2014 League City election picks for City Council

Early voting for the City Council races in League City (plus many other muni, county, state, and federal positions) began yesterday but I withheld publishing my picks until today out of a desire for fairness and balance.  I wanted to incorporate the primary alternate editorial source, which is the recommendations put forth by Galveston County Daily News (paywalled), and also see some of those forum comments, so that you could compare and contrast both sets of picks in the process of doing your own evaluation and arriving at your own voting choices.

I note again for the record that this is a non-commercial, non-politically-affiliated blog that presents personal opinions only.  This blog is not associated in any way with Centerpointe POA; we just happen to live in the same named place.

Here we go... the early vote is now on!  Signs at the corner of SH 3 and League City Parkway.  

For those of you who are not familiar with my local involvement, I gathered the information that underpins my picks from the following sources:

1. Daily reading of our local newspapers (GCDN and Chron; I am a paying subscriber to both, ca-ching!).
2. Daily participation in local online discussion forums, some behind paywalls, and also email discussion threads.
3. Daily general attention to League City goings-on for the past 5 years of my residency here.
4. A little bit of attendance at a few historical City Council meetings and watching of additional meeting videos on the internet. 
5. Attendance at the City Council candidates forum held on October 8, 2014 (you can see a full video of that forum here - not paywalled - with corresponding GCDN link here). 
6. My own October 9, 2014 public appeal for historical context and additional "back-story" information on all candidates in competing races.  

Cutting to the chase, here are my picks, and I will describe my rationale for these choices in sections to follow this graphic.

POSITION 1:  BECKER vs. EWEND

My choice is either Becker (if you can stand him) or a no-vote in this ballot position (which is called undervoting) if you cannot stand him.  GCDN picked Ewend because they obviously cannot stand Becker, but I find that their rationale for doing so was weak and didn't take all relevant decision factors into proper account.  Becker is well-known for his obvious intelligence and League City managerial experience, but GCDN essentially argues that he's too much of a hot-head to deserve a vote.  My response to this is YES, he certainly is a hot-head, and furthermore, he does not seem to be improving himself in that regard.  But the example that GCDN gave was that of the fist-fight with fellow Council member Okeeffe, which I argued was mostly a cosmetic issue that, if anything, suggests that both men are probably honest at the core.  I don't pick my political candidates based on the cosmetics of their behavior or sensationalized news accounts of same.  Far more consequential in this analysis is Becker's Achilles heel:  Despite his higher IQ, he sucks out loud when it comes to risk assessment and decisional priority weightings.  I could provide you with specific, pointed examples but I'm afraid it would make this post too long, and so I will reserve that for later.

In my opinion, voting for Ewend would simply make a questionable Council seat much, much worse.  Ewend has not represented himself well during this election cycle.  Jim Guidry's local news service, which almost never crosses my radar, explained exactly how in an op-ed titled "The circus left Houston last week - a missed calling".  The writer described Ewend as "our town jester" and I agree with that evaluation.  Ewend seems to be intentionally making a mockery of the American democratic process and he has already cost the LC taxpayers unnecessary time and money with his absolute failure (or refusal?) to comprehend Ethics 101 (sorry - paywalled; can't find an open info source on that one).

In absolutely no scenario that I can imagine would Ewend be an improvement over Becker, as imperfect as Becker is.  Becker is the clear lesser of evils, as I see it.

POSITION 2:  CONES vs. MORRIS

I pick Morris because I think he's strong enough to deserve a chance to prove himself.  He's an attorney, so we get that proverbial "free attorney" on Council which is something we desperately need (and this is particularly important because I do NOT pick attorney Gross; explanation given in the next section).

GCDN picked Cones and argued their choice on the basis that nobody knows LC better than Cones does, but that's not necessarily a good thing unless Cones can also behave in a functional manner with respect to City business and relationships.  During my public appeal, every single piece of feedback I received on Cones was strongly negative, and every email was backed up with objective information that the commenters used to justify their thumbs-down (so it wasn't  just subjective ranting on their parts).  Whatever the hell Cones did during his previous Council tenure, he made a lot of enemies.  And we don't need enemy-makers on Council when we have a potentially better choice available in Morris.

POSITION 6:  GROSS vs. J. LONG vs. DAWSON

I pick Dawson for much the same reason that GCDN also picks her - because there is no other voice on Council who has proven themselves to be the least bit concerned about quality-of-life issues.  We desperately need a canary in our Council coal mine, and Dawson, as limited as she appears to be in certain functional respects (explanation omitted for brevity), has proven herself capable of filling that specialized role.  Dawson will be the whistle-blower when the rest of the WASPy conservative clones on Council step too far out of line.  And we really, really need that for counterpoint perspective if nothing else.

As further support for this pick, I note that Jason Long is not a good choice by virtue of his criminal record (paywalled) which calls his temperament into question if nothing else, and the fact that he does not represent himself well in debate (see the forum video for evidence).

As further evidence for this pick, I note that Gross is a litigator, an adversarial character whose mannerisms struck me as way, way too far toward a slash-and-burn mentality.  Watch the forum video and I think you'll see what I mean.  He does not appear to come to the table with a cooperative demeanor - rather it's a short-sighted, over-the-top attitude of (paraphrased), "You people are all screwing up spending money on moving oak trees and thank goodness I'm swooping in to save the good people of League City from your wild incompetence and dastardly influences."  We do not need that kind of attitude on Council given the personalities that we've already got.  He may be an attorney and he may have some professional strengths as a result of that, but that's not enough.

POSITION 7:  N. LONG vs. AL-SAHLI

Agreeing with GCDN on this one as well, I pick Nick Long for the simple reason that he's an extremely strong candidate, so strong that if he ran against any one of those others, he'd still be a shoe-in (danged pity that he did not choose to run against Becker).  In the candidates forum, Al-Sahli proved himself to be no slouch, and if he were running against a weaker opponent, I think he would be both electable and desirable as a Council member.  He seems to be a buoyantly positive, laid back kind of guy (in some instances, probably a bit too laid back for his own self-preservational good).  I sense that Mr. Abdul has a latent potential to become a Great Dispeller of Bullsh*t, if only he were given a chance.  I hope that decides to run again in the future if he loses his current bid.

There are my opinions for you to do with as you see fit in formulating your own.  With respect to voting resources, here are a few useful links.  Following the closing meme below, I will also reproduce GCDN's contrasting election picks with their own rationales presented in full for your consideration.

• Your customized Galveston County sample ballot HERE.
• KHOU has a pretty cool election information site that you can walk through to determine your logistics.

But not until the skinny lady sings.  Good luck at the polls.  

***

In the contested races for city council in League City, The Daily News recommends:

• Council Position 1: Jay Ewend. This is a case of addition by subtraction. The incumbent, Dan Becker, was arguably the most knowledgeable candidate at a recent forum. He provided informed answers on questions about debt and infrastructure. But League City got national attention when two council members got into a fistfight in the city manager’s office. Voters shouldn’t have to worry about things like that.

• Council Position 2: Tommy Cones. Cones had a colorful run during his previous tenure on council — and he could work on decorum. Nevertheless, few people know League City better.

• Council Position 6: Joanna Sharp Dawson. Attorney Keith Gross is an articulate candidate and would be a good choice, but Dawson deserves another term. She has been a voice of decency on a council that is sometimes bitterly divided. She’s also been an advocate for parks and historic preservation — interests that ought to warrant at least one spokesman in one position on council.

• Council Position 7: Nick Long. Long, a financial consultant, gave the most detailed view on how the city should balance debt with the need to build infrastructure to accommodate growth. While Long gets the endorsement, it’s hard to argue against the experience in operating small businesses offered by his opponent, Abdul Al-Sahli.

Heber Taylor is editor of The Daily News.

A request following the League City candidates forum

Last night, Galveston County Daily News hosted a question and answer forum attended by all nine City Council candidates.

GCDN editor TJ Aulds, who served as the organizer and moderator, did a superb job of maintaining a rigorous professional order.  

As a blogger, I am in the process of formulating my list of "picks" for this election.  Attending last night's forum was one step in my process of researching and evaluating the candidates.  In conjunction with this process, I invite members of the community to present me with their own opinions and evaluations.  Here are my personal areas of weakness regarding which I would appreciate specific input:

1. I have only lived in League City for about five years.  Therefore, I lack some historical context that is relevant to this present-day evaluation.  For instance, why did Cones lose his Council seat previously?  Why have I observed Cones and Paulissen to fight like cats and dogs on occasion?  What else do I need to know about historical activities and backstories that should be weighed in the evaluation of each candidate's present-day qualifications? Questions such as these are important because they speak to the potential of the candidates to work effectively with Council rather than expending time and energy on the type of conflict and divisiveness for which League City has become well-known.
2. I am politically unaffiliated and socially unconnected where all of these candidates are concerned.  That is a strength I cite in support of my own objectivity, but it is also a weakness because it limits my ability to know from experience who is in bed with whom and why - in other words, what behind-the-scenes alliances may or may not bode well for League City.  Local political offices are routinely exploited by people for personal gain instead of representing the genuine sense of civic duty that should be driving their participation.  A particular candidate might look wonderful on paper and may present well on his or her face, but if that candidate's primary motivation is to use League City as a stepping stone to something better for themselves, then I'm not sure that's the candidate we need.  Knowing more about this factor will help my evaluation.  

If you have information to share (hard information substantiated by facts is particularly desirable), please inbox me via centerpointe.blog - gmail.com.  Conversely, if you start your own blog or provide your analysis elsewhere (such as in the commercial news media), I would appreciate it if you would drop me a line to draw my attention to your content.  I do review the GCDN comment stacks almost daily, but sometimes I miss things.

Thank you!  @CenterBlog. 

There's always room for a meme, especially when it conveys information.  

Trackbacks:

• League City candidate website
• Ewend
• Becker (candidate website not found as of 20141009)
• Cones
• Morris
• Dawson
• Gross (candidate website not found as of 20141009)
• J. Long (see Facebook, votejlong)
• N. Long
• Al-Sahli

An open letter to City Council candidate Abdul Al-Sahli

Mr. Abdul, as a candidate for League City Council Position 7, I am curious as to why your business chose not to lower its flags to half staff yesterday to commemorate the 13th anniversary of 9/11.

September 11, 2014, approximately 4:00 p.m.

Your exact role at this business is reported variably depending on the source, but it's clear that you have substantial authority there.  The DE website does not mention any owner or controlling entity by name and neither does the corresponding Secretary of State franchise page (officers and directors information is missing), but your own LinkedIn profile describes you as DE Flooring's "President".  I've heard people verbally refer to your relationship to this business in ownership terms (partial vs. full ownership not specified), and when I signed a small services contract with DE Flooring about a year ago, you were explicitly described to me as "the man in charge".  As such, it would appear that you are the authority who would be in the position to make administrative decisions such as flag-lowering.  

Yesterday was a day of national mourning in which American flags were ordered to half staff.

Screengrabbed from this site.  

Of course, not every private business in our area complied with this directive.  For instance, a day care center not far from DE Flooring also had flags at full staff.  The crucial difference is that the day care owner has not claimed a role for himself or herself as a political figure.  He or she is not currently running for an American public office and seeking the public's trust.

All public offices and most local businesses did lower their flags, however.  About three minutes after I took the above photo of DE Flooring, I took this one of ACU of Texas' League City branch, which has established an unfailing local reputation for its tasteful displays of patriotism.  

Even the initial act of declaring political candidacy is a demonstration of leadership, and the very first task of leadership is to identify with the people and confirm a strong connection to the people.  I intentionally looked at your place of business yesterday on my way home from work because I assumed you would be showing this kind of solidarity on a day when such observances are absolutely vital to the American soul.

While DE Flooring's flags were at full staff late yesterday afternoon, this is what was going on a short distance away.

Image courtesy of the City of League City.  

In your case, of course, the participatory issue goes beyond generic political candidacy due to your ethnicity.  I mention this because I personally think it's fair game to discuss that aspect of what you potentially bring to League City's political table (which is currently characterized by a woeful lack of diversity), and because obviously you think this is fair game, too - your campaign website specifically references that element:

Screengrabbed from this campaign page.  

As a Council candidate, it cannot possibly have escaped your attention that League City has spent the last two months embroiled in conflict over a City Council resolution that contained the phrase "radical Islamist terror groups".  While most reasonable people question the motivation behind the injection of this reference (and the resolution itself, for that matter), the unavoidable fact is that the resulting social conversation is well underway, and some of the questions being raised by local residents are arguably valid and deserving of responses (e.g., see the most recent discussion threads on Galveston County Daily News here and here).  Many of those questions boil down to a very simple inquiry:  which is more important to any given individual - their ethnicity and the religious and cultural factors that go with it, or their allegiance to America?  People genuinely want to explore that issue, and I believe that it is healthy for them to do so.

It saddens me that your business did not lower its flags yesterday.  I may be the first to publish this question, but I cannot possibly be the only League City resident who noticed those flags.  By not participating in the national observance of Patriot Day, you will give additional ammunition to those of the more extreme voices in the conversation who are quick to seize upon any perceived negative development to support their fears and distrust of other cultures, especially those that they believe are associated with Islam.  They're going to say things like (paraphrasing), "WTF??  This guy named Abdul Al-Sahli is running for office and he had the nerve not to observe 9/11?  See??  I've been telling you all along that these people are not really with us!"  Even if accidental, this type of outcome hardly seems consistent with your own stated campaign intentions.

I hope you will address this question, not to me, not to this blog post, but to those who deserve your response - the good people of League City, Texas.

On top of everything else we've got going on locally, yesterday was not an "ordinary" 9/11 anniversary - it had a larger sadness component than those in recent memory.  All of America is increasingly anxious because, every single day, there is a new news story documenting the burgeoning power of the group known as Islamic State.  We don't know what will happen, but we know that thousands of people have already died, and thousands more will surely die, with or without the planned American airstrikes.  

I could not get done with work in time for League City's memorial service yesterday, but I did pause to face these half-staff flags in front of another City Hall about 50 miles from here.  I stopped to pay my respects and to say a small prayer for international peace.  I also pray that we can reach a better state on our local level, a state in which we can all understand each other more deeply than we obviously do today.   

 

League City's next election critically important

Quote from yesterday's Houston Chronicle (story probably paywalled):

League City's recent resolution rejecting refuge for Central American migrant children violates two landmark civil rights acts, a complaint to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development alleged this week.

Are you having Jornaleros flashbacks yet?!  For those of you who don't know the story, just over a year ago, League City squandered hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on losing that unwinnable lawsuit.  I don't think that the final figures were ever made public, but it was well into the six figure range according to initial reports.  As losers on most points, not only did League City have to pay its own legal costs, but they had to reimburse MALDEF for theirs as well.

This Guidry article cited $357,000, but I don't know if that's the "total-total" or just a portion of it.  

Rather than taking care of League City's legitimate business, City Council wastes taxpayers' money on culture warring where it has absolutely no business inserting itself.  Here we go again with MALDEF and another special interest group.  By this time, MALDEF is well-versed in successful strategies for dealing with the continuing flow of antagonistic crap that emanates from League City, so it will be interesting to see what develops here.

Meanwhile, in the past three or four years, has a single thing of actual municipal value been done with respect to practical issues such as resolving traffic congestion at Five Corners??  Nnnnope.  Does this tell you anything about your elected representatives?

Stay tuned for forthcoming info on the November elections.  They are the best short-term chance we've got at curtailing at least some of this nonsense.

Here are the positions to be elected.  Screengrabbed from this page.  

League City vs. the USA, Part 6: Those who live in glass tract houses

Most League City residents have contributed to illegal immigration through their own economic activity.  We can't all reap the benefits of the cheap construction provided by the 50% of Texas tradesmen who are undocumented and then turn around and disavow all responsibility for the corresponding problems that demand-driven illegal immigration predictably brings to our doorsteps.

Here's a join-the-dots example showing exactly how these moving parts all work together.  I chose this example below because this speaker voluntarily elected to self-identify in public and therefore it can be reasonably assumed that she claims no expectation of privacy with respect to her personal identity or her views on this subject.  

Screengrabbed from Y. C. Orozco's very thoughtful and thorough account (non-paywalled) of the vote that was held this past week.  

But where was Ms. Vickers' objection to third-world illegal immigration when those same people were most likely building her own house?  Publicly-available CAD records (PDF link) suggest that she and her husband purchased their 2002 suburban masterpiece directly from builder D.R. Horton, the same D.R. Horton who made the news shortly thereafter for its treatment of illegal alien residential construction workers.

I've read other news stories in which major builders proudly disavow any hiring of illegal aliens.  But of course they hire subcontractors en masse, and they typically don't check the immigration status of anyone working in the resulting supply chain.

Screengrabbed from this site.  

I am by no means singling out Ms. Vickers as disproportionately responsible for contributing to the local demand for illegal labor.  I suspect that, if a thorough analyses were done, every local homeowner would share a roughly equal responsibility.  Including the bulk of our City Council.

Every one of those elected reps who voted for that unenforceable resolution... every one of them appears to hold title to exactly the kind of suburban tract home that we can reasonably assume was likely built using a significant component of illegal labor.  But was there a single one of those representatives who was overtaken by the strength of their principles at the time of their home purchase and said, "Oh no, I cannot in good conscience follow through with this purchase because I know from simple statistics that this house was likely built in significant part using illegal labor, and I have taken a strong moral stand against contributing to the support and economic stimulation of illegal immigration in any way."

Apparently, not a one of them experienced an actionable twinge of conscience, a conscientious objection, at the time their sales closed.  But when there's an opportunity for political grandstanding that invokes those same anti-illegal-immigration principles that they'd prefer not to see violated, that is another story.

This is the basis for my objection to what League City has done here:  Those who live in glass tract houses should not throw stones.  Other commentators have invoked a humanitarian justification against the resolution, but I don't think that the analysis needs to progress beyond this simple bit of common sense that I'm presenting here.  

I am a legal immigrant.  It took me 13 long, difficult years to follow the procedure and finally attain the rights of American citizenship.  During those 13 years, I watched millions and millions of illegal immigrants simply walk into the country across an open border.  I would fervently like to see the federal government secure the border once and for all and stop all this madness.

Given those personal circumstances of mine, you'd think that I would be counted among those who are the most angry at the specter of tens of thousands more undocumented people streaming across our border at this time.  But the situation is not that simple because I recognize my own contribution to creating the conditions that brought us all to this unfortunate juncture.  

Before the illegal?? labor-intensive transformation: 
Our subdivision lot in League City, prior to the start of construction. How many of you have had the amazing privilege of building your own home?  It's a remarkable experience, especially if you're able to take a base architectural plan and transform it utterly into an almost-unrecognizable one-of-a-kind custom home, as my husband and I did with ours.

A hard hat, buckets of fresh joint compound, but no worker:
I have almost two thousand pictures of our home in progress, but only three of those pictures contain any evidence of human presence, and those three photos show no faces.  That's because every time I would show up with my camera to document each day's building progress, the tradesmen would hide themselves away until I was done.  I was always very careful to be discrete and respectful about what I was photographing, because it's not proper behavior to frighten vulnerable people, especially when they are working fourteen hours a day seven days a week on your behalf.   

Nameless, faceless, and furtive:
It was plenty warm out that day, as the mason in the blue T-shirt indicated by not wearing a jacket or even a long-sleeved shirt.  But his low-skilled helper felt compelled to pull up his hoodie so his face could not be seen.  Why might he have done that??  

I have absolutely no evidence that our builder or its subcontractors used any illegal construction labor.  I can only report the behaviors that I saw and the statistics that characterize the industry, those being that a full 50% of Texas' construction workers are undocumented (PDF link).     

I signed our home build contract.  I put up all that money that was used to stimulate additional demand for the services of those construction workers, including the very young man shown above who felt compelled to hide his face.  We have most definitely made our own suburban beds on the illegal immigration issue.  Now we have to lie in them.  

Good advice:
League City's building inspectors did not suffer fools gladly during our construction process, but this is good advice for everyone - Ms. Vickers, City Council, and everyone else who forms an opinion on our current illegal immigrant issue:  WAKE UP!  Wake up and see your own wider role in our collective situation.  

League City vs. the USA, Part 5: Next time, vote

I ask you to remember these images when the next League City election rolls around:

Screengrabbed from WFAA in Dallas.  

Instead of devoting energy to the actual needs of League City, Council is squandering resources on the kind of culture war activity that cannot, by definition, lead to a measurable benefit for taxpayers.

Screengrabbed from KHOU.  

Even Judge Ed Emmett used the term "grandstanding", for crying out loud.  For those of you not familiar with local politics, Judge Emmett is not even our county judge, but he's a respected local Republican leader, and people in greater Houston pay attention when he speaks.

Notice the way the news media refers to League City as "this Houston suburb", in a pejorative sense.  Not a real city in manifested character, more like a red-headed stepchild of the suburban sort.

Screengrabbed from Google and KVUE.     

Trying to usurp that authority makes them look like foolish foot-stompers.  A lot of public resources have been squandered on previous attempts, but both the regulatory framework and the case law are settled.

Screengrabbed from KHOU.  

And whose fault is it that we have this line-up in office?  Emphatically, ours.

Election results from 2011. which is when four of the current seven were elected. Note the "total votes" column.
Screengrabbed from this page.  

Voter turnout during that election was a memorable 9.47% (PDF link).  Voter turn-out was naturally a bit better in 2012 (PDF link) because the other three Council positions were voted during the general election, when people were already at the polls for federal voting purposes.  But even with a federal election drawing people to the polls, look at the number of undervotes:

I believe that a lot of LC residents had no idea of who these people even are, and so they didn't vote for any of them. The effective voter turn-out was closer to 30%.

Screengrabbed and simplified from this PDF.  

I know what a lot of residents are going to want to say in response to this - they're going to claim that it's very difficult to obtain enough detail about a local candidate to make an informed voting decision, and therefore they don't vote for Council members at all.  This response is understandable -  I myself feel that I went into the 2012 election as an ignorant voter, despite my candidate research efforts. It is hard to get relevant information.  We don't even have a real newspaper in League City despite the fact that our population is rapidly approaching six figures, so it's very difficult for facts (as opposed to campaign propaganda) to get disseminated.

The juggernaut that hasn't yet come into its own.  Arguably, we are large enough to do better than what we have been.

Screengrabbed from Google.  

Our local blogging community is even worse than our newspaper situation, as most bloggers activate only within the context of narrowly-defined personal agendas, and then quickly grow dormant once any given election cycle is concluded, leaving nobody to monitor what's going on most of the time.  And then what happens??  We elect our local reps by partial ignorance and accident, and League City ends up in the international news portrayed as child haters and Constitutional rights violators.

My husband likes to tell me that I'm a crappy political blogger and that I should stick to the suburban lifestyle content that was my original intent and which continues to be my forte.  To which I reply that I don't do political commentary because I envision myself to be any good at it.  I do it because there isn't a single other soul out there who is lifting a finger in this regard.  If I give it a shot, hopefully that meager effort will help contribute to a tipping point of awareness which will inspire more people to make contributions (a scenario that becomes increasingly likely by simple statistics as our population continues to expand).

I've leave you with a meme-type graphic that I doctored in order to emphasize my bottom line.  There aren't enough sufficiently-informed League City residents electing our local reps, but here's what transpires when people choose not to vote.  

How many of you feel like you've had sausage involuntarily thrust into your voting mouths after watching LC's ongoing tedious series of guns, God, and grandstanding efforts?

Let me explain the graphic in a bit more detail.  In my opinion, Canada is the world leader in double entendre, where the practice is considered acceptable and even desirable within the public discourse.  I've modified the original intent of this humorous offering from Fairvote.ca, and the resulting communication is rather shocking by American public standards, but you get the underlying message loud and clear, don't you?  And that's the point.  

Separated at birth?

I have a confession to make and it's one that might have some folks slapping their knees in hilarity:  I have genuine difficulty forming a visual distinction between David Dewhurst and Jeff Skilling.

Other than being two fairly standard-looking white guys of about the same age and build when most of their respective photos were taken, they really don't resemble each other that closely in the literal physical sense.  I don't know enough about either to speculate as to whether they might be similar in some aspects of their personalities, but one thing is clear to me - there's something concordant about the way they both emote that interferes with my recognition skills.   

It has to do with the body language.  Normally when I'm scanning news thumbnails, I identify popular individuals in the media the same way that every other human being does - by simple associative recognition based on what I've seen before.  It's an automatic, effortless, nonverbal process, except when the thumbnail contains either Dewhurst or Skilling, in which case I often have to stop and consciously ask myself, "Waitaminute - which one of them is that, now??"

I'm not saying this because I have a political ax to grind.  I have very little interest in state politics (I personally believe it's more important to focus one's political attention and effort locally), and if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to choose between Dewhurst and his main rival Dan Patrick, I'd say go ahead and pull the trigger, because I can't detect a clear advantage to either.  

This concordance that I'm perceiving is perplexing to me particularly in view of the wildly different circumstances in which most of their respective media photos were taken.  Skilling is almost always sporting some version of that bored, pained, arrogant, hard-done-by body language projection associated with his criminal trial.  In significant contrast, Dewhurst is, well, the current Lieutenant Governor of Texas.  On the surface of it, those two realities hopefully don't have that much in common, existentially speaking.   

I realize that my brain doesn't work exactly the same way as everyone else's...  

...which is why I'll leave it for you to decide:  Was I perhaps dropped on my head as a baby resulting in subtle but specific damage to the perceptual areas of my brain, or am I actually seeing something here??
:-)

Photo credits for the above:  Pretty much every major news media outlet in America.  

What happened to all the signs??

The Galveston County Annex looks a lot differently than it did a few days ago.  The political signs have been reduced to about 10% of their original density - it had gotten so crazy that you could barely see the building from the street.  Did the County crack down, or did the avalanche of signs become a casualty of campaign wars?  Election day is not until tomorrow.

Sure wish I had a "before" pic to go with this one, because it was an unprecedented display of rampant excess while it lasted.  

Healthy eating resolution, Part 3: Political potentiality

I wasn't planning to make this into a trilogy post, but Texas' gubernatorial candidates Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis have both driven me to it.

Which one is better??  On the subject of food, they both get a FAIL from me this morning.

Photos screengrabbed from Wikipedia here and here.   

Houston Chronicle did what was supposed to be a lighthearted compare-and-contrast in which they queried both candidates on a number of less-consequential personal preferences.  But there's no such thing as a political interview that doesn't count toward a candidate's ultimate public perception, and that's certainly true in this case. 

 

Chron's question seemed innocuous enough: 
Do beans belong in chili?

Davis said, "No beans." 

Abbott said "No.  As they say, real Texas chili doesn't need a filler."

Screengrabs from Chron.com

Now, I realize that they were both responding within a specific context, but that doesn't change the fact that they both missed an opportunity for meaningful elaboration.  That's what politicians are supposed to do, isn't it?  Capitalize on opportunities to communicate important messages to the electorate? 

Let me get this straight:
31% of Texans are now obese - not just overweight, but obese -  and both of you are suggesting that Texans not put beans in their chili?!  Holy crap!!

Screengrab from this CDC website. 

If it had been me, I would have opened a dialog by acknowledging that the traditional way of preparing Texas chili does not include beans of any kind (e.g., variants here and here). 

I then would have expounded by letting people know that there are ways to prepare a walloping good chili with beans, and that those ways are both better for their health and consistent with a lower-calorie eating plan that will help maintain a lower weight. 

I didn't buy all this stuff on New Year's Day for nothing.  While I can make a good chili from scratch, my family really enjoys this Cookwell and Company product, and so I usually default to using it as the base. 

When I make red chili, I follow the same rationale as I did in making the green chili chicken stew I showed yesterday:  I pack in vegetable and legume components such that the resulting home-made product ends up being both lower in calories and higher in certain micro-nutrients and fiber without any noticeable loss of taste.

Typical chili beef contains two and a half times the calories of red beans, but the beans are still relatively high in protein.  Furthermore, the consumption of beans can help control blood sugar, lower cholesterol, and reduce cancer risk. 

So when I make chili, I add both - the beef for the taste and protein, and the beans for their health benefits and net calorie-lowering potential. 

Comparison composed of Google screengrabs. 

That's how I would have brought that question to closure if it were asked of me.  I would have said, "By all means, enjoy traditional Texas chili once in a while.  But also know that there are updated recipes that taste wonderful and that could significantly benefit your health and weight loss goals." 

Abbott is questionable with his reference to beans as "filler".

That's a hell of a lot of "filler" in my pantry stockpile, eh? 

I wonder how the Texas Hispanic population reacts when they see his statement?  Beans are so central to Hispanic cultural heritage that it's impossible to think of one without the other.

This guy ain't sellin' filler, and I ain't whistlin' Dixie.  When I think of the Hispanic families I have come to know over the past several decades, one of the aspects I remember most vividly is that enormous pot of traditional home-made beans on the stove, simmering aaaaall day long as giant extended families gathered to be with each other.  And those beans were always out of this world!

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia.

Anyway, I don't have a bean-laden red chili recipe to share with you today, but I'll do that in the future.  In the mean time, Happy New Year, and healthy eatin'.

Guilty as charged:  If you look carefully, you can see some beans visible through the glass Pyrex dishes in this, my most recent batch. 

However, I'd put my chili up against any other in a taste test.  Remember all those organic Anaheims I harvested from our suburban back-yard garden a few months ago?  I slow-roasted them on the BBQ, and then I put them in that batch of chili, which my husband declared to be "Our best yet." 

Voting vexations

Heading to your polling place today?  Ponder this Chron blog post if the notion of a straight-ticket solution ever crosses your mind in any future election where public servants rather than bonds and Constitutional amendments are on the ballot:  Yet another local Judge is alleged to be engaging in flagrant abuse of the public trust.  Excerpt from Chron:

"Family Court Judge Denise Pratt of the 311th District has come under fire for altering court records to mask tardy rulings, as well as a host of other doings that many lawyers have described in interviews as not criminal but highly unusual, unprofessional or unethical, including rampant absenteeism and communicating with lawyers on one side of a case without the other side knowing.  Pratt, a Republican judge first elected in 2010, did not immediately respond to requests for comment."

ADD SHAME FACE DU JOUR:  You could choose Judge Denise Pratt (Houston), former Judge Christopher Dupuy (Galveston), or if you change the costume, this could be former District Clerk Jason Murray (Galveston). 

Microsoft clip art (a weird one). 

This is the third such recent case just in our local area.  Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.  Something is wrong here because the system doesn't seem to be self-regulating.  We would expect our elected representatives to exhibit a diversity of competence, but multiple cases of allegedly-intentional lawbreaking?? 

My heart goes out to the families impacted by this latest situation.  Family law cases are horribly disruptive and emotionally wrenching even in the best of circumstances.  I can't imagine those transactions being complicated by unethical and/or illegal behaviors from the presiding authority - talk about adding unspeakable insult to injury.  Here's hoping that both the voters and the Republican Party can do a better job of cleaning our elected house in the future.

From KTRK:

The state of the League City blogosphere

A long time ago and even recently, I mentioned that it was never my intention to make Centerpointe Communicator into an "issues" blog.  I had intended to preserve this as a "lifestyle" blog, my personal Suzy Homemaker-style recreational outlet to counterbalance my otherwise-serious and technically-oriented lifestyle as a parent and micro-business owner. 

Every once in a while I'd like to kick back and forget about all those years I spent studying rocket science in graduate school and instead focus on the boundless enrichment that mindless television can contribute to my life.  In the process of blogging, I have ended up availing myself of tear-jerker style indulgences, alright, but they weren't the type I initially anticipated.

The trouble with my initial plan was as follows:  I began to get increasingly concerned with what's happening in League City on administrative as well as political levels, AND, to my knowledge at least, very few others seemed to be making much of an effort to bring those issues into the public view. 

Or if they did push those issues into view, out of necessity, it was largely restricted to mainstream reporting.   Galveston County Daily News generally does their job very well, but they are a commercial news outlet and they have to act as such if they are to survive in the market.  They are also spread thinly and are routinely forced to focus on the bizarre antics that plague other cities that also fall within their coverage area, such as La Marque, and (holy crap - what next!!) City of Galveston.  Much the same restrictions can be seen to characterize the reporting depths achieved by the geographically-distant Houston Chronicle (example here). 

My husband moans about the fact that League City has experienced all this explosive growth and yet hasn't managed to give birth to its own newspaper yet.  Maybe some day that will change, but I'm not holding my breath, especially in light of what's happened to commercial journalism over the past few years. 

How big does a city have to get before it can support its own newspaper?  Does anyone know the answer to this?
Graph screengrabbed from this site.

Far more deleterious than the naturally-limited commercial news media are the entities who are augmenting the newspapers' efforts with non-commercial public commentary mostly because they are focused on personal gain, not because they are primarily concerned with objective facts, the rights of the taxpayer, or the future of League City. 

• Such is the case with every real estate blogger in and around this city, the ones who blog only as thinly-veiled attempts to increase the size of their own contact databases.  These are not bloggers - they are marketers.
• Such is the case with everybody else who is engaged in direct selling of goods and services.  They are exploiting a free platform in an attempt to raise their own profiles, and they are clogging up the search engines with worthless content in the process.  Every time I start trolling around to check up on who's-who in blogging these days, I have to waste valuable time sorting through all of their useless self-promotional spew.   
• Such is also the case with certain political special interest groups whose efforts I'm not even going to dignify by referencing active URLs.  Their blogging amounts to blatant self-advocacy for the obvious greedy reasons. 

There are, however, a number of additional individuals and social consortia for whom the citizen-journalism integrity issues have never been as black and white as all that. 

The people in this category are perhaps leaving the door open to some kind of a longer-term personal advantage in terms of political gain and/or a specific market share, yet at the same time, they are clearly justifying their own existences in the blogosphere by providing valid observations, viewpoints, and raising very good questions, as well as furnishing factual content that is genuinely of interest to many of the folks who care about League City.  These are people whom I don't know and might not agree with, but they do have valid things to say, and I definitely want to hear those things. 

Back in 2009, former (?) Chron writer / League City reporter Thayer Evans produced a little piece titled "Dueling blogs in League City" which neatly summarized the guts and history of some of the players who fall into that category.  Thayer focused primarily on Mallios and Edelman and the friction between the two.

But that was three years ago, and since that time, things in the blogosphere have continued to evolve.  As a citizen journalist who is aligned with absolutely nobody in any political or commercial sense, I'm only partly apprised of how and why they are evolving, but here below is what I can report about it as of today. 

My concern for the state of information availability began to escalate earlier this year because Mallios appeared to cease production of The League City Blog.  As of today, its most recent post is from July 2012 - four months ago.  This cessation was particularly unfortunate given that it was occurring in a pivotal political season, and the disappearance of this collective voice was one of the reasons why I stepped up my own process of blogservation and commentary.  League City is a big city with a controversial political profile and somebody should be making an ongoing attempt (however limited) to journalistically mind this store. 

Following that apparent summer cessation, what concerned me even more was Mallios's unabashed open love letter to Tim Paulissen in GCDN in October.   When I first read it, my exact reaction was, "What the hell was that?!"   Bear in mind that I'm a complete political Newbie here, and a reluctant one at that, but I have no idea why GCDN would want to publish that as anything other than a clearly-marked op-ed.  Someone please explain this to me if you think it would be worth your effort and my time to cover it.  I have no issue with personal loyalties, but when they are played out in that format, of course it calls into question a lot of wider objectivity issues. 

Please, not in the commercial press!
At least, not without being appropriately captioned.

So basically, I was increasingly concerned that a disturbing journalistic vacuum may have begun opening up here, and initially I did not understand why.  But this question got partially answered within the past couple of days when it came to my attention that Edelman et al. re-commenced blogging under the title Real Scary League City Politics about six weeks ago.  I guess I didn't get the memo on that, and being a nascent site, it hadn't had a chance to rise high enough in hits to enter the general public's radar. 

Anyway, here's where I stand on protocol as we move forward in our inextricably-intertwined and arguably-underserved commercial and citizen journalism universes: 

I'm attentively reading, referencing, and blogrolling (and occasionally commenting on) anyone in League City, Clear Lake, or Galveston County whom I feel has something worthwhile to say about any relevant local topic, even if it can be argued that they're partially driven by their own interests (e.g., Edelman is aligned with former Councilman Cones who still appears to have a strong interest in muni affairs), and even if I don't agree with them on many issues. 

The purpose of the blogging medium is exchange of information and genuine dialog.  Everybody should have the opportunity to be exposed to what everyone else has to say, to at least be informed about the range of other viewpoints out there. 

I'm glad (and relieved) to see that this new blog has initiated, for this reason.  My husband and I both have good jobs and neither of us have the time, interest, or ambition to make extensive contributions to the League City political scene at this point in our lives.  But every time I read stories like this and this and this, I just cringe and then I feel compelled to do something about it, as any responsible citizen would.  Administrative continuity is absolutely vital for the success of a city like League City, especially technical continuity.  Without a threshold level of stability and continuity, institutional knowledge gets lost, sometimes to the point where astonishingly bad (and expensive) mistakes can happen.  Such as a city spending over a million dollars on a water treatment facility without ever getting it working, and then only discovering the oversight when the city's water pressure starts failing in the depths of drought.  The likes of that is downright horrifying and would compel anyone to make a contribution toward remediating the obvious municipal dysfunction. 

Blog on.  All available voices are needed to help keep tabs on a fairly big city that continues to be characterized by a fairly small amount of news reporting.  And if any additional new blogs pop up, please, someone drop me a line.