Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
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METRO | Austin area transportation planning update
Now is a good time to pause and reflect.
I-35 in downtown Austin. Photo by Todd Morris / Flickr / Creative Commons.
AUSTIN — The federally-required CAMPO planning process has gotten continually less credible over recent decades, and is now, IMO, being used strategically as a way to keep TxDOT and the regional suburban sprawl developers politically dominant in shaping Austin’s growth future. Now is a good time to pause and reflect.
(CAMPO is the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority. TxDOT is the Texas Department of Transportation.)
The recent inability of the CAMPO Regional Arterial Study to win CAMPO Policy Board approval was an important planning failure in this regard. The CAMPO planning process has degenerated into an embarrassing non-transparent mess without a price tag. It is arguably worse than the new letter from the Travis County Commissioners Court to CAMPO implies. This broad criticism primarily applies to CAMPO’s road planning and funding.
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Posted in RagBlog
Tagged CAMPO, Rag Bloggers, Roger Baker, Transportation Politics, Travis County
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BOOKS | ‘Red Scare in the Green Mountains’
Political paradox in Vermont is narrated with insight in Rick Winston’s book.
Image from Red Scare in the Green Mountains.
ROYALSTON, Mass. — There are paradoxes in the politics of Vermont.
When a liberal majority in the state’s legislature in 2000 approved a history-making law authorizing same-sex “civil unions,” conservative Vermonters expressed their outrage by placing “Take Back Vermont” anywhere they could.
Then, in 2009, Vermont became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage, the first to do so by legislation rather than a court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling on this topic didn’t occur until 2015. Now, few people in Vermont, if any, are fretting over this matter.
In the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who identifies as a “democratic socialist,” became wildly popular, inspirational to many. He began serving in the U.S. Senate in 2006, and was reelected in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote, and in 2018 with 67 percent.
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Posted in RagBlog
Tagged Allen Young, Books, McCarthyism, Rag Bloggers, Red Scare in Green Mountains, Rick Winston, Vermont Politics
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POLITICAL CARTOON | Keep ’em moving…
save the economy.
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POLITICAL CARTOON | Life During Wartime: Covid-19 Edition: Complainers
http://www.joshbrownnyc.com/ldw.htm
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A remembrance of Gene Bishop and
Herman Goldfarb
Two doctors who were activists for peace.
Herman Goldfarb, left, and Gene Bishop. Photos courtesy Allen Young.
ROYALSTON, Mass. — Every time I read about a monument being erected to honor soldiers, I remember conversations I’ve had with friends about the need we feel for a monument of some sort to acknowledge those of us who were soldiers of a different sort — marching against war, specifically the Vietnam War.
Most followers of The Rag Blog are aware of this anti-war movement, a central pillar of the legendary “Sixties,” and this article is a memorial tribute to two activists, both of whom were also medical doctors. Both died recently, and linking them in this article is part of my own process of mourning for them.
They are Gene Bishop, M.D. (1947-2020), and Herman Goldfarb, M.D. (1927-2019).
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Posted in RagBlog
Tagged Allen Young, Gene Bishop, Herman Goldfarb, Rag Bloggers, Remembrance
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‘Virtual Cough-In’ called for
Seniors confront Dan Patrick’s ‘Coffin Campaign.’
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, coughing. Photo graphic by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.
AUSTIN — On March 23, as the coronavirus pandemic sent shock waves across the nation, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that lots of grandparents would be willing to die from the coronavirus to save their grandchildren from another Great Depression. It had the makings of a “Coffin Campaign.”
Texas Monthly summed up Patrick’s position with this headline, “Dan Patrick to Dan Patrick: Drop Dead,” writing: “Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has only one regret: that he has but one life to give for his country. He also feels compelled to offer up yours, and grandma’s too.”
Some Texas retirees and grandparents have a response to the lieutenant governor and hope it will go viral, so to speak. The Texas Alliance of Retired Americans (TARA) is launching a Virtual Cough-In Campaign for the week leading up to the lieutenant governor’s 70th birthday on April 4.
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Spotlight on women’s activism at UT’s Briscoe Center
Oral history project is online while major exhibit shelters in place.
Unlike many underground newspapers, The Rag at UT-Austin embraced women’s liberation. Here, women of The Rag, with Linda Smith in foreground, work on layout, February 1974. Photo by Alan Pogue.
AUSTIN — To honor women’s history, the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History opened a major exhibit, “On with the Fight!” highlighting 150 years of women’s activism. I was honored to speak at the exhibit’s opening on March 5, 2020.
That gathering now seems to have taken place in a different era. By March 16, the Briscoe Center closed due to Coronavirus concerns. The post I had written about the exhibit will be published at a later date when the Center’s exhibit hall reopens to the public.
Most of the nation is now sheltering in place hoping to “flatten the curve” of contagion. The Covid-19 death toll rises daily. What a difference a few weeks can make.
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‘Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service’
Dorothy Dickie has documented a significant and nearly-forgotten chapter of our history.
Screenshot from Under the Ground, a documentary by Dorothy Dickie
about Liberation News Service.
AUSTIN — Award-winning Canadian filmmaker Dorothy Dickie is completing production on an exciting 80-minute documentary film called Under the Ground: The Story of Liberation News Service. LNS was an alternative news operation that flourished between 1967 and 1981 in the United States, playing a major – and underrecognized — role in those tumultuous times.
Austin’s New Journalism Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit group, is joining Dickie in co-sponsoring Under the Ground. NJP also publishes The Rag Blog, sponsors Rag Radio, and has a book-publishing arm that produced Celebrating The Rag: Austin’s Iconic Underground Newspaper.
Liberation News Service served underground newspapers, college publications, radio stations — a range of alternative media. They sent out regular packets of news and graphics that provided content otherwise not available to these feisty but often-shoestring alternative publications that sprung up around the anti-war and student power movement and the ‘60s counterculture.
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