying to save the poor from a lifetime of dependency.

“It’s like their birthright to have the projects rebuilt on the same locations,” Stanowski tells the Observer. On the Web site of his anti-government group, Galveston Open Government Project, Stanowski frequently writes about the “poverty industry.” In a typical passage, he recently wrote, “White guilt has lead to the de facto policy of: no expectations, no responsibilities, and no accountability in the operation of the Welfare State; in other words—the entitlement mentality.”

That language is tame compared to what some other anti-public housing activists in Galveston have written online. Anonymous activists (Stanowski says he wasn’t involved) posted an online petition against the public housing effort that reads in part: “If anything we need less of these parasites on our Island and need to stop catering to their lifestyles. … An island economy is NOT the place to build a welfare paradise.”

The acrimony has attracted the attention of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. In a November letter to Gov. Rick Perry, the agency said it was tracking the Galveston public housing situation and reminded the state to follow the Civil Rights Act and Fair Housing Act in spending disaster-recovery funds.

Though the hardcore opposition would like to see no public housing rebuilt, community leaders largely agree that all 569 apartments lost in the hurricane should be replaced in some form. But it might take a few years.

The debate now centers on details such as how dense the new developments should be, where to locate them, and what population they will serve. Raymond Lewis, a member of the housing authority board, says that no matter the configuration, the demand for affordable housing far outstrips the eventual supply. A lot of people in Galveston lost their homes, and even if the new units are built, they may not be enough.

Patricia Tolliver, a retired nurse who lived in Galveston public housing after a divorce left her unable to pay rent, says, “The argument is only delaying the process and keeping people homeless a lot longer.”

You had to know the sensationalistic anti-health-care-reform rhetoric would return.

Congress may soon pass the nation’s most significant health care overhaul in four decades. (The House has already passed its version, and the Senate will begin what promises to be a rollicking debate after Thanksgiving.)

Predictably, critics of the bill are once again ramping up their opposition. We haven’t heard much about death panels recently, but what we are hearing is just as misleading. 

On  Monday — after the Senate voted to begin debate on the health care bill — my inbox was flooded with emails from conservative groups trying to mobilize their supporters with dire warnings that the world as we know it will end if Democrats pass national health care reform. 

Critics put forth three common (and highly misleading) talking points: The legislation will raise your taxes (and the taxes of nearly every American), will nationalize our health care system, and will slash Medicare.

You also hear that from Republican lawmakers. Kay Bailey Hutchison, for instance, said on last Sunday’s Meet the Press that:

Our only avenue to stop it is to let the American people know that their taxes are going to increase, that their premiums are going to increase, that Medicare’s going to be cut.”

Let’s start with claim No. 1: The bill will raise our taxes. That’s not true. Both bills are financed through tax increases on — say it with me — rich people.

The House bill would raise taxes on individuals making $500,000 a year or more and couples earning $1 million or more; the Senate version would raise Medicare payroll taxes on individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples earning $250,000.

That means — at worst — a tax increase for roughly 5 percent of Americans. The other 95 percent of us will see no tax hike from this bill.

For more details, here’s an excellent breakdown of the bills from Reuters.

Next up, let’s look at the government-takeover-of-health-care talk. This, of course, is an old saw and a fairly obvious falsehood, so I won’t spend much time debunking it. The House plan includes a limited government-run plan that would compete with private insurers in health care exchanges. (Quite a few liberals would like to see a full-on government takeover of health care, but this isn’t it. The giveaway is that many liberals aren’t thrilled with this idea.) The Senate bill, meanwhile, contains a similar “public option,” but would allow states to opt out. Something tells me Texas would be first in line to jump ship.

Finally, the Medicare issue. This is a tricky one. The bills do propose several hundred billion worth of cuts to Medicare spending. But that doesn’t mean Medicare benefits would be reduced. This gets complicated — it’s Medicare, after all — but most of the cuts would come from two areas that wouldn’t greatly impact health care for seniors.

The biggest cuts would be to the Medicare Advantage program, which contracts with private insurers to deliver benefits. It’s been a darling of the GOP in recent years. The program covers just 20 percent of Medicare patients. Some private insurers are reportedly pocketing a nice profit on Medicare Advantage, and those dollars are the first on the cut list. Did I mention that it’s complicated? For a more detailed breakdown, go here.

So while it’s technically true that Medicare spending will be reduced, Medicare benefits largely won’t suffer. Most seniors will see no difference. Given those details, the “it cuts Medicare” phrasing sounds like a scare tactic.

The final tally: Out of three main claims, health care reform critics have two outright lies and one distortion.

But — to paraphrase my favorite character from The Wire – it’s all in the game, right?

Evidence that natural gas activity in the Barnett Shale is fouling the air has mounted to the point that even TCEQ, perhaps the laissez-est of laissez faire regulatory agencies, has bluntly acknowledged the problem and promised to take action.

The tipping point came shortly after the town of DISH, situated near a hotspot of natural gas compressors, released the results of an ambient air study. Conducted by Wolf Eagle Engineering for DISH, the study showed alarmingly high levels of cancer-causing chemicals and neurotoxins associated with natural gas.

At first, TCEQ simply recommended more study of the issue, a wise idea but not one sufficient to appease people worried about exposure to harmful toxins.

But apparently TCEQ’s own testing, obtained by the Denton Record-Chronicle, corroborated the DISH study.

State environmental inspectors found emissions at some eye-popping levels during short monitoring visits in August and October, including particularly high readings obtained at the fence line of a wellhead west of Dish where an operator reportedly left production equipment open.

Identified only as “Site 8″ about five miles west of Dish, inspectors with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found more than 30 compounds at elevated levels at 5 p.m. on Aug. 26, including all four of the “BTEX” carcinogens, according to documents obtained by the Denton Record-Chronicle.

Specifically, inspectors measured 15 parts per million by volume of benzene, 21 ppm of toluene, 7.4 ppm of ethylbenzene, and 20 ppm of xylene.

Those levels were serious enough to light a fire underneath TCEQ Chief Toxicologist Michael Honeycutt. WFAA:

“The highs that we found are relatively high, some pretty high numbers, a thousand parts per billion,” he said. “That would be equivalent to opening a can of gasoline and holding it up under your nose.”

Dr. Honeycutt went to TCEQ’s executive director. “I’m not a Chicken Little toxicologist,” he said. “That got his attention.”

Those are some pretty inflammatory statements, at least for an agency loathe to say anything ill of the industries it regulates. But what does TCEQ plan to do about the problem?

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

State environmental regulators want natural gas companies to voluntarily emit less air pollution after tests showed high levels of a cancer-causing chemical near wells in the Barnett Shale gas field.

On Nov. 13, regulators from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Barnett’s eight biggest operators discussed ways to cut benzene emissions, said Michael Honeycutt, chief of the commission’s toxicology section.

Given the history of “voluntary” pollution programs in Texas (Gov. Bush’s industry-written, voluntary plan to close clean air loopholes, for example), one should be skeptical about the success of “ask nicely.” FWIW, a TCEQ spokesman told me that this approach is “not an official TCEQ policy” and not in writing.

Meanwhile, Mayor Tillman has run out of patience.

“This just keeps getting worse and worse,” Tillman said.

An increasingly vocal critic of the industry, Tillman called for regular monitoring and strict enforcement of state environmental regulations.

“These guys need to get regularly inspected, and fined, otherwise it will never stop,” Tillman said.

“The Fort Hood massacre was the predictable result of decades of massive immigration from third world countries, affirmative action, enforcement of political correctness and ‘celebration’ of diversity and multiculturalism.”

The above sentiment was written by one Peter Morrison, a right-wing activist from the southeast Texas town of Lumberton (just north of Beaumont). When he’s not ranting about the evils of multiculturalism, Morrison is helping the State Board of Education rewrite the social studies curriculum for Texas public schools.

Earlier this year, Morrison — who serves on the Lumberton School Board — was appointed to serve on the “writing team” that’s helping overhaul the curriculum that Texas teens will learn in social studies class. He was appointed by State Board of Education member David Bradley (R-Beaumont), part of the board’s social-conservative faction. Morrison and the writing team create only the draft curriculum, and the State Board will likely make many changes to that draft. But he does have an impact. And his appointment offers a glimpse at the kind of thinking that’s en vogue with certain members of the State Board.

Morrison writes a weekly newsletter. His views are, ahem, not exactly mainstream. For instance, earlier this year, he called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a “radical racist.” When Sotomayor came up for Senate confirmation, Morrison wrote:

If the Senate approves Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, Obama will know that he has carte blanche to escalate his all out war on traditional Americans. . . .If they approve her (and to be honest, with only 40 squishy Republicans in the US Senate, it’s unlikely), it’s time to get serious about finding a way for our beloved Texas to exit a system where Barack Obama and his racist friends interpret the laws that undergird our very life, liberty and material security.

His most recent newsletter concerns the Fort Hood shooting. (Hat tip on this to TFN, which first wrote about Morrison last week.)

Take a gander:

How could such a thing happen in America?  Actually, the question should be why we’re surprised that something like this has taken place.  The Fort Hood massacre was the predictable result of decades of massive immigration from third world countries, affirmative action, enforcement of political correctness and “celebration” of diversity and multiculturalism.   All of these policies would be bad enough on their own, but when combined they result in a prescription for disaster, on both a small and large scale.

By most accounts, Hasan should’ve been a shining success story. He’s a second generation immigrant, whose parents came here legally, and who is fully “assimilated.” He speaks English well, was smart enough in high school that the Army paid for his medical school, and he became a licensed medical doctor.  His relatives assure us that he is a “moderate” Muslim.  Until November 5th, Nidal Malik Hasan was the kind of person politicians like to point to as proof that the “American dream” is still alive, and that third world immigration makes our country stronger…..

The result of this political correctness is destroying our country from within.  We’re importing millions of third world peoples with no connections to us or our culture, and expecting them all to ignore their racial, religious and tribal loyalties and swear allegiance to a multicultural USA.  We tell ourselves the absurd fairy tale that a nation made up of every ethnic and religious group under the sun, speaking all kinds of languages, with many of the groups hating us and/or each other, somehow will make us less divisive and “stronger.”

Americans that actually love their country are discriminated against, while people like Hasan are given all kinds of quotas and affirmative action.

Of course, Morrison is free to write this stuff every week and email it all over creation. His column was certainly the highlight of my week so far.

But should this guy be rewriting curriculum for school kids? (And would we be OK with an equally radical leftist — like, say, these folks — determining what kids learn in social studies class?)

Just sayin.

Last week U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that it will be auditing 1,000 businesses across the nation looking for immigration violations, 161 of those businesses are in Texas.This is the new, improved Department of Homeland Security response to a crackdown on illegal immigration. Before Obama took office, the Bush Administration favored immigration raids which destroyed families and communities and seemed very well, un-American. How politicians react to this new emphasis on audits over raids says more about our political system than it does about fixing our broken immigration system. Workers and businesses are stuck in the middle of an untenable situation trying to muddle through as the government patches up the sinking boat that is our immigration system. Will it float for one more year? Will we ever have sane immigration policies? Don’t hold your breath.According to a Houston Chronicle story, U.S. Rep Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, is truly disappointed that our government won’t be rounding up workers in workplace raids this holiday season. Nothing says Christmas more than a workplace raid, after all!”It is hard to conceive of a worse time to cut work site enforcement efforts by more than half,”  Smith said in a statement. “There are 16 million Americans out of work. And yet, the administration has chosen to ignore the fact that there are nearly 8 million illegal immigrants.  Those stolen jobs should be returned to out-of-work citizens and legal immigrants.”In response Matt Chandler, a spokesman for Homeland Security, told the Chronicle that just looking at the decline in criminal or administrative work site enforcement arrests — without considering ICE’s new strategy — reflects a “myopic, outdated and distorted view of effective enforcement.”Vermont dairy farmers are also feeling the ICE heat. Vermont’s dairies can’t find laborers locally to do the hard work year round. They can’t bring in guest workers legally because the U.S. government doesn’t allow foreign workers to remain the entire year. Now ICE is knocking on their doors with subpoenas, asking to go through their books.According to the Vermont newspaper Times Argus, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy is none too pleased about it. Leahy issued a rather tepid statement, however, saying he was disappointed in the timing of ICE’s crackdown.”We have a broken system that does not work well for anyone, and especially for dairy farmers and the workers they need to keep their farms running,” he said. “This is all the more evidence that we need workable reform of the agriculture visa system, and it can’t come soon enough.”Leahy told the Argus that he had directed his staff to monitor the situation with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Nice of him to check in, but it doesn’t really help a dairy farmer struggling to make it through one of the toughest economies in U.S. history. He can’t afford to wait around while Congressional members dither.On either side of the aisle in Congress the message, or lack thereof,  is clear when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform – don’t count on us to do anything about it.